RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/trump-right-china-years-uighurs/

Back in the summer of 2015, all the cleverest people made fun of Donald Trump for obsessing about China. One of them even made a video compilation of the candidate saying ‘China’ over and over again on the hustings. Ha ha ha.

It seems distinctly less funny now. There is a reason that the novel coronavirus is popularly denominated the Wuhan flu or CCP virus. As Bill Gertz observed in How China’s Communist Party Made the World Sick, ‘the world does not need to prove that the communist regime in Beijing was responsible for the escape of the coronavirus from a lab’ in order to cast a jaundiced eye upon its many malefactions. ‘It is now clear,’ he writes, ‘that decades of international engagement and cooperation with communist China was a mistake that seriously undermined fundamental American values of freedom, democracy, openness, honesty, and free markets.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. In the 1970s, under Richard Nixon, America embarked on a program of ‘constructive engagement’ with communist China. The hope was that by pursuing closer ties with China, America would mount a more effective challenge to the Soviet threat. The secondary hope was that by engaging with China, we would lure the backwards communist behemoth into the modern world. That turned out to be a fond hope. China entered the modern world all right. But instead of softening its penchant for top-down totalitarian rule, economic and military modernization made its despotism more cunning.

Consider, for example, the 370,000 Chinese nationals who have come to the United States for college. They typically pay full-freight, which makes them an important economic boon to the colleges and universities they attend. And it is still not widely appreciated that all are subject to Article 7 of the 2017 National Intelligence Law of 2017, which requires that ‘any citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with the state intelligence work’. In other words, as Brian Kennedy notes in Communist China’s War Inside America, ‘It is quite literally the law that all Chinese students in American universities are agents, or potential agents, of the Chinese Communist party and the intelligence apparatus of the P.RC.’

https://www.newsweek.com/us-needs-broad-response-china-iran-moves-opinion-1518160
A new China-Iran economic and military agreement and this fall’s expiration of the global arms embargo on Iran could dramatically upend international relations by expanding China’s global reach, empowering Iran to threaten America’s regional allies, undercutting U.S. efforts to pressure both nations and further destabilizing the Middle East.

From their agreement-which both nations plan to finalize and ratify in the coming months-China will get a greater foothold in the Middle East, threatening traditional U.S. big-power supremacy there. Iran, meanwhile, will receive an important economic lifeline through Chinese investments and oil purchases, and added security from a tighter military relationship with Beijing.

From the arms embargo’s expiration, Iran will get unimpeded global access to sophisticated weaponry-weaponry that it can use to continue building its own threatening arsenal, as well as to arm its allies like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and terrorist proxies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere.

These converging developments demand a thoughtful response from the West. The United States and its allies now need to develop a broad strategy to contain Beijing and Tehran and thwart their ambitions.

“Two ancient Asian cultures,” Beijing and Tehran declared in the opening sentence of their draft agreement, “two partners in the sectors of trade, economy, politics, culture and security with a similar outlook and many mutual bilateral and multilateral interests will consider one another strategic partners.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sends-two-aircraft-carriers-to-south-china-sea-for-exercises-as-china-holds-drills-nearby-11593816043?mod=hp_lead_pos1

The U.S. is sending two aircraft carriers into one of Asia’s hottest spots to deliver a pointed message to China that it doesn’t appreciate Beijing’s military ramp-up in the region.

The USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz are set to hold some of the U.S. Navy’s largest exercises in recent years in the South China Sea from Saturday—at the same time that China is holding drills in the area.

With tensions rising between the two over trade, the coronavirus pandemic and China’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong, U.S. officials said they wanted to challenge what they called Beijing’s unlawful territorial claims.

