CHINA WILL GET STRONGER

After four years of Joe Biden, China's leaders would likely be relieved to have Donald Trump back in the White House.

- Michael Schuman

Compared with his predecessor, Biden has operated quietly. Trump launched a trade war; slapped tariffs on Chinese imports; and infuriated Beijing by referring to the coronavirus as "the Chinese Virus," blaming the Chinese Communist Party for its spread, and even at times humoring theories that the party may have played a role in its creation.

But Biden has hit China harder than Trump ever did. Armed with a more determined foreign policy, he has inflicted acute damage on the country's economy and geopolitical ambitions, from which China's leader, Xi Jinping, has struggled to recover. "A Biden-led U.S., probably from the Chinese perspective, looks like a more formidable challenge," Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told me.

The most telling example is Biden's technology policy. In 2022, his administration effectively barred the export to China of advanced semiconductors and the complex equipment required to manufacture them. The controls will likely set back China's hopes of building a competitive chip industry for years and hamper its progress in other key tech sectors, such as artificial intelligence.