Trump needs a realistic and restrained China policy

Recent commentary has labeled Donald Trump’s national security appointees “hawks” who favor a tough role for the United States against China. This is wrong and distracts from the need to place America’s national interests at the heart of US foreign policy.

Trump’s first days in office suggest a willingness to reach out to Beijing that does not fit with the “hawks” label, the president saying he wants to visit China, and would prefer not to impose tariffs if a “deal” can be struck on trade.

This should be unsurprising since Trump’s appointees include both those committed to standing up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and those with deep economic investments in the country.

Trump’s China “hawks” include Marco Rubio for secretary of state, Mike Waltz for national security adviser, Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Peter Navarro for trade adviser, key advocate of the TikTok ban Jacob Helberg as State Department economic policy official, and as deputy national security adviser Alex Wong, anti-CCP Senator Tom Cotton’s former adviser.

But Trump’s team also includes a new constituency of advisers likely to have a say in China policy: the tech bros. Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey of autonomous weapons manufacturer Anduril have much to gain from an open congressional spigot on defense spending and both have said the US must prepare for a possible conflict with China.

On the other hand, Elon Musk’s business interests point away from decoupling from a China that represents a large share of profits for his company Tesla, as it does for many other leading US tech firms. The tech bros are thus divided.

In fact, there are few real “doves” on China in Washington these days. Those like SAIS professor Jessica Chen Weiss or former deputy secretary of state James Steinberg who reject the zero-sum language of much of the debate are far from naïve about the China challenge.

A hawks-and-doves framing neglects the real issue: not what the new administration’s China policy might be, but what it should be. Trump should be guided by realism and restraint, an accurate assessment of the balance of power in Asia and a clear-eyed view of America’s core national interests.

A zero-sum competition framing of China, one that casts any issue in terms of military buildup/deployment or sanctions/tariffs, is unhelpful. China does represent the sort of military challenge America has not faced since the early post-World War II years, and it has managed to match the West in advanced manufacturing, from AI to automobiles.

But the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not an existential threat. We do not in America have to like the Marxist-Leninist one-party state the CCP is bent on defending, but we can live with it. A good start to clarifying our terms on China would be a less expansive definition of “national security.” This is a lesson America should have learned from the War on Terror.

Questions of whether to allow TikTok to operate, who should be allowed to own US port equipment or a company like US Steel, or whether foreign-made drones or electric vehicles should be legal, all warrant serious scrutiny from lawmakers regardless of tensions with the PRC. But fears over propaganda or data theft are matters for domestic law enforcement, which should be kept separate from militarized understandings of national security.

Connecting questions like whether to ban TikTok to the military defense of East Asia via a zero-sum discussion of China serves as justification for a grand strategy of “primacy,” or maintaining predominant U.S. military capabilities in East Asia.

Primacy, however, is both unrealistic and unnecessary. The defense of the United States should not begin a few miles off the coast of the People’s Republic of China. The defense of Japan and countries from South Korea to New Zealand is not the responsibility of the United States. Washington can be a security partner but not guarantor.

On Taiwan, the major imperatives are cooling tensions, maintaining the status quo, and not being sucked into a shooting war. A policy of strategic ambiguity—remaining uncommitted to the use of force should the PRC try to take Taiwan—is still the most appropriate policy.

Like the US with the PRC, Beijing might not like a liberal democratic Taiwan, but it can live with one. Washington cannot prevent Beijing from invading Taiwan, however. It would not be a policy failure if Xi decided to try his hand at capturing the territory. Such illusions of US control, used to bash others for being “soft on China,” are meant to reinforce primacy as the only acceptable strategy option.

Neither should the quest for primacy via competition with China be the prerequisite for domestic investment. Leaders should want America to be at the forefront of new technologies like AI because they promise good jobs, economic growth, and a spur to domestic innovation.

Secure supplies of things like critical minerals and semiconductors should, therefore, be a priority absent a peer challenger. No China threat rhetoric is required.

Finally, engagement with Beijing cannot remain off the table, however toxic the word has become. American diplomats don’t like how Beijing conducts diplomacy, in particular their reneging on promises.

But the Chinese don’t like how America does business either: lecturing rather than bargaining, avoiding strategic questions and giving up little while demanding structural reforms in China. Yet while cheap, talk is still worth the effort.

No matter who Trump appoints—hawk, dove, or tech bro—a realistic and restrained policy attuned to America’s core interests remains the gold standard for making China policy.

David M McCourt is associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of a book titled “The End of Engagement: America’s China and Russia Watchers and US Strategy Since 1989.” Published with the permission of Defense Priorities.