“The purpose is to show an unambiguous signal to our partners and allies that we are committed to regional security and stability,” said Rear Adm. George M. Wikoff, commander of the strike group led by the USS Ronald Reagan, in an interview.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/congress-launches-bipartisan-bill-to-give-refugee-status-to-certain-hong-kong-residents-11593553499

Lawmakers of both parties launched a bill to give refugee status to Hong Kong residents at risk of persecution under the Chinese territory’s new national-security law, which local rights activists and many Western countries have decried as a tool for Beijing to suppress civil liberties in the semiautonomous city-state.

The bill, introduced hours after the text of the new security law was released, is being led by Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) in the Senate and John Curtis (R., Utah) and Joaquin Castro (D., Texas) in the House of Representatives, along with around a dozen co-sponsors from both chambers.

The legislation would require the State Department to designate as refugees of special humanitarian concern Hong Kong residents who suffered persecution, or have a well-founded fear of it, due to their expression of political opinions or peaceful participation in political activities. The privileges would extend to those individuals’ spouses, children and parents, provided the parents are Chinese citizens, the text says.

The paperwork could be completed in Hong Kong or in a third country, and refugees would then be able to apply for permanent residency and citizenship. The opportunity, which wouldn’t be restricted by the current U.S. cap on refugees, would be valid for five years from the date of the bill’s passage.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-global-strategy-that-can-appeal-to-trump-voters-11591201375?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

Donald Trump will be president for either 7½ more months or 4½ more years. The voters who support him will be around for much longer.

For students of U.S. foreign policy, this poses a question independent of Mr. Trump’s personality and political style: Is the gap between America’s post-World War II global strategy and the beliefs of the president’s base too wide to be bridged? Or is there a way to envision a global strategy for the U.S. that American populism can support?

Historically, the answer to the latter question has been yes. Jacksonians can be part of a stable political coalition that backs a global U.S. strategy. That was the normal condition during the Cold War, when Jacksonians were as loyal to Ronald Reagan as they are today to Mr. Trump. Though rarely enthusiastic about the United Nations, foreign aid or humanitarian interventions abroad, Jacksonians saw the Soviet Union and its communist ideology as a mortal threat to American freedom. Facing that danger, they were ready to do their part against the U.S.S.R.

After the Cold War, Jacksonians and U.S. strategy began to drift apart. Under Republican and Democratic presidents from George H.W. Bush through Barack Obama, American foreign policy became more ambitious. The goal was no longer to defeat the Soviet threat but to create a “new world order” by promoting democracy and liberal capitalism around the world. As awareness of climate change spread, the new world order acquired another task: to shift the global economy toward carbon neutrality.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/why-the-u-s-and-uk-must-stand-up-to-china/

The Rt. Hon. Tobias Ellwood MP is the chairman of Parliament’s Defense Committee and leads its subcommittee inquiry into the future of 5G in the United Kingdom. Tom Cotton is a United States senator for Arkansas. He will testify before Ellwood’s subcommittee today.

T he Chinese Communist Party’s malevolent actions are forcing governments around the world to reassess their relationships with China. This is an opportunity to strengthen the alliances among the United States, the United Kingdom, and other free countries.

China’s leaders proved they can’t be trusted when they suppressed news of the virus outbreak in Wuhan and stonewalled inquiries into the virus’s origins. Now they are breaking promises to the people of Hong Kong, preparing repressive security laws against the will of the island’s residents, in clear violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Beijing promised to respect Hong Kong’s free system of government. Conditions for the Uighur minority in Xinjiang are as dire as ever, and territorial expansion in the South China Sea and in disputed areas of the Sino-Indian border continues apace. Meanwhile Xi Jinping’s dictatorship makes no effort to conceal its plans for compulsory reunification between mainland China and Taiwan, using violence if necessary.

Such abuses have contributed to a debate in the U.K. about whether to allow equipment from the Chinese company Huawei into its 5G network. Huawei is one of the Communist Party’s technology champions. After clawing its way to the top of the global market through industrial espionage, economic blackmail, and state subsidies, Huawei now gives China’s spies a portal into the countries that have allowed it into their networks.