Explained: How Trump and Biden would confront China

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have released ads accusing each other of cozying up to China, and President Trump even went so far as to tell a conservative radio host that Americans would have to "learn to speak Chinese" if Biden was elected.

The increasingly adversarial U.S.-China relationship has become a central issue on the campaign trail, with both candidates invoking the external threat of the Chinese Communist Party to deepen the stakes of an already crucial election.

The next president’s outlook on China will have a significant impact on the future of geopolitics. But despite what the ads say, Biden and Trump are actually in agreement on many critical issues, according to experts in trade and foreign policy, and a Biden administration would constitute less of a fundamental reorientation of U.S.-China relations and more of a shift in strategy.

However, Biden would likely discard certain parts of the Trump agenda, confronting China with allies, rather than picking fights with it unilaterally, and taking a more consistent stand against human rights abuses committed by the Chinese Communist Party. A second Trump term would probably bring with it a Cold War-style economic policy involving broad sanctions and further efforts to decouple the U.S. and China economies.