Tribune. On the very day Joe Biden moved to the White House, January 20, the three Chinese telecom giants – China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom -, freshly banned from the New York Stock Exchange, asked the New York Stock Exchange. here to reverse this decision, dictated by a decree signed by Donald Trump because of their links with the Chinese army. Other Chinese companies, such as Huawei, Wechat or Tiktok, also in Washington’s sights, had the same hope, namely that the Biden administration “Would show rationality and common sense”, in the words of Xinhua, Beijing’s official voice.
Two months later, everything indicates that Joe Biden, the declared anti-Trump, is faithfully following the lines drawn by his predecessor in relations with the communist regime in Beijing. Not only did the warming of the bilateral relationship not take place, but it is even on the verge of dropping to a temperature as freezing as the Alaskan winter where, during the first Sino-American meeting of the era Biden, on March 18, the two countries called the world to witness their deep mutual hostility.
Admittedly, on January 26, Mr. Biden had quietly withdrawn the regulation proposed by Mr. Trump which required universities to disclose financial links with the Confucius Institutes, Chinese equivalents of the Alliances Françaises, and whose mission is to increase the influence from Beijing to around the world. But a poll by the Pew Research Center shows that the image of China, seriously damaged by the pandemic, is more negative than ever.
Arrogance or naivety
True, on February 11, Lunar New Year’s Eve, Mr. Biden delighted the two Chinese platforms TikTok and WeChat by ordering the suspension of legal actions initiated by the Trump administration, which suspected them of spying. But, four days earlier, on February 7, the new American head of state had said that his Chinese counterpart “Does not have an ounce of democracy in him”.
Certainly, on March 12, a US federal judge ruled in favor of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone maker, by temporarily removing it from the blacklist of “Chinese Communist Military Enterprises” enacted in the final hours of Mr. Trump’s tenure. But that same day, the telecoms giant Huawei was confirmed as “Threat to national security” by the Federal Communication Commission, which amounts to excluding it from the American market.
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