Under Trump, Washington abandoned the Paris climate pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the UN Human Rights Council and UNESCO, and ditched the Iran nuclear deal. It has announced that it will withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) next July and has crippled the World Trade Organization by blocking appointments to its appeals panel.
Beijing, which accuses Washington of being “addicted to quitting”, has struck a more globalist posture under President Xi Jinping: Chinese officials head four of the 15 UN agencies, and Beijing has boosted its WHO commitment by $2 billion.
As it has sought a seat at the table more befitting its status as the world’s number-two economy, China has also formed its own multilateral institutions, including the Belt and Road Initiative and Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
“China has been trying its best to take advantage of the U.S. retreat to advance its own goals,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. “Nevertheless, China has had difficulty translating its growing influence into foreign policy success,” he said.
While China has all-but-quashed the spread of coronavirus and is a leader in vaccine efforts, its early mishandling of the outbreak that began in Wuhan has triggered a global backlash.
Beijing’s clampdown on Hong Kong, its mass detention of Uighur Muslims, its island-building in the South China Sea and sabre-rattling towards Taiwan as well as more aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy, have also eroded sentiment towards China – even as Trump’s policies have undermined U.S. standing.
China has struggled to leverage the exasperation of some U.S. allies towards Washington under Trump, with State Councillor Wang Yi, the government’s top diplomat, facing pushback over Hong Kong and other issues during a recent five-country visit to Europe.
“Many see the U.S. retreat from global institutions under Trump as ceding fertile ground to China in this area, but what is striking is how much China’s so-called ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy has undercut their ability to take advantage,” said Susan Thornton, the top U.S. diplomat for Asia early in the Trump administration.