China’s reaction to Harris’ candidacy

China has officially avoided commenting on Kamala Harris’s late entry into the US presidential race. But state-backed news outlets and social media users have dismissed her as a weak vice president whose candidacy did not pose a major threat to the world’s second-largest economy.

The Global Times, a Communist Party-backed media outlet, cited Chinese experts who called Harris’s performance in the White House “mediocre” and claimed she lacked “the experience and accomplishments to serve as president.” Another state-run media outlet highlighted Donald Trump’s campaign claim that Harris would be “easier to defeat” than the incumbent president.

“Does this mean Trump is set to win?” one person asked on China’s X-like Weibo, where the hashtag “Biden out” garnered some 490 million views as citizens tried to parse what the move meant for the Asian nation. An online survey of 12,000 users on that platform found that nearly 80% believed Republicans would now prevail in the November vote, without portraying that as a negative outcome.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning on Monday sidestepped a question about President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 race and endorse his running mate, calling it a “domestic matter.” “We will not comment on it,” she said at a regular news briefing in Beijing.

Most analysts agreed that Harris would, at least initially, bring continuity on trade and foreign policy, meaning there would be little impact on Beijing in changing the likely Democratic nominee.

“There’s a well-established strategic continuity that’s driving the U.S. position right now,” said Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of international relations at East China Normal University in Shanghai. “And at the level of whether it’s Biden or Trump or Harris, it’s really just a question of style.”

Fundamentally, the next president has to represent the economic and strategic interests of the United States, he added.

Tensions between the world’s largest economies have risen in recent years over China’s military aggression against Taiwan and Washington’s campaign to cut Beijing off from high-tech chips. While Biden used a meeting with President Xi Jinping in San Francisco last year to cement ties, new U.S. complaints about a surge in cheap Chinese exports are adding friction to the relationship.

Vice President Harris has only met with Xi on the sidelines of a summit in Thailand and has not visited Beijing in her current role. While Biden is expected to be the first US president since Jimmy Carter not to travel to China while in office, he has repeatedly touted spending “more time” with Xi than any other world leader, “about 90 hours”.

Former prosecutor Harris will need to quickly build trust with national security advisers to guide her on China policy, said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

“Harris does not have a track record on China, and it is not an area where she feels particularly comfortable,” the former Pentagon official added. “Biden has keen instincts and long-standing relationships with world leaders, including Xi Jinping, but Harris does not.”

One asset she could leverage is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose trip to China last year was praised within the Asian country for bringing a more constructive message of cooperation than visits by other Biden administration officials.

While Chinese citizens touted Newsom as a Biden replacement after the president’s poor debate performance, the Californian endorsed Harris for the running. “Tough. Fearless. Tenacious,” he wrote of the vice president on his official X page. “No one is better at making the case against Donald Trump’s dark vision.”

Having Newsom in a senior Cabinet role could help Harris build on the relationships she has forged with Chinese leaders. Both Democrats built their careers in California, the only U.S. state to send a governor to Beijing for a meeting with Xi during Biden’s term and one with strong trade ties to the Asian nation.

The vice president’s public comments demonstrate a willingness to maintain the current administration’s tough stance on trade, which has seen Biden build on tariffs imposed by Trump. Those restrictions have been justified as necessary to protect both national security and American jobs.

After a summit of Southeast Asian countries in Indonesia last year, Harris said there was a need to protect American interests and ensure “we are leaders in terms of the rules of the road, rather than following the rules of the road.”

During the event, she criticized Beijing for “bullying” its attempts to control access to the South China Sea, where China has broad sovereignty claims. Harris also visited Palawan in the Philippines, an island near an area that is hotly disputed between China and neighboring countries.

The vice president’s overall foreign policy is expected to align with Biden’s, especially toward China, according to Zhu Junwei, a former People’s Liberation Army researcher who is now director of American research at the Grandview Institution.

“The two parties don’t have much difference on China,” she said of Republicans and Democrats. “On China, they’re pretty similar.”

With information from News Agencies