President-elect Donald Trump has been making harsh statements toward China for many years. he hates China's huge trade surplus with the USand who can blame him? Chinese President Xi Jinping has done everything in his power to ensure that China gets billions of dollars in exports to the United States, producing products with cheap labor while violating or circumventing rules and regulations. There is no doubt that it happened.
Taken together, these violations appear to justify President Trump's threats. 60 percent customs duty The value of imports from China is significantly higher than President Trump's proposed 10% increase in imports from the rest of the world. The Chinese will scream, U.S.-China relations will become increasingly strained, and people will wonder how China will retaliate.
The obvious way would be for China to strengthen ties with countries from Africa to the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Important to China's ever-increasing presence, One Belt One Road Initiative It has provided the framework for China's aggressive expansionism with military and economic consequences. Nowhere is this effort more dramatic than the construction of a Chinese-built and financed highway across the Himalayas to Pakistan and the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar.
Trump's incoming foreign policy and defense team may respond with a largely untested promise to challenge China, more or less as the Biden administration has done. However, optics can be a cover for concessions and compromises. No one knows for sure. At least one wild card may be the ultimate proof of President Trump's determination to stop China's exploitation of the rich, ripe, gullible, but surprisingly free and open U.S. market.
That wild card is North Korea.
It's all well and good for Mr. Trump to pretend that he won't take prisoners, but how is he going to update that stance? bromance North Korea's unpredictable leader openly declares his relationship with Kim Jong-un “I fell in love” At a summit in Singapore in June 2018 while endlessly at odds with China, the source of most of North Korea's oil and half of its food? Mr. Kim may want to take on the Chinese and Americans who resent his power, but he is not too far from the nation's orbit towering over its northern border to the last few miles it shares with North Korea. cannot be moved. Historical rivals of Russia and China.
Indeed, Mr. Kim has shrewdly forged what appears to be a rock-solid alliance with Russia, meaning he cannot afford not to comply with all of China's demands. Unlike Russia, Mr. Xi may not want Mr. Kim to consider South Korea as a “state.” “Enemy country” And they may not be happy to hear that Mr. Kim is threatening to flood South Korea with nuclear-armed missiles.
Remember, China is overwhelmingly South Korea largest trading partner, And while China has a huge embassy in Seoul, it is much larger than its embassy in Pyongyang. Mr. Xi and his lieutenants and aides see China as having influence over both countries, much as China controlled all of the Korean peninsula centuries before Japan defeated China in war. There is. Sino-Japanese War They occupied Taiwan in 1895 (Russia in 1905) and within 15 years had turned all of Korea into a colony.
If President Trump follows through on his much-voiced promise to put China in its place and stop it from cannibalizing the U.S. market while threatening U.S. forces from the South Pacific to the South China Sea and beyond, the North How will we begin to deal with Korea? ?
President Trump has suggested that Kim may want to resume talks that broke down after the then-president resigned. Withdrew from the second official summit meeting The two met again four months later at the truce village of Panmunjom, where Trump sided with Kim for a meeting. ritual steps Although they crossed the North-South Line, nothing came out of the talks. Since then, communication between the two appears to have stopped, although Trump and Kim may have exchanged love notes.
However, North Korea's silence regarding Trump's re-election victory shows that Kim is thinking long and hard about the relationship between the two countries.
Indeed, by signing a strong mutual defense pact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr. Kim strengthened North Korea in a way no one expected during his summit with Mr. Trump; Mr. Kim needs to ponder the possibility of resuming dialogue with Washington. . Perhaps he believes that there is a possibility that the United States will eventually recognize North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state and abandon the idea of a “nuclear-weapon state.” “Complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.”
Kim's strategy is to pit Trump against Putin, but Trump is also seeking a deal with Putin. quickly end the war in Ukrainelet the Russians keep what they have. Like President Trump, we may not be able to reach an agreement in one day. He said for a long time that he could do it.But soon he wants to claim that the war is resolved. North Koreans are Currently a fighter in Ukrainewill be part of the contract. Could President Trump and Chairman Kim agree to meet again with Ukraine in mind?
Perhaps, but how could President Trump, who seeks to open up to North Korea while sending American warships to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea and ordering heavy bombers on threat flights, take a tough stance against China? I wonder if it was? And how can he maintain the relationship he wanted the world to believe was at least civil, even friendly, with President Putin, while also maintaining his relationship with Mr. Xi as it folds?
The Chinese may not love Russia and President Xi may resent the strong bond Putin has forged with Kim, but the Chinese and Russians are still the saviors of North Korea and the Korean War. It is also the guarantor of North Korea's survival.
Mr. Trump and his team will need basic training in the tactics and tactics of the Northeast Asian power game. They will realize that there is nothing easier than raising tariffs all at once or signing a piece of paper declaring “peace” on the Korean peninsula.
One thing they are completely unprepared for, mentally, psychologically, by background and training, is the second wave that could erupt as tensions rise with a wave of rhetoric starting with a new trade war. These include the Korean War and the great fires in Northeast Asia.
Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, focusing much of his career on conflicts in Asia and the Middle East, including as a correspondent for the Washington Star and Chicago Tribune. He is currently a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea and is the author of several books on Asian affairs.
