Biden’s Policies So Far Ultimately Benefit CCP: China Expert

Some of President Joe Biden’s executive orders are misguided, as they will ultimately benefit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China expert Gordon Chang said.

“Although he [Biden] talks about extreme competition with China, although he talks about holding China accountable, we have seen in those executive orders a flood of measures that Beijing just absolutely loves,” Chang said.

Chang made the comments during a recent interview with The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program. Among the executive orders that Biden has signed, Chang highlighted two in particular—one suspending former President Donald Trump’s executive order on securing U.S. critical electric infrastructure and one revoking the permit for constructing the Keystone XL pipeline.

Biden’s Actions

The Keystone project was revived by Trump in January 2017 after it was blocked by the Obama administration due to environmental concerns.

Chang said Biden’s decision to suspend Trump’s critical infrastructure executive order is “indefensible” and “there is no explanation for it,” since it would allow China to sell equipment to U.S. electric grids.

In May 2020, Trump signed an executive order (E.O.13920) securing the United States’ bulk-power systems (BPS). The order banned federal agencies and U.S. persons from procuring or installing BPS equipment sourced from countries determined to pose a risk to U.S. national security or the security and safety of American citizens.

In response to Trump’s order, then-Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette issued a prohibition order in December last year banning utilities that supply critical defense facilities from procuring certain BPS equipment from China. The ban went into effect on Jan. 16.

On Jan. 20, Biden suspended Trump’s order for 90 days while asking the energy secretary and Director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to “jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued.”

The Department of Energy has since issued a statement saying that the December prohibition order is also suspended during the 90-day period.

As for the cancellation of the Keystone project, Chang said that since the pipeline would have brought Canadian oil to the United States, canceling it means the oil would now be sold to other countries, such as China, instead.

Chang criticized Biden for not consulting with Canada before he revoked the permit.

“This is just really bad policy across the board. We hurt our relations with the country [Canada], [with] which we …[share] an undefended border of thousands of miles, and we benefit China, our enemy. So this to me, makes no sense at all,” Chang said.

Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone project has been met with criticism in both the United States and Canada. A recent survey of more than 28,000 Epoch Times readers found that 96 percent disapproved of Biden’s decision.

Chang said that rejoining the World Health Organization is also a win for China, noting the team in Wuhan to investigate the source of the pandemic has repeated Beijing’s narrative that COVID-19 could be spread through frozen food.

“The reality is that the overwhelming majority of the things that the Biden administration has done so far, benefit China, and many of those things do not benefit the United States,” Chang stated.

Bilateral Ties

Asked about recent remarks by China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi, warning the Biden administration not to cross Beijing’s “red line” on issues regarding Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang, Chang said it was evidence that cooperation with China would not bear fruit.

“Beijing is trying to establish the areas that they'll talk to us about, which are becoming fewer and fewer, because everything’s becoming a red line,” Chang said. “China is trying to constrict those areas where we can have a constructive discussion. I believe you can’t have a constructive discussion with them in the first place.”

Though Biden and his administration officials have said they are willing to engage with Beijing in areas such as climate change and pandemic prevention efforts, Chang said the administration should instead “cut all ties with China, because China uses every point of contact with the United States to undermine our society, overthrow our government.” He especially pointed to the threat of Chinese espionage on different facets of U.S. society.

Chang recommended that the Biden administration should stop trade, investment, technical sharing partnerships, cultural exchanges, and sister city agreements with China.

Additionally, Chang emphasized that the United States should not talk about cooperation, for it would “embolden” the Chinese regime to be more hostile toward its neighbors, including India, Japan, and Taiwan.

In other words, the Biden administration should instead focus on a deterrence policy against China, he said.

Beijing has sent military jets into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone almost on a daily basis in January, and has recently threatened war against the self-ruled island.

2022 Olympics

Over 180 international rights groups, including International Tibet Network, World Uyghur Congress, recently wrote a joint letter to world leaders, urging governments to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. There have been similar calls in the United Kingdom recently.

In response, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of China’s hawkish state mouthpiece Global Times, took to Twitter to threaten trade sanctions against countries that decide to boycott the Games.

Chang urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to move the Games “to a country that is not tainted by atrocities,” pointing to China’s persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s far-western Xinjiang region.

In January, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated the CCP’s persecution of these minorities as genocide and “crimes against humanity.”

Aside from moving the Games out of China, Chang also recommended that the IOC ban Chinese athletes in the 2022 Games, on the same grounds that the IOC barred South Africa from participating in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of its racial segregation policy known as apartheid, which only allowed white athletes to represent the country.

Chang said that China should be similarly barred because “a significant population in China are not allowed to participate in sport” because they are either being persecuted or being held in internment camps.

“We do not need another 1936 Olympics,” he said, referring to when Nazi Germany was host to the Olympics. “We don’t need another 2008 Olympics [when Beijing hosted the summer games], which basically promoted totalitarianism with those ghastly displays. We do not need to do this again.”