Communist China Is Preparing To Eat Joe Biden’s Lunch Ben Weingarten
https://www.newsweek.com/communist-china-preparing-eat-joe-bidens-lunch-opini
Communist China is betting on a return to the status quo ante of American acquiescence to, and support of, its hegemonic ambitions through comprehensive “engagement” and outright appeasement under a Biden administration.
That is the primary takeaway, if the recent remarks of Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi are any indication.
In the waning days of 2020, Wang delivered a speech at the Asia Society entitled, “Reorient and Steer Clear of Disruptions for a Smooth Sailing of China-U.S. Relations.” The title itself gives away the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) game: It seeks a reversion to the ostensibly pacific relations with the U.S. under which our ruling class aided, abetted and enabled its rise from trifling concern to our most formidable geopolitical adversary.
Wang would make this view even clearer in a subsequent interview published in CCP mouthpiece Xinhua, in which he said “China-U.S. relations have come to a new crossroads, and a new window of hope is opening.” As Xinhua summarized it, “The Chinese side hopes that the next U.S. administration will return to a sensible approach, resume dialogue with China, restore normalcy to the bilateral relations and restart cooperation.”
Clearly, Beijing would only deliver such a message if it believed it had a willing partner. That partner would be Joe Biden, the vessel of America’s globalist ruling class who spent his career at the highest levels of government cheering on a vision much in line with China’s own.
What does China’s desired relationship look like?
Like his colleague, Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai, who delivered similar remarks days prior to an audience of prominent American business and military leaders, Wang in his Asia Society speech invoked General Secretary Xi Jinping‘s call for the U.S. and China to “work together in the spirit of no conflict [and] no confrontation,…focus on cooperation, manage differences,…and, together with other countries and the international community, advance the noble cause of world peace and development.”
Juxtapose these words with General Secretary Xi’s stated belief, as expressed to the CCP’s senior-most leadership, in the imperative to “build[] a socialism that is superior [to] capitalism and lay[] the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position“—a future in which Xi argues that “capitalism is bound to die out and socialism is bound to win.” (Emphasis my own.)
Weigh them too against China’s cataclysmic cyberattacks against American institutions; rampant intellectual property theft from U.S. enterprises; rapacious trade practices and exploitation of U.S. capital markets in violation of relevant rules and regulations; pervasive influence and espionage efforts across every strategically significant sector of American society, from Congress to corporate boardrooms; corruption of international organizations chiefly subsidized by America; and myriad additional bellicose words and deeds.
As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted in a September 2020 speech to the Wisconsin state legislature on China’s malign influence in the U.S., “when he [Xi] uses the word ‘cooperation’ and ‘opening up,’ he means that the Chinese Communist Party wants to create arrangements that benefit the Chinese Communist Party,” in Xi’s own words, “to put China ‘in an undefeatable and invincible position.'”
The history of U.S.-China relations suggests Xi, and the apparatchiks who serve him, mean precisely the opposite of what they tell us. The CCP’s rhetoric is calibrated to appeal to the ear of a West all too willing to be bought off, naïve to and/or willfully blind to its motives.
And so we should read Wang’s remarks with commensurate skepticism—assuming they are, at core, about advancing the CCP’s own interests.
In contrast with Xi’s stated desires, Wang lamented that recent years have been marked by the “power politics jeopardizing international stability…[including] arbitrary interference in others’ internal affairs and sanctions…protectionism jeopardizing international trade…unilateralism jeopardizing international cooperation…[and] McCarthyism jeopardizing international exchanges.”
Wang therefore presented the not-so-implicit CNN caricature of the Trump administration’s revolutionary effort to marshal every element of national power against the CCP. In fact, he explicitly claimed that the “ensuing ‘whole-of-government’ [U.S.] strategy that mobilizes all resources available to take on China is going in a wrong direction.” One must ask, though: a “wrong direction” for whom? And what of China’s whole-of-society effort to become the world’s singular preeminent superpower?
While criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to China, Wang also suggested that there would be “big space for cooperation between our two countries” on three of the “priorities laid out by…Biden…[including] COVID-19 response, economic recovery and climate change.”
