According to President Joe Biden, his two hours together with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco was time well spent. Xi, he said, had agreed to resume high-level military communications, to reduce fentanyl exports to the United States, and to not militarize artificial intelligence.
Just a few days earlier, the State Department had proudly announced that it had struck a deal with China for both countries to “accelerate” the transition from coal, oil, and gas generation to green energy sources such as wind and solar power.
What does history tell us about such arrangements with China?
Hotlines and High-Level Military Exchanges
Past military exchanges have followed a standard pattern. The Pentagon, eager to fulfill its side of the bargain, invites Chinese delegations to visit—or spy on—our most modern warships and production facilities. Rather than reciprocate, however, the Chinese side only allows visiting Americans to see what one general has described as “junk.”What about President Biden’s claim that “[Xi] and I agreed that each one of us can pick up the phone, call directly, and we’ll be heard immediately”?
President Biden has forgotten, if he ever knew, that hotlines have never worked with China. When the first President Bush tried to call Deng Xiaoping during the Tiananmen Square massacre, Deng refused to pick up. When a reckless Chinese fighter jet pilot caused a midair collision with a U.S. EP-3 surveillance aircraft, Beijing again refused to answer repeated phone calls from Washington.
What’s the likelihood that Xi would take President Biden’s phone call in the event of a crisis?
The Fentanyl Crisis
The most dangerous illicit drug ever concocted, fentanyl, has turned entire blocks of America’s major cities into the 21st-century equivalent of open-air opium dens. An estimated 109,000 Americans died from drug overdoses—many from fentanyl— in 2022, and the number is growing. This is by far the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history.Most Americans know that the fentanyl comes from labs run by the Mexican cartels. What they don’t know is that without shipments of the chemical precursors to fentanyl from China, the production of the opiate in cartel-run labs would grind to a halt. And without China to launder billions of dollars in profits, the cartels would be drowning in hard-to-hide cash, their money neither portable nor investable.
Now, President Biden claims that he has secured a commitment in principle from the Chinese “dictator”—as he called Xi—to crack down on the Chinese producers and exporters of fentanyl and its precursor drugs.
It’s certainly true that if Xi wanted to, he could cut off the cartels in less time than it takes for fentanyl to stop a beating heart. There are effectively no private companies in China. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders may deny it, but they know exactly which pharmaceutical companies in China are producing and shipping the chemicals needed to make fentanyl.
The fact that they’ve continued to allow it for more than a decade suggests to me that this is deliberate: Beijing is using the drug cartels to wage a kind of proxy war against the United States and its citizens. And, as an added bonus, as American casualties mount, so do China’s profits.
The Agreement to Not Militarize Artificial Intelligence
It had been reported that both President Biden and Xi were going to pledge a ban on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in autonomous weaponry, such as drones, and in the control and deployment of nuclear warheads. President Biden certainly made such a pledge in his post-meeting press conference, but Xi was silent. Apparently, no such agreement has been reached.
In other words, President Biden seems to have given up a significant technological advantage for ... nothing. We'll stop research on military applications of AI while the People’s Liberation Army continues to press forward. The hi-tech advantage that we currently have will be eroded as China catches up and surpasses us.
Joint Agreement on the Climate Crisis
Flushed with his success at selling out on AI, President Biden further agreed to cripple America’s energy production. The two countries will jointly combat “climate change,” he said, shutting down their fossil fuel industry in favor of green energy sources such as wind and solar power.Since wind and solar power are unreliable, the administration’s ill-conceived deal will condemn Americans to higher power bills, factory closures, and job losses. Not to mention the blighting of the American landscape with giant bird-killing Cuisinarts and ugly arrays of solar panels that are costly to manufacture, have short lifespans, and are impossible to recycle.
In other words, the most likely outcome of the current agreement is that, as America’s fossil fuel industry is crushed and we’re reduced to praying that the wind blows and the sun shines, China will continue to build two coal-fired power plants every month.
Even if President Biden doesn’t, Xi understands that access to cheap energy is the difference between wealth and poverty. And he doesn’t suffer from “climate anxiety.”
Former President Donald Trump wrote a best-selling book called “The Art of the Deal.” President Biden should write a book called “The Art of the Sell Out.”
