Despite the Chinese regime’s constant fear that U.S. policy makers have long been plotting a U.S.-led “regime change” in China, a senior former official under the Obama administration said there was never any such plan nor even any discussion remotely associated with the idea. This revelation sheds further light on the paranoid nature of the Chinese regime, but likely also raises questions concerning the Obama administration’s commitment to promoting U.S. principles such as democracy and freedom in the world’s largest authoritarian nation.
Evan Medeiros, who served six years from 2009 to 2015 in the Obama administration as a senior China specialist, attended a Thursday panel at the Center for Strategic & International Studies to discuss his thoughts on the latest U.S.–China Relations reports published by American and Chinese think tanks and scholars.
Medeiros said that the fear of a U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” has been one of the most defining features of the Chinese regime’s perceptions toward the United States for decades, and that such fear still dominates the Chinese regime’s thinking about U.S.–China relations even today. Speaking on the basis of his six years of experience steering U.S.–China policy for Obama’s White House, however, Medeiros attested that there was never any discussion among Obama and senior officials concerning the possibility of regime change in China.
According to Medeiros, there was “not a single conversation” in which neither President Obama, nor Vice President Biden, nor the national security adviser raised any issue concerning China’s political system and its potential threat to American national security. Behind the curtain, the Obama administration never contemplated let alone attempted a change to the authoritarian rule of the Chinese regime. “Not even once, not even remotely close,” said Medeiros.
