Could a Trump-Vance win reshape America’s relationship with China – and Taiwan?

Hong Kong CNN —

The official launch of the Republican presidential campaign ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance this week has been closely scrutinized by governments around the globe looking for clues to what a return of an “America First” foreign policy might look like – including in the world’s second-largest economy.

Vance, a junior senator from Ohio, wove several mentions of China – and what he painted as its negative impact on the American economy – into his introduction of his own life and views to the Republican National Convention (RNC) Wednesday, when he accepted the nomination to be Trump’s vice-presidential candidate.

Much like his running mate, Vance claimed that policies in past decades supported by President Joe Biden and “out-of-touch politicians” in Washington meant the US “was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor, and in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl.”

“We’re going to build factories again … together, we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens,” Vance said.

The comments, which were among the few direct references to foreign nations throughout the nearly 40-minute speech, come in a week where Vance and Trump have shown signals of how their administration would shape US policy and relations with China – and US partners in Asia.

That’s drawn attention from the region, where countries’ ties with the US start to look different if power changes hands in the November elections.

Beijing has already obliquely called for the rhetoric to tone down, with a Foreign Ministry spokesperson on both Tuesday and Wednesday repeating that Beijing is “opposed to making China an