Joe Biden, China And The Indo-Pacific

As Joe Biden takes official charge as the 46th President of the United States of America, he will be confronting a number of foreign policy challenges.

- Uday Patil

Perhaps, the most important among all the foreign policy challenges will be the one concerning how the Biden administration will deal with the China factor in its Indo-Pacific strategy.

China’s Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party recently contented “Trump’s defeat in the election does not mean an end of the Indo-Pacific Strategy. Biden is anticipated to adopt a similar way of thinking, although the name of the regional strategy may be different.” The Indo-Pacific, which stretches from the West coast of the United States to the West coast of India, is a primary theatre for US-China strategic competition. For China, the waters of the Indo-Pacific region offer an important route to secure its energy requirements as well as enhancing its economic and maritime influence. For the United States, the region remains central to sustaining its primacy, securing its allies, and countering the rise of China. In what ways, the onset of the Biden administration in the United States will affect Washington’s approach towards the Indo-Pacific and its policy towards China remain a matter of debate. In this context, the article attempts to analyse the probable US approach to the Indo-Pacific in the new American presidency and its implications for the state of US-China relations.

With the change of leadership in the United States and the Biden administration taking charge there, the policymaking and the strategic community elites across the world will be keenly following the direction of US foreign policy. Given the nature of the US-China relationship playing out in the Indo-Pacific and its consequence for the global order, both friends and foes of the United States will be closely following the changes and continuities in America’s Indo-Pacific strategy and the China factor in this regard.