BEIJING – As Vice-President Han Zheng and Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng watched in a corner of the Capitol rotunda while Mr Donald Trump was sworn in, China was hoping that their presence in Washington would signal a proactive reset of the tumultuous relationship.
But with the experience of Mr Trump’s first tenure in the White House still very much alive, the Chinese leadership is under no illusion that there will be much of a honeymoon period this time around.
In fact, there will be no honeymoon.
China might have appeared to have been spared in the first few hours of Mr Trump’s second term. Absent among the flurry of executive orders the new President signed on his first day in office were the steep tariffs he had earlier promised to slap on the world’s second-largest economy.
Nonetheless, Beijing had an early taste of how Mr Trump is likely to deal with what the US has labelled its biggest strategic rival, when he put China on notice: Allow the sale of TikTok or get hit by more tariffs.
“It is the opening shot, and it is Trump sending the signal that he is holding back for now while he thinks about what to do with some of the issues he is unhappy about,” said Associate Professor Hoo Tiang Boon, a US-China relations expert at Nanyang Technological University.
“He wants to create a window for negotiation.”
Another issue that will test US-China ties was Mr Trump’s claim that China was effectively “operating” the Panama Canal and that the US would take it back.
This was despite China having said that it respects Panama’s sovereignty over the canal, and that it recognises the canal’s role as a permanently neutral international passageway. China also acknowledged Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino’s statement that the Panama Canal is not under the direct or indirect control of any major power.
China has been making positive noises about its willingness to work with the US from “a new starting point”, believing that Mr Trump wants to deal.
Relations were civil leading up to his inauguration, with President Xi Jinping’s phone call with the incoming president on Jan 17 setting the tone for how Beijing would like to engage.
Promisingly, both leaders agreed to establish strategic communication channels and keep in touch regularly on “major issues of common concern”.
Mr Xi showed the new US President his sincerity in resetting ties when he sent a more-senior-than-usual envoy in his place for Mr Trump’s inauguration.
While in Washington, Vice-President Han also met American businesses, as well as US Vice-President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk, who now has his own White House office.
Yet, the Chinese leadership will be clear-eyed about the real intentions behind such positive atmospherics.
After spending much of his first campaign savaging China in 2016, Mr Trump and his wife Melania wined and dined Mr Xi and his wife at his Florida home in Mar-a-Lago barely three months after he was sworn in in 2017.
Mr Trump’s grandchildren serenaded the Chinese couple with a Chinese folk song, and the American President gushed about the “great chemistry” he had with Mr Xi, promising that “lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away”.
Three weeks later, he signed an executive order to establish a trade policy office to look at how to decrease the trade deficit and strengthen US manufacturing and industrial bases.
Then came the trade war and a host of punishing actions against China.
But Mr Trump is not the only one capable of veiled threats while playing nice on Day One. Beijing made a show of a virtual meeting between Mr Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin that just so happened to take place hours after the inauguration.
A read-out released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the two leaders underscored the need to “deepen strategic coordination” and “firmly support each other” in response to “external uncertainties”.
Bitten once, Beijing has been gaming out various contingencies for how to deal with Mr Trump, and Mr Putin – by keeping him close – is but one chess piece.
“For the time being, China is largely keeping its powder dry and saying all the right things about wanting to have a positive and productive relationship with the President. If and when Trump does move forward with tariffs, China will respond forcefully,” said Mr Stephen Olson, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
China’s leverage comes primarily from its sizeable market and its dominant position as a supplier of critical materials needed for everything from the green transition to jet fighter planes, said Mr Olson, formerly an international trade negotiator in Washington.
Still, some in the establishment believe that Mr Trump might be less focused on a continuation of the trade war with China this time.
His new team reflects his commercial priorities, argued Dr Henry Wang, who heads the Chinese think-tank Centre for China and Globalisation, and who is also an adviser to the Chinese government.
These include his choice of ambassador to China, Mr David Perdue, who ironically had made a career out of outsourcing manufacturing facilities to Asia in search of lowering costs. There is also Wall Street veteran Scott Bessent, Mr Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary; and Tesla chief Mr Musk, who has been tapped to run a new Department of Government Efficiency.
“I think President Trump will handle this (potential tariffs) with caution. After eight years and two administrations of sanctioning China, China is still resilient and still keeping to its 5 per cent GDP growth target,” said Dr Wang.
Still, behind the big smiles and the warm handshakes, Beijing is armed and ready.
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