New US president won't affect China ties: experts

Whether it's Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump eventually elected as the next United States President, neither will make much difference to the China-US ties, experts said at a symposium on Monday.

The election has little to do with the bilateral relations and will not change the US's core strategies, said Zhou Xiaojing, a researcher at the Center for China and Globalization, during the symposium hosted by the center, which focused on how the election will affect China-US ties.

Huo Jianguo, vice-chairman of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, said whoever became the next US president would submit to the will of the US as a nation, and would be "constrained and kidnapped by the US congress and the country's various interest groups".

Zhou said the length of time the new US president stayed in office - four or eight years - was an important factor in analyzing the US's policies and in turn the development of China-US ties. She pointed out that a short term in office would impose "great restrictions" on the implementation of policies.

Zou Dehao, another researcher at the center, said the election would not change the China-US ties' "keynote", which had been formed over a long period.

Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center, who was invited to give a keynote speech and attend discussions at the symposium, said that if Clinton became the US president, she would be "slightly tougher than Obama" and would deepen and continue the US's "pivot to Asia" policy.

On the other hand, if Donald Trump became the US president, there would be much unpredictability as to how he would interact with China, Daly said.

Huo, the Chinese researcher, said both Chinese and US scholars were seeing it clearly that stable China-US ties and bilateral cooperation were basic elements to solving many problems in the world.