National Review Online
Saturday, December 05, 2020
The Trump administration is working to make its hawkish
China policy the new normal.
The administration’s record on China is decidedly mixed.
Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a poorly conceived trade war and
fruitless trade negotiations, and disgraceful presidential tweets puffing up
the CCP and its ruthless general secretary Xi Jinping all detracted from fully
realizing the vision of a 2017 national-security document for strategic
competition with the People’s Republic.
And yet the administration has confronted the
Party-state’s bid for military dominance, advocated on behalf of pro-democracy
activists and persecuted minorities, and, crucially, led a fight against
Beijing’s efforts to export its authoritarian model through global adoption of
its technological censorship regime and cooptation of foreign elites and
institutions.
For too long, the CCP sought and received special
accommodations in trade, diplomacy, and its foreign influence operations as the
rest of the world accepted that state of affairs as normal.
One of the participants in that old order was Joe Biden.
In the current political environment, he seems to have shelved some of his
previous delusions. Still, although his campaign put out a number of solid
statements on these issues, and although he recently told the New York Times
that he would not “make any immediate moves” to undo the Trump administration’s
work on China, the soundness of Team Biden on this question is doubtful.
In October, the president-elect said the “biggest
competitor is China” but that Russia is the biggest threat to the United
States. Jake Sullivan, his intended national-security adviser, tweeted in
support of Australia this week as the U.S. treaty ally faces down an outrageous
CCP bullying campaign — but didn’t specifically name the Chinese in his post.
And it remains to be seen if U.S. climate czar (and self-styled master
negotiator) John Kerry will seek a grand bargain with the environmentally
destructive Party leadership, requiring compromises in areas unrelated to
carbon emissions.
As Biden prepares to take office, the Trump team is
moving to try to entrench what it hopes, rightly, will be a new consensus
approach to China. This week alone, it issued multiple new, significant
policies to do that.
On Friday, the State Department announced that it would
impose visa restrictions on individuals involved in Beijing’s pernicious
“united front” foreign influence work from receiving visas to enter the United
States. This move came on the heels of new rules this week limiting the maximum
length of visas for CCP members to one month.
These narrowly tailored visa restrictions alleviated
concerns that an all-encompassing ban on the CCP’s more than 90 million members
from entering the United States would sweep up ordinary people. Instead, this
approach targets Party leaders, immediate family, and those who truly pose a
threat. Contrary to Democrats’ claims that such visa restrictions are racist
and xenophobic, they actually demonstrate solidarity with the people of China
against those most responsible for the ruling regime’s human-rights atrocities.
On Thursday, the Pentagon announced that it had added
four companies — including a semiconductor manufacturer and a national oil firm
— to a government blacklist, alleging that they collaborate with the Party’s
military arm. This is recognition of the fact that no Chinese enterprise can
exist independent of the CCP’s political and military ambitions.
The administration also this week implemented a ban on
cotton imports from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the shadow
government and farming collective that governs swaths of the Xinjiang region
and has significant involvement in the genocide and slave-labor scheme there.
Not only does this deter multinational corporations from doing business in
China’s West, it also strikes at a key strategic node in the Belt and Road
Initiative.
Meanwhile, work on deepening U.S. global partnerships to
counter Beijing has continued. Last month, the U.S. and Taiwan struck an
agreement to establish an economic dialogue that touches on areas including
semiconductors and 5G technology. And the State Department’s Clean Network
initiative has continued apace, adding Brazil to the ranks of the now 50
countries that are working with the United States to sideline CCP-tainted
technology.
Other possibilities include issuing a formal
determination that the crimes against the Uyghurs constitute a genocide,
targeting banks that serve CCP stooges in Hong Kong under new sanctions
authorities created this year (a potential move that’s become even more salient
with the imprisonment of Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong this week), and
facilitating the immigration and resettlement of persecuted peoples fleeing the
Party’s grasp.
At the end of the day, none of this sticks unless the
Biden team wants to stay the course. It will be in our interest — and that of
the region and ultimately the Chinese people — if it does.
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