Commentary
Since President Richard Nixon’s
Shanghai Communiqué in February 1972, which is often credited with “opening China,” two primary schools of thought (in general) have prevailed regarding the communist country.
The Communiqué marked the ascendancy of the “China engagement” faction, which has subsequently made fortunes in the five decades since through commercial and financial investments in China, various sinecures, revolving diplomatic and think tank careers, lucrative consultant contracts, and outright corruption and bribery at the expense of Upper Midwest manufacturing, other U.S. business concerns, and more.
The other faction consists of “China watchers” who remain skeptical of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) intentions (in some cases through direct personal persecution and loss) and watch with great trepidation the regime’s mercantilist actions and international lawfare actions that undermine the global order, as well as the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) increasing belligerence in China’s near-abroad accompanied by diplomatic intimidation of its neighbors.
During the Donald Trump presidency, the China watcher faction displaced the engagers with a new strategy of fair trade with China supported by tariffs that undercut Chinese mercantilism, and a psychological shift away from seeming willy-nilly foreign direct investment in China ensued that continues to this day, as Beijing hid the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and implemented CCP leader Xi Jinping’s “zero- COVID” policy that wrought economic and personal havoc in mainland China until
abruptly reversed in late 2022.
The Biden administration has apparently reversed course and returned to China engagement policies virtually across the board, as well as so-called constructive meetings between American and Chinese counterparts on a full range of topics.
Let us examine some of the more egregious examples of China engagement in the face of ongoing CCP threats against Taiwan, the Philippines, India, and Japan in recent months.
China Engagement Syndrome
Last November, Xi attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco and met with President Joe Biden. U.S. business executives reportedly spent $40,000 to dine with Xi during the conference.The capitalists who attended the business dinner—including Apple’s Tim Cook, Blackstone Group’s Stephen Schwarzman, and Bridgewater Associates’s Ray Dalio—gave Xi a standing ovation!
What have the China engagers done since APEC? Here are some examples.
A flurry of high-level U.S.–China contacts
occurred in January, including a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and senior Chinese official Liu Jianchao in Washington, a discussion between Liu and White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, a phone conversation between U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, and the resumption of long-stalled military talks between the two nations.
On Feb. 19, Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met in Vienna as a follow-on to the Xi–Biden talks during APEC to discuss “advancing bilateral cooperation in drug control and law enforcement, and addressing each other’s concerns,” reported state-run media China Daily. During the talks, Wang reemphasized
Xi’s three principal propaganda goals of “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.” Apparently, the flood of illegal Chinese immigrants into the United States was not discussed, as the numbers have
skyrocketed since 2020.
On Feb. 25, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns stated that “[the U.S.–China relationship] is the most important, most competitive, and most dangerous relationship that the United States has in the world right now” and that the two countries must “live together.” These statements echo Xi’s endless propaganda that Beijing only wants peaceful coexistence, respect, cooperation, and partnership—with Chinese characteristics (to benefit the CCP). Chinese belligerence and intimidation of its neighbors require confrontation and steadfast support to U.S. allies in the region, not happy talk.
On March 13, Ms. Raimondo stated, “I could see a day when we have [Chinese-built electric] vehicles on roads in the United States.” While she did caveat that those vehicles would need to “have very significant controls and conditions around the software and sensors,” opening the United States to Chinese EVs would undercut the U.S. car industry and provide surveillance and data collection opportunities for the CCP, particularly if China circumvents those controls by assembling the vehicles in Mexico or Canada beforehand.
Think Tanks Support Engagement
China engagers from various think tanks have also weighed in recently.Commenters from the Quincy Institute and Stimson Center argued on Feb. 22 that the United States “is playing the ‘wrong game’ in competition with China” and Washington must find ways to avoid confrontations in the Western Pacific and “lower tensions and cooperate even in the face of profound differences on issues like human rights and the military balance.” That seems like surrendering to the CCP.
Meanwhile, Dan Murphy, the executive director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School,
claimed on March 1 that “many observers have overestimated [China’s] apparent power” and that, as a result, “the U.S. risks misallocating resources and attention, directing them toward a threat that is not as imminent as one might otherwise assume.” The fact that the PLA is approaching military parity with the United States is apparently an “overestimation” of China’s growing power. Never mind that
China’s rapid military growth in recent decades is nothing short of shocking, particularly regarding aircraft and missile production and shipbuilding.
Finally, Lyle Goldstein,
a visiting professor at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, uses the threat of war with China as the dominant rationale for engaging with the CCP and lowering U.S. defenses across the board. This commenter uses fear as his primary tool to avoid a possible nuclear confrontation with China over the fate of Taiwan.
The Pièce de Résistance of China Engagement
Xi and President Biden circled back for another phone conversation on April 2.
The U.S. version of what was discussed included “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” “the rule of law and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea,” Washington’s “commitment” to denuclearizing North Korea, “concerns” over climate change, China’s “support for Russia’s defense industrial base,” and Beijing’s “unfair trade policies,” according to the
New York Post.
The Chinese version in Xinhua was dramatically different and “[painted] Biden as defensive, saying he reiterated the US objective ‘not to change China’s system’ and that Washington doesn’t support ‘Taiwan independence’ but rather ‘follows the one-China policy.’”
The New York Post article points out that President Biden has not taken a single concrete action against China while “China provokes Taiwan incessantly, sends fentanyl ingredients to Mexico, utterly abandons its treaty promises to let freedom ring in Hong Kong, deploys spy balloons over America, aids Russia in its war on Ukraine, claims the South China Sea is its territory, [and] pumps ever more carbon into the air despite John Kerry’s pleas.”
And that is what the Biden administration’s return to China engagement has wrought: unchecked CCP belligerence without any effective pushback by the United States.
Concluding Thoughts
Xi’s inner circle, which includes the “New Zhijiang Army” and the “Shaanxi Gang,” must be beside themselves with joy and relief that the Americans are returning to engagement policies that may save communist China yet again. These two factions include the communists who worked under Xi in Zhejiang Province, south of Shanghai, and in Xi’s home province of Shaanxi in north-central China and rose in the CCP hierarchy with him during his rise to the top. Xi and his pals must believe that if Deng Xiaoping can do anything, he can do better in terms of hoodwinking Americans and Westerners to save the CCP once again.That fact would seem to be borne out as Xi hosted a meeting with 20 U.S. business figures, including Chubb’s Evan Greenberg, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon in Beijing on March 27. What’s that adage about capitalists selling communists the rope with which to hang themselves (see
here)?
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
