12. America Counters China: Congress, Resolve, and Constraints

The US government hardening against Chinese challenges to American interests, begun in late 2017, represented an unprecedented reversal in the previous fifty years of growing US engagement with China. The hardening emerged erratically in the Donald Trump administration, reached a high point of rising tension during the 2020 US presidential election campaign, and continues strongly during the Joseph Biden administration. Throughout this period, bipartisan majorities in Congress were more resolute than the sometimes erratic or ambivalent presidents. They played a more important role in making and implementing US China policy than in any other period of American history.

This chapter explains the role of Congress and American domestic politics in driving the hardening of US policy toward China. It examines successes and shortcomings in US policy, seeing important gaps in American competition to China. It forecasts that US hardening toward China will endure in large measure because of strong resolve on the part of bipartisan majorities in Congress.