The world’s most populous country looked more soberly at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency after the New York billionaire became the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump has threatened to slap a 45% tariff on Chinese goods and recently accused the country of “raping” the U.S. through unbalanced trade. He has also said that as president he would put a stop to Chinese island building in disputed areas of the South China Sea.
Many in China had previously treated Mr. Trump’s campaign bluster as entertainment. That seemed to change after Ted Cruz, his chief rival, dropped out of the race on Tuesday. “Based on what he’s said so far, if he were to become president, I’m afraid U.S.-China relations would suffer some major upheaval,” said Shi Yinhong, an international-relations expert at Beijing’s Renmin University.
A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s status as the presumptive GOP nominee at a regular press briefing on Wednesday, saying it was “an internal affair of the U.S.” He called on people in general to view relations between the world’s two largest economies “rationally and objectively.”
China’s Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in April that the U.S. “wouldn’t be entitled to world leadership” if it tried to implement Mr. Trump’s 45% tariff idea.
Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on China has vacillated in recent days. During a foreign-policy speech in Washington on April 27, Mr. Trump softened earlier criticisms, saying China was taking advantage of the U.S. but that the two countries “are not bound to be adversaries.”
Yet the vitriol bubbled back up during a rally in Fort Wayne, Ind., four days later. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing,” he told the crowd, referring to what he described a China’s unfair trade practices. “It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.”
The comments gave rise to a hashtag and a flood of ribald responses on popular Chinese microblogging site Weibo. “Don’t worry, none of us are attracted to your filthy bodies,” wrote one user.
Chinese state media have seized on Mr. Trump’s candidacy as evidence of the decline of American democracy. The reality TV star’s success in the primaries has been “dumbfounding,” said a commentary published Sunday by Xu Changyin, a researcher at a think tank run by the official Xinhua News Agency.
“The democratic elections in the U.S. are neither democratic nor civilized — it’s truly difficult to admire,” it added. Yet China could also benefit from seeing Mr. Trump in the White House, said Renmin University’s Mr. Shi. During his foreign-policy speech, the real-estate mogul called for U.S. allies to take up more of the slack in maintaining global security — a demand that could help China by placing an added burden on its regional rivals South Korea and Japan, Mr. Shi said.
He said the government might also rather deal with Mr. Trump than with the hawkish Mrs. Clinton on problem areas like the South China Sea..
“Hillary is a lawyer, she wants to do everything according to the law,” he said. “Trump is a businessman, so maybe in the future he would be willing to do some deals with China on certain issues.”