Adaptive Actions: Bystanders ' Responses to the U.S. -China T rade War

This thesis examines the implications of the U.S.-China trade war on the global geopolitical shift from 2019-2024. Specifically, I pay attention to the effect of the third parties' export responses to the mutual tariff barriers during the U.S.-China trade war on the frequency of the diplomatic visits that were sent to Beijing and Washington, compared to prior to the trade war. Methodologically, I employ a shift-share framework to ensure the exogeneity of the trade war shock and construct an original dataset on diplomatic visits of 44 states. The results reveal that while the trade shock generally has no statistically significant effect on the diplomatic engagement within the designated time, there is an asymmetrical effect between the two destinations: the diplomatic visits to China increase along with a stronger shock, but there is no significant effect on visits to the U.S. More importantly, only bystander states that gain more export to China from the spillover effect of the trade war exhibit such an asymmetrical pattern. Finally, by incorporating public opinion into the model, the study finds that domestic attitudes have no significant effect on leaders' visits, at least during the trade war period.