Peter Martin | (TNS) Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON — U.S. spies believe China’s leaders see little or no upside to the looming electoral showdown between President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump.

Ahead of next week’s first debate of the presidential campaign, U.S. intelligence agencies assess that China has no clear preference between the two candidates, according to American officials, who asked not to be identified discussing nonpublic assessments.

The conclusion suggests that officials in Beijing, like their counterparts in Washington, believe that ties between the world’s two largest economies will continue on their long-term downward trajectory despite a recent increase in high-level meetings billed as efforts to manage differences. In recent years, the two countries have clashed over everything from technology to human rights and the South China Sea.

The U.S. assessment is matched in interviews with Chinese officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. They say the view in Beijing is that both candidates are intent on containing China and disrupting its rise.

“Neither is a perfect candidate, to put it mildly,” said Gao Zhikai, a former Chinese diplomat who served as translator to the late leader Deng Xiaoping. “Biden is a Cold War warrior who doesn’t care if he pushes the world into conflict, while Trump will probably impose sanctions and tariffs on China in pursuit of his America-first agenda.”

Spokespeople for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on intelligence assessments of how China views the 2024 vote. Asked about the U.S. elections, Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said China does not comment on “U.S. domestic affairs.”

A second Trump administration could pose significant problems for Beijing.

In his first term, Trump declared a trade war on China, increased high-level ties with Taiwan and oversaw a reorientation of U.S. military strategy to counter Beijing. By the end of his time in office, it was routine for officials in both Beijing and Washington to refer in private to ties between the nations as a new Cold War.

Chinese officials believe that a second Trump administration would likely be characterized by provocative pronouncements, unpredictable policymaking and a renewed push for anti-China measures, U.S. and Chinese officials said. During Trump’s campaign, he’s already floated the idea of 60% tariffs on Chinese-made goods,

Liu, the Chinese embassy spokesman, said that raising tariffs on Chinese goods would drive up the cost of goods, “inflicting more loss on American companies and consumers” while damaging global supply chains.

The flip side of these concerns, Chinese officials believe, is that a Trump presidency could weaken Washington’s ties with its allies, opening opportunities for Beijing. The former president’s first term in office was characterized by repeated friction with European allies over defense spending, as well as periodic complaints about the cost of the protection the U.S. affords Japan and South Korea.

One Chinese official told Bloomberg that Trump might also prove more amenable to doing deals than Biden, suggesting that Chinese concessions on trade could open the way for U.S. concessions over sensitive issues for China such as Taiwan.

But the prospect of a second Biden term offers little comfort to Beijing.

The central concern for Chinese policymakers would be Biden’s likely push to strengthen regional partnerships to push back against Chinese assertiveness, according to U.S. and Chinese officials.

Over the past four years, China has routinely denounced groups such as the “Quad,” comprised of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan, and “Aukus,” a defense pact among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., as efforts to contain China. At a recent defense forum in Singapore, a Chinese delegate accused the U.S. of attempting to build an Asian NATO.

At the same time, Biden “needs to pay more attention to the views of its allies, which are likely to call for caution and moderation. This may be good for China,” Jia Qingguo, a prominent academic and standing committee member of Beijing’s top political advisory body, said in an interview this month.

Liu said the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific strategy “is essentially about division, confrontation and detrimental to peace” and that its aim is to “encircle China.”

U.S. intelligence leaders and senators have warned that a host of actors — including China — could also seek to influence the outcome of the election. In April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN the U.S. had seen evidence of Chinese attempts to “influence and arguably” interfere in the 2024 vote.

Still, officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told journalists in a briefing that Beijing has so far taken a cautious approach to such interference because it’s aware of the blowback that such efforts might cause.

No matter who prevails in the November election, officials in Washington and Beijing are girding for more tense periods.

“From the Chinese perspective, we just need to sit tight,” said Gao, the former diplomat. “Whoever wins, China needs to deal with them as they are, rather than hoping for the unrealistic.”

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(With assistance from Rebecca Choong Wilkins and Tania Chen.)

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By JAKE COYLE (AP Film Writer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Sutherland, the prolific film and television actor whose long career stretched from “M.A.S.H.” to “The Hunger Games,” has died. He was 88.

Kiefer Sutherland, the actor’s son, confirmed his father’s death Thursday. No further details were immediately available.

“I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film,” Kiefer Sutherland said on X. “Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.”

The tall and gaunt Canadian actor with a grin that could be sweet or diabolical was known for offbeat characters like Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s “M.A.S.H.,” the hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and the stoned professor in “Animal House.”

Before transitioning into a long career as a respected character actor, Sutherland epitomized the unpredictable, antiestablishment cinema of the 1970s .

Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-down — but still eccentric — parts in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” More, recently, he starred in the “Hunger Games” films. He never retired, working regularly up until his death. A memoir, “Made Up, But Still True,” was due out in November.

“I love to work. I passionately love to work,” Sutherland told Charlie Rose in 1998. “I love to feel my hand fit into the glove of some other character. I feel a huge freedom — time stops for me. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”

Born in St. John, New Brunswick, Donald McNichol Sutherland was the son of a salesman and a mathematics teacher. Raised in Nova Scotia, he was a disc jockey with his own radio station at the age of 14.

“When I was 13 or 14, I really thought everything I felt was wrong and dangerous, and that God was going to kill me for it,” Sutherland told The New York Times in 1981. “My father always said, ‘Keep your mouth shut, Donnie, and maybe people will think you have character.’”

Sutherland began as an engineering student at the University of Toronto but switched to English and started acting in school theatrical productions. While studying in Toronto, he met Lois Hardwick, an aspiring actress. They married in 1959, but divorced seven years later.

After graduating in 1956, Sutherland attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts to study acting. Sutherland began appearing in West End plays and British television. After a move to Los Angeles, he continued to bounce around until a series of war films changed his trajectory.

His first American film was “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played Vernon Pinkley, the officer-impersonating psychopathic. 1970 saw the release of both the World War II yarn “Kelly’s Heroes” and “M.A.S.H.,” an acclaimed smash hit that catapulted Sutherland to stardom.

“There is more challenge in character roles,” Sutherland told The Washington Post in 1970. “There’s longevity. A good character actor can show a different face in every film and not bore the public.”

If Sutherland had had his way, Altman would have been fired from “M.A.S.H.” He and co-star Elliott Gould were unhappy with the director’s unorthodox, improvisational style and fought to have him replaced. But the film caught on beyond anyone’s expectations and Sutherland identified personally with its anti-war message. Outspoken against the Vietnam War, Sutherland, actress Jane Fonda and others founded the Free Theater Associates in 1971. Banned by the Army because of their political views, they performed in venues near military bases in Southeast Asia in 1973.

Sutherland career as a leading man peaked in the 1970s, when he starred in films by the era’s top directors — even if they didn’t always do their best work with him. Sutherland, who frequently said he considered himself at the service of a director’s vision, worked with Federico Fellini (1976’s “Fellini’s Casanova”), Bernardo Bertolucci (1976’s “1900”), Claude Chabrol (1978’s “Blood Relatives”) and John Schlesinger (1975’s “The Day of the Locust”).

One of his finest performances came as a detective in Alan Pakula’s “Klute” (1971). It was during filming on “Klute” that he met Fonda, with whom he had a three-year-long relationship that began at the end of his second marriage to actor Shirley Douglas. Having been married in 1966, he and Douglas divorced in 1971.

Sutherland had twins with Douglas in 1966: Rachel and Kiefer, who was named after Warren Kiefer, the writer of Sutherland’s first film, “Castle of the Living Dead.”

In 1974, the actor began living with actress Francine Racette, with whom he remained ever after. They had three children: Roeg, born in 1974 and named after the director Nicolas Roeg (“Don’t Look Now”); Rossif, born in 1978 and named after the director Frederick Rossif; and Angus Redford, born in 1979 and named after Robert Redford.

It was Redford who, to the surprise of some, cast Sutherland as the father in his directorial debut, 1980’s “Ordinary People.” Redford’s drama about a handsome suburban family destroyed by tragedy won four Oscars, including best picture.

Sutherland was overlooked by the academy throughout most of his career. He was never nominated but was presented with an honorary Oscar in 2017. He did, though, win an Emmy in 1995 for the TV film “Citizen X” and was nominated for seven Golden Globes (including for his performances in “M.A.S.H.” and “Ordinary People”), winning two — again for “Citizen X” and for the 2003 TV film “Path to War.”

“Ordinary People” also presaged a shift in Sutherland’s career toward more mature and sometimes less offbeat characters.

His New York stage debut in 1981, though, went terribly. He played Humbert Humbert in Edward Albee’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” and the reviews were merciless; it closed after a dozen performances.

A down period in the ’80s followed, thanks to failures like the 1981 satire “Gas” and the 1984 comedy “Crackers.”

But Sutherland continued to work steadily. He had a brief but memorable role in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991). He again played a patriarch for Redford in his 1993 movie “Six Degrees of Separation.” He played track coach Bill Bowerman in 1998’s “Without Limits.”

In the last decade, Sutherland increasingly worked in television, most memorably in HBO’s “Path to War,” in which he played President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. For a career launched by “M.A.S.H.” it was a fitting, if ironic bookend.

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