Biden and China-Appeasement “I want to see China succeed economically.” by Joseph Klein
https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-and-china-appeasement/
While Joe Biden was a U.S. senator from Delaware, he became one of the leading advocates for admitting China to the World Trade Organization and expanding trade between China and the United States. “The United States welcomes the emergence of a prosperous, integrated China on the global stage, because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules,” then-Senator Biden declared in 2001 during his visit to China. While Joe Biden was serving as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he helped enable China’s rapid economic ascent at America’s expense.
A decade later, while serving as vice president during the Obama administration, Joe Biden again spoke in favor of a rising China during a state visit in August 2011: “Let me be clear: I believed in 1979 and said so then, and I believe now that a rising China is a positive development not only for the people of China but for the United States and the world as a whole.”
Now Joe Biden is the president of the United States and the leader of the free world. Despite all the evidence of the Communist Chinese regime’s exploitation of its “rising” power to the detriment of the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region, Biden remains a cheerleader for China’s economic wellbeing. He is as wrong-headed about the Communist Chinese regime today as he has been for his entire career in government.
The Chinese regime under President Xi Jinping’s leadership exploits global trading rules, steals intellectual property, and manipulates multilateral institutions and agreements solely for its own national advantage. During his ten years in office, President Xi has fully embraced Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s chilling maxim as his ruling principle: “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
But President Biden still wants China to prosper as a healthy competitor of the United States.
“We’re all better off if China does well,” President Biden exclaimed at his news conference in Vietnam on September 10th, where he stopped to meet Vietnam’s leaders after attending the G-20 summit conference hosted by India. The Biden family syndicate has certainly done well in partnership with Chinese state and private business enterprises. But the American people are emphatically not better off if the Chinese Communist regime does well.
President Biden also said during his Vietnam press conference that “China is beginning to change some of the rules of the game, in terms of trade and other issues,” as if this were an entirely recent phenomenon. To the contrary, the Communist Chinese regime has been changing the rules of the game for years, right under Joe Biden’s nose.
China is not just a vigorous competitor of the United States, as President Biden would like us to believe. The Chinese regime is our most dangerous adversary in the world today. Chinese President Xi’s ambition is for China to overtake the United States as the world’s leading economic, military, and technological superpower.
Nevertheless, President Biden said during his September 10th press conference in Vietnam that” I don’t want to contain China.” Biden is still hoping against hope that he can “make sure we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.”
When asked when he will meet with President Xi, President Biden meekly replied that “I hope I get to see Mr. Xi sooner than later.” But President Xi is in no hurry to see President Biden.
President Xi was a no-show at the G-20 summit meeting where he would have had the opportunity to meet one-on-one in person with President Biden. President Xi is also not planning to attend the United Nations High-Level Week in New York later this month, which would provide another opportunity for him to meet face-to-face with President Biden. Nevertheless, President Xi found the time to attend the August BRICS summit in South Africa.
One of President Xi’s diplomatic priorities is to strengthen the BRICS bloc of countries as a counterweight to Western-led multilateral economic institutions. BRICS’ membership list is expanding. Six new countries will join Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, effective as of January 1, 2024. These new members will be Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.
In an obvious swipe at what he considers to be Western control of the existing “rules-based” international order, President Xi said at the BRICS summit that “Development is an inalienable right of all countries, not a privilege reserved for a few.” He urged BRICS countries to fight back against “economic coercion” and international rules “dictated by those with the strongest muscles or the loudest voice,” an implicit reference to the United States and its allies.
President Xi called for fully leveraging “the role of the New Development Bank,” which was established by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as an alternative to Western-oriented international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. The New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai, China, has already added several countries as shareholders and contributors, and is currently considering applications from more prospective members.
China, together with Russia, is leading the charge to reduce the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency and as the principal medium of exchange in global trade and international financial transactions. The BRICS New Development Bank’s loans are part of the effort to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar and advance a more multipolar global financial system.
“China is now the world’s second-largest economy and will soon become the first,” the chairman of Russia’s VTB Bank, Andrei Kostin, predicted. “There is every reason to expect that the Chinese yuan will replace the US dollar as the world’s main reserve and settlement currency as early as the next decade. In fact, the Central Bank of Russia is already investing its reserves in yuan, and more than 70 percent of trade turnover between Russia and China is settled in yuan together with the ruble.”
The U.S. dollar remains the reserve currency of choice for most countries. The yuan will certainly not eclipse the dollar overnight. However, the percentage of global currency reserves held in U.S. dollars has fallen from nearly 75 percent at the beginning of this millennium to 59 per cent, according to the International Monetary Fund. More countries are becoming interested in trading with China in the yuan.
“The global economy is hard-wired to the US dollar, but as China’s influence and power grows that could change as more countries start using the yuan,” said Giles Coghlan, Chief Currency Analyst for HYCM.
If the United States dollar does lose its dominance in global commerce, the U.S. economy will suffer significantly, to President Xi’s delight.
China’s current economic woes will most likely slow down any trend in the yuan’s favor, at least in the short term. But while President Xi continues to play the long game to supplant America as the world’s number one economic, military, and technological superpower, President Biden continues to treat the U.S.-China relationship like a polite competition.
“I want to see China succeed economically,” President Biden said at his press conference in Vietnam. He could not be more wrong. Instead, the United States must pivot immediately towards a containment policy. The U.S. must move away from dependence on China for such necessities as medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and key raw materials. More restrictions need to be imposed on China’s access to America’s advanced technology. And the U.S. must push back far more aggressively against the Chinese regime’s surveillance of Americans and sensitive military sites.
In short, start treating the Chinese Communist regime for what it is – America’s number one enemy that cannot be trusted concerning anything it considers important to its national interest.
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