United States

The Kamala Harris bandwagon continues to gather momentum. Going into this week’s Democratic National Convention “The Economist” poll tracker put her three points ahead nationally. The convention dividend should add another two to three points easily.

Kamala’s rapid rise, however, has less to do with her policies and more to do with vibes. Her main attributes are that she is younger than Joe Biden, pro-abortion and anti-Trump, which, for the Democrats, is more than enough.

In her 40-minute conference speech a few foreign policy hints slipped out. On the Middle East she supports Israel while sympathising and empathising with the Palestinians. On NATO she is pro-Alliance. As for Ukraine, she is anti-Putin and on China Kamala Harris remains a bit of a mystery.

Ms Harris’s recent speech in Philadelphia on Kamalanomics failed to impress the professionals. Her plans to end price gouging with federal regulations; raise child tax credits by $4,000 and hand-out $25,000 to first time home buyers, was derided by most economists as inflationary left-of-centre crowd-pleasing populism. It was not, however, as Trump claimed, communism.

Former prosecutor Kamala Harris is, however, proving adept at deflecting criticism; coming up with resonating slogans and landing punches. Two placards keep popping up at her rallies: “Freedom” and “We Will Not Go Back.”

The first encompasses a broad swathe of issues to include reproductive rights, racism, misogyny, health care, for the elderly, the electoral process, the rule of law, the constitution and democracy itself. All of which either have been, or are perceived to be, threatened by Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes.

“We Will Not Go Back” refers to the belief that Republicans want to turn the social clock back to the 1950s – perhaps even further – when Jim Crow ruled in the South and a woman’s place was in the home.

Trump is the master of the personal insult. Vice President Harris has fostered a unique method for countering them. She ignores them. Then she turns the debate on her opponent’s weaknesses. Project 2025, for instance, is a major embarrassment for the ex-president. He has repeatedly disavowed it. But Kamala Harris refuses to let it go.

Finally, there is the fact that Kamala Harris ticks almost every diversity box there is. She is a female, part-Asian, part-African all-American. Yet she rarely mentions her gender or mixed-race background. Perhaps it is time for Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. The dream that the day will come when a person will be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.

China and the United States

China appreciates Donald Trump. It is too much they say they like him. His threatened tariffs and bellicose rhetoric would undoubtedly put a strain on Sino-American relations.

But at the same time, the ex-president has shown little inclination to defend Taiwan and Trump’s transactional diplomacy could simplify relations. Most of all, Donald J. Trump is a known quantity.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is an unwelcome mystery.

For a start, Beijing is unhappy with the end of the battle of the geriatrics that a Trump-Biden race represented. The Chinese have their own problems with a perceived gerontocracy and Kamala Harris presents an unflattering contrast with 71-year-old Xi Jinping. Since Ms Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee, all hints of a Biden-Xi comparison have been erased from the Chinese internet.

Then there is the problem of racism and misogyny. At least America’s problem as portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party. In May Beijing published a report on human rights in America which said racism is getting worse and gender discrimination is “rampant”. Kamala Harris – in case you missed it – is female and of mixed Asian-African heritage.

It is expected that Kamala Harris’s China policy will largely be a re-run of Joe Biden’s. She will likely leave in place the tariffs imposed by her mentor and continue the commitment to defend Taiwan and attack China’s human rights record.

The choice of Tim Walz as Harris’s running-mate adds an interesting wrinkle to Sino-American relations in a possible Harris administration. He taught in China and has visited the country dozens of times. In contrast, Ms Harris has made only the rare visit to Asia.

This indicates that Walz may break with vice-presidential tradition and have a role to play as the administration’s point man on China. Republicans are ready for it. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives have already launched an investigation into Walz’s “longstanding and cosy relationship with China”.  Unfortunately for the conservatives they are unlikely to find skeleton’s in Walz’s Chinese wardrobe. His time in and out of Congress has been marked by repeated attack on Beijing’s human rights record, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by China’s state-controlled media.

Trump, on the other hand, is more concerned with trading rights than human rights. So, all things considered, Xi Jinping is likely to prefer Trump over Harris.

India

Last month Moscow. This week Kyiv. What is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi up to?