EXPERT INTERVIEWS – As the U.S. retreats on several global fronts -- foreign aid, global health, global alliances and others -- is China taking advantage? Many experts and critics of the Trump administration are worried that Beijing will seek (or is already seeking) to fill vacuums created by the gutting of U.S. support for global programs, and a turn away from traditional American alliances.
In some cases, it's already happening. China announced last week that it will give $500 million to the World Health Organization over five years, replacing the U.S. as the institution’s biggest donor. President Trump announced soon after his inauguration that the U.S. was withdrawing from the WHO.
Other examples: the U.S. has slashed support for USAID and other foreign assistance programs, while China’s aid to the developing world has increased; the U.S. has moved to shut down Voice of America and other federally funded media, while Chinese has expanded its efforts to boost China-friendly media in many parts of the world; and while the U.S. has cut funding for scientific research and places for foreign students at U.S. universities, China has recently opened its doors to global talent, including Americans of Chinese origin.
Beyond the funding cuts, there are changes in the U.S. approach to longtime allies – and China’s efforts to take advantage in that space as well. After Vice President JD Vance took to the stage at this year’s Munich Security Conference and criticized many of the European nations represented there, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a case for multilateralism and closer China-Europe cooperation.
“While not everything Beijing does on the global stage harms the United States, China will fill the vacuum President Trump has created in ways that benefit its interests and its people,” Michael Clark, a research associate for China policy at American Progress, wrote recently. “Trump is weakening the foundations of American strength and prosperity.”
How much does this matter? The Cipher Brief put that question – and others – to two experts with deep experience in China and the U.S.-China relationship: Orville Schell, Director of the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations; and Martin Petersen, who served as Acting Executive Director at the CIA.
“With the United States retreating, particularly from the Global South, Africa, Latin America, and other less-developed countries, it does create an opportunity for China,” Schell said. “Without competition, China has an easier job of gaining influence in the world.”
Schell and Petersen spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Watch now at The Cipher Brief YouTube channel.
The Cipher Brief: Do you believe China benefits in any way from policies taken by the White House over the past several months?
Schell: The first thing to note is that nature abhors a vacuum. And with the United States retreating, particularly from the Global South, Africa, Latin America, and other less-developed countries, it does create an opportunity for China. They are incredibly tenacious, and as we all know from the Belt and Road [Initiative], they're moving into this vacuum. That said, I think it's the absence of America that creates the opportunity for China, not the attributes of their system and their society, or that what they're offering that is particularly appealing. But without competition, China has an easier job of gaining influence in the world.
Petersen: China will certainly attempt to take advantage of any openings, but there's a second question that hasn't been asked. Equally important is China's ability to exploit those opportunities.
What does China have to offer to others as a way of building better relationships, as the U.S. retreats? I think it comes down to three things. Certainly technical assistance and aid, particularly if you look at what they've been doing in Africa and Latin America—they've been very active there. Some of the bloom is off of the Belt and Road program, but it’s still a tool China has and will use.
Second is expanding their trade with nations other than the U.S. – but here's the issue: something like $103 billion, around 15% of China’s foreign trade, has gone to the U.S. Some 16 million jobs in China depend on trade with the U.S., and the PRC has a lot of problems right now finding jobs for college graduates. And that's a lot of trade to move someplace else, including to Europe and the Middle East. I'm not sure those countries are going to be all that happy with aggressive Chinese trade policies that may swamp local products and industry. So there's certainly room to move that trade, but it's not going to be easy to do.
And then the last thing China has used is support for various issues in the region and around the world. The Chinese have been very active in the Middle East — often as a counter to the U.S. — but it doesn't really translate into a lot of influence that I can see at this point. And furthermore, if you're a foreign leader, you have to decide how you are going to react to Chinese initiatives. How comfortable are you going to be, getting close to the PRC?
And so, yes, I think there are going to be openings for the Chinese. I think they're going to be harder to exploit than some would have you believe.
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The Cipher Brief: To the point about Africa, there are cuts looming at the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs and elsewhere. There was a piece from the AEI recently that called the cuts in the U.S. presence in Africa “a preemptive surrender” to China. Do you agree with that assessment?
Petersen: I would argue that that's a bit of an overstatement. There are opportunities in Africa. The Chinese have been active there, but frankly, what does it get? I mean, you can pour more money in there, but I'm not sure that in terms of Chinese priorities — domination in East Asia and that sort of thing — spending a lot of their political capital in Africa is going to get them very far.
Schell: As we are closing consulates in Africa, or at least threatening to, China is upping its diplomatic presence in every conceivable way, whether it's through media, or investing massive amounts of money through the Belt and Road infrastructure projects in these countries, whereas the United States is really in retreat. So I think it does matter.
But again, there is the inescapable fact that China represents a very different political system, which isn't always appealing. And its soft power also is a little bit less lustrous than the United States. So it's not like it's a clean sweep, but I'd have to say we've exited the stage of much of the world, and we show no sign of upping our game — and that does give China an advantage.