How could any American leader in his right mind cooperate with Communist China over a coronavirus that it was primarily responsible for spreading around the world—covering it up from day one, allowing it to spread from its shores, hoarding personal protective equipment (PPE) and then cynically flooding the world with shoddy versions of it, threatening to use its control of medical supply chains to deprive sick Americans of relief if criticism of China persisted, and using the resultant chaos and bloodshed as an opportunity to expand its sphere of influence both at home and abroad?
Why would any American leader assume China’s interest in economic recovery consisted of anything other than a desire to deepen its integration into world markets, thereby increasing its strategic leverage via the interdependency that has propelled it into such a powerful position today?
What American leader would think that combating climate change with the world’s leading polluter—with former Secretary of State John Kerry at the helm—would lead to anything other than the U.S. destroying the golden goose of its energy industry, while giving said nonpareil polluter an advantageous deal over which it would almost assuredly cheat?
But the areas of cooperation do not end there. The Biden camp has also indicated a desire to “engage” with Communist China in the realm of space, which would likely prove to be a strategic disaster for America.
This is to say nothing of Biden team members’ and prominent potential appointees’ disturbing dealings with the CCP; the fact that Biden’s defense of his pick for secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, consists of not a word about China at all—while highlighting all manner of other perceived threats; and perhaps most importantly, the numerous officials from past Democratic administrations with whom Biden has surrounded himself, few if any of whom have ever sought to challenge the status quo of American support for the CCP’s ambitions.
And then there is Biden himself. As noted, he has spent his career helping facilitate said rise of the CCP. As of a few months ago, he continued to rank Russia and the “climate crisis” as greater threats to the U.S. than China. Only in the final weeks of the campaign, and today, is he bothering to string together a few sentences regarding concerns over China’s “abuses on trade, technology, human rights and other fronts.”
Looming in the background are the Biden family’s allegedly criminal business dealings with CCP-tied individuals and entities that compromise Uncle Joe—dealings he continues to wave off as “Russian disinformation.”
The sum total of a Biden China policy at this point seems to be multilateralism. Toward what end, we have not the faintest idea.
Speaking a decibel above softly, and carrying no stick, seems to be what China is banking on.
Wang followed his paeans for re-establishing the “healthy and steady growth of China-U.S. relations” with five red line tests on which China will assuredly test our next commander-in-chief. These include:
- “First, on ideological issues, we need to respect each other’s choice of system and development path.” That is, America must cease speaking openly and honestly about the brutal, totalitarian and imperialist nature of the CCP.
- “Second, on issues concerning national sovereignty and territorial integrity, we need to commit to the international norm of non-interference in other’s internal affairs.” That is, America best not dare challenge China over—as Wang lists explicitly—Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.
- “Third, on trade issues, we need to replace confrontation and sanctions with dialogue and consultation.” That is, America must no longer counter China’s mercantilist trade practices, outright cheating and theft.
- “Fourth, on maritime issues, we need to strive to turn frictions into cooperation.” That is, America must not pursue a free and open Indo-Pacific, nor challenge China’s territorial claims in the region, regardless of how illegitimate they are.
- “Fifth, on people-to-people exchange, we need to remove restrictions as soon as possible.” That is, America must not prevent Chinese agents of influence, and other actors who have taken advantage of our freedom in pursuit of the CCP’s interests, from operating freely in the U.S.
Americans of all stripes ought to parse Wang’s words closely, and demand that their putative leaders at every level of government, and across every strategically significant and influential sector of society, vow to do all they can to comprehensively counter the Chinese Communist threat. This includes refusing to accede to the rules by which the CCP seeks to bind us—while it flouts those same rules with impunity.
The nature of the China challenge is clear. There is nothing to indicate that the president the CCP craves, Joe Biden, would be up to the task of meeting it—and every indication instead that America would face a reprisal of the disastrous policies that the Trump administration has worked so doggedly to overcome.
Ben Weingarten is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, fellow at the Claremont Institute and senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party (Bombardier, 2020). Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting and production company. Subscribe to his newsletter at bit.ly/bhwnews, and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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