Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With only seven weeks remaining before the Donald Trump 2.0 era begins in Washington, China, the US’s biggest economic competitor, is wary of what the proposed Elon Musk-Vivek Ramaswamy-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would do in America.
“There is a huge pressure on China,” an advisor to Chinese President XI Jinping was quoted as saying in the media reports on Monday.
The DOGE potentially poses a challenge to China’s system, he said.
The new department will be the “biggest threat” to China, said Zheng Yongnian, China’s top academic and policy advisor to Beijing.
The duo’s team would put huge pressure on China’s current system which would now have to compete with a far more efficient US political system.
“A more efficient US political system would put huge pressure on China’s current system,” Zheng, dean of the School of Public Policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Shenzhen campus, said while speaking at Baichuan Forum hosted by the Institute for International Affairs (IIA) on November 23.
“Of course, the pressure is not exclusive to China but also others, especially Europe,” he said.
“In the medium to long term, the biggest pressure on China may come from the far-reaching changes in the US,” he said, adding, “If Trump succeeds in his efforts to overhaul the government, the US would develop a new, more competitive system.”
He also called it a form of “state capitalism with American characteristics.”
“I think we should not underestimate the institutional reforms prioritized by figures like Musk,” he warned, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Sunday.
Zheng also said that to counter the US internal changes China should expand opening up countermeasures, adding that Trump may damage bilateral ties with tariffs but “he does not want to go to war with China.”
Trump’s “tariff stick” against China under his “America First” policy approach would not only “maximally” damage bilateral relations but also sabotage the international trade system, he added.
China is now gearing up for Trump’s second term, beginning on January 20, 2025, on several fronts, including his threat to impose a 60 percent increase of tariffs on its over USD 427 billion annual exports to the US.
Trump, who was tough on China during his first term as the US President (2017-21), is expected to reinforce measures against Beijing on various global fronts, including Taiwan and the South China Sea.
While China asserts Taiwan as part of its mainland and claims ownership over most of the South China Sea, its neighbors like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan also have counterclaims over the area.
To counter tough tariff increases by the incoming Trump 2.0 administration in the US, China announced new policy measures on November 21 to back its export sector against “unreasonable foreign trade restrictions” and to create a “good environment” for its exports.
At the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Peru and the G-20 summit in Brazil last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping, during his meetings with a host of world leaders, reaffirmed China’s commitment to promote “high-standard opening up” for investment and trade.
As part of new measures to open up, China added nine more countries, including Japan, to its unilateral visa-free entry scheme, taking the total to 38.
Technology tycoon Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, was tapped to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), along with wealthy Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy.
Musk says he is targeting USD 2 trillion in cuts from the federal government’s USD 7 trillion annual budget, pledging to test legal boundaries to achieve it.
The duo has already planned to scrap “thousands of regulations” and reduce the size of the government workforce.