Kamala Harris’ record shows she would focus on China, Indo-Pacific: CFR expert

Vice President Kamala Harris would likely prioritize countering China and strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region if she were to win the White House, according to American political scientist Rush Doshi. 

As pundits speculate on what a Harris administration would look like, a recently released Democratic National Committee policy platform has garnered attention for featuring Europe at the top of its chapter on foreign affairs. 

However, speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday, Doshi warned against interpreting the platform as a pivot from the Indo-Pacific to Europe. 

“People shouldn’t read too much into the order in which things appear in the platform … If you look at the record that Vice President Harris has as a senator and vice president, it shows pretty deep investment, involvement, engagement, and focus on the Indo-Pacific,” said Doshi, senior fellow for Asia studies and China Strategy Initiative director at the Council on Foreign Relations.

On Sunday, the DNC released the 2024 policy platform document ahead of its convention. But the document was written and voted on before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and contains several references to a “second Biden term.” 

For insight into Harris’ position on the Indo-Pacific, Doshi instead suggested taking into account the policymaker’s past work there.

“She pushed some of the most important legislation on China,” he said, highlighting her co-sponsorship of legislation on the special administrative region of Hong Kong and China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang. 

He noted Harris has spent a lot of time over the last four years traveling to the region and has “met with just about every Asian leader when she was vice president as senator.”

Those leaders include now Taiwanese President William Lai in January while he was still vice president and Chinese President Xi Jinping later that same year. 

Harris has also held meetings with other regional heads of state, such as Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

It is also important to consider Harris’ involvement in the Biden administration’s foreign policy agenda, said Doshi.

“[That administration] spent four years deeply involved in the Indo-Pacific with perhaps the most robust Indo-Pacific agenda of any administration, really, in decades,” Doshi said. 

According to the political scientist, that agenda was particularly focused on building partnerships and alliances. 

Examples include AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom, and the Quad, a diplomatic partnership involving Australia, India, and Japan. Such partnerships have been seen as efforts to counter China’s power and influence in the region. 

The Biden-Harris administration also took a partnership-centered approach to economic and trade policies aimed at competition with China, according to Doshi and other experts. 

Various experts have previously told CNBC that former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump has taken a more unilateral approach to enacting much of his tough-on-China policy.