United States President Joe Biden's diplomatic overtures during his first week in office signalled an early effort to rally allies for a collective approach to China, a message that US partners in Asia have appeared more receptive to than those in Europe.
Analysts say the Biden administration will largely continue the tougher approach to China taken by the former Trump government, albeit by embracing relationships with allies in a way the previous administration disdained. This comes as public sentiment and a bipartisan political consensus in the US has shifted against China, and as Beijing took up an increasingly aggressive foreign policy approach during the pandemic and in defending its domestic political repression.
Andrew Small, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Asia Programme, said the Biden administration made clear in its initial calls that both China and the Indo-Pacific would be high on its agenda with allies, including explicitly with Europe. A survey published last week by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that Washington could not take European alignment on China for granted, with nearly 60 per cent of the 15,000 respondents from 11 European countries surveyed wanting their nation to remain neutral in a US-China conflict and 32 per cent believing Americans could not be trusted after Trump was elected in 2016.
But in Asia, reassurances by the Biden's team that the US was committed to the region were welcomed by leaders in the region. Small said some of the United States' Asian partners had worried that a Biden presidency would mean a return to the days of the Obama administration, when Biden served as vice-president for eight years.
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