The Cipher Brief: Is there a national security ramification to the U.S. retreat, and China’s filling the vacuum? The phrase we hear all the time from the intelligence community and the national security establishment – for years now – is that China is the “pacing threat.” Is this just about soft power, or is there a nexus between what we've been talking about here and national security for the U.S.?
Schell: There is a real national security question here. There are a couple of elements. One is the mining industry — whether it's lithium, graphite, rare earths, cobalt — China tends to have a real lock on a lot of these mining operations in other countries. And that means that it's all well and good as long as we were getting along in the old world of globalization, where it didn't matter where things came from or what kind of governments the countries had, as long as you could get it quickly and fast and at a good price. But now as politics enters the scene, who owns the mines? And even more important, who owns the processing industry? In the case of rare earths, China not only mines most of the ores from which rare earths are extracted, but it controls over 90 % of the rare earth processing facilities.
That means that even if we have a mine in Ukraine, which Trump has just signed up for, the question is who's going to process it to extract the ores for the magnets and the various things that we need, for consumer goods and military hardware. So there are lots of choke points in the global supply chain that China has quietly occupied. And one of them is in the mining industry, but also in things like silicon, polysilicon, solar panels, battery technology, which depends on a lot of lithium and other minerals. China has quietly just moved in and invested in these areas, and we have not.
Petersen: Yes, there is a national security element to this. I think Trump is forcing the nations of Asia to consider and make some decisions between the U.S. and China. That’s a national security issue. Our trade imbalance with India and with Vietnam is pretty significant too. At what point is this economics and at what point is it national security? You can't really separate the two completely. They're interwoven.
And here I think the world needs a predictable U.S. with a clear vision – and “America First” is not a clear vision. But look at Trump. He turns on a dime, and I think we've got to factor his personality into this. I think he likes big statements, he likes to push out and then — back off may not be the right word, but he adjusts his position. I would like the U.S. to be able to articulate a little clearer exactly what our foreign policy priorities are, and be able to explain those to our allies and to our adversaries.
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The Cipher Brief: The Chinese are trying very hard for obvious reasons to engage more with areas of the world where the U.S. has retreated — and not just in Africa and the Global South. They are pushing for better relations with the Europeans, and even the Canadians. To what extent is that going to be a boon for China?
Schell: The answer to your question is, we don't really know. But in regard to Europe, China is going to aggressively seek to switch exports away from America that now may not be able to take them because of high tariffs to Europe. But Europe is frightened to death because they don't want to have low-cost Chinese goods. Consumers will love it, but it'll put people out of business. The auto industry, for instance — Germany is dependent on its auto industry. If they let in Chinese cars that are well designed and well made at a much lower cost, it's going to kill their industry.
The other thing that China is trying to do is to ship things to Malaysia, Vietnam, other countries and have them assembled there, or actually sometimes ship fully manufactured goods and have them re-labeled as being made in these other countries. So we can certainly do something about this, too, in terms of our customs and tariffs, but it creates a tremendously complicated system where you constantly have to be vigilant about massively expensive systems and administrative branches of the government to investigate where things actually come from. So the old system is dead, where nobody really cared where anything came from, as long as you could maintain low inventories, get the things quickly and cheaply.
Petersen: I think if you're sitting in Beijing, you're balancing two or three different issues. And certainly your relationship with the United States is one of those. You also got your relationship with the North Koreans, the Iranians, and the Russians, and you've got to factor that in. There's talks between the U.S. and Iran on nuclear issues. I don't know how that's going to play out, but there are foreign policy pieces that are moving that Beijing is looking at.
They've also got economic issues, not just the trade issues with the U.S. but job generation within China. Finances aren't what they should be. The investments are not in the areas that are probably ideal for the long-term development of the Chinese economy and whatnot. So that's a second set of issues.
A third set of issues is, to the degree that Xi is talking about unification with Taiwan, a more aggressive Chinese military posture, and certainly in Asia, he's got to be taking a look at what happened with the Russians in Ukraine and think, do I have equipment that will function? Do I have armed forces that will be able to work together to achieve goals? What about initiative at the company and battalion and brigade levels? Will they be able to maneuver on a complex modern battleship? So Xi Jinping is balancing three balls. There's the U.S. ball, which is a big one. He's got his relationship that he's tied himself to with Putin and North Korea and Iran, and he's got these economic issues at home. He's got a lot on his plate.
The Cipher Brief: So have these first months of the second Trump administration been a good thing for China? A terrible thing? Somewhere in between?
Schell: I think China is — in a different way than the United States — in a difficult position because its economy is so dependent on the global market system functioning as it has, and that's now under threat. Moreover, the property market in China has crashed and is in a grave state of affairs. And this was the heart and soul of an important element of China's economic well-being. And there are other things that China has to concern itself with, like aging demographics, no immigration to irrigate the society with younger immigrants from elsewhere. And it also has a political system that for most countries, if they had their druthers, is not that appealing. They wouldn't choose it, but the United States has made itself so indigestible in some ways, that it makes it more appealing for them to buddy up with China. But that game is not over yet.
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