Wherefore America's China Policy?

Five or so decades ago President Richard Nixon traveled to China. He went to meet with Mao Zedong, one of the the worst despots the world had seen. Nixon went in the midst of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a time of horrific crimes and economic decline. 

The American media, not often willing to praise Nixon, thrilled to the event. News anchors were learning about their chi; reporters were discovering the glories of the Chinese past.

No one much cared about the simple fact that Mao had prescribed a single little red book of his thoughts to everyone, and had made it the only acceptable reading material. Mao gave new special meaning to the notion of despotism.

Anyway, our current president, Joseph Biden, met again with China’s current president, Xi Jinping in California. The city of San Francisco actually cleaned itself up to welcome the Chinese president. 

Aside from the fact that the American media, the talking heads and our politicians believe that Xi Jinping is the root of all political evil, most sensible Americans were mostly concerned with whether Joe Biden could sustain a four-hour conversation without making a complete fool of himself, or even of falling asleep. 

Joel Kotkin explained it well:

It’s also worth comparing Xi to his counterparts. Besides him, Western leaders are doing little to impress — not least his host, the doddering Joe Biden, whose own party does not even want him to run. There’s not a Churchill, Roosevelt or even a Reagan in the bunch. Biden was even prevented from unveiling a proposed new trade deal in San Francisco with Asia’s other economies due to opposition from his own party. 

In truth, Biden waited until his news conference to call Xi a dictator, remark that did not go down very well with the Chinese.

After the Biden-Xi meeting America’s most powerful business executives spent $40,000 a head to attend a meeting with Xi. After all, China is open for business, and most executives know that the Chinese market is massive. They also know that China has considerable manufacturing skills.

Most commentators, however, believe that Biden should have harangued Xi. Apparently, they learned nothing from Nixon’s trip to China. They seem to have become a chorus of shrieky schoolgirls, insisting that true strength lies in berating the Chinese leaders, about the Uygurs and about the fentanyl trade.

Sad to say, they are not ready for prime time. Apparently, Biden wants to prevail on Xi to shut down the fentanyl trafficking. We all agree. He seems to understand what our schoolgirl leaders do not understand. Attacking China’s public face will never succeed in inducing China to do anything at all. 

Our pundit class knows to a certainty that China will never shut down the fentanyl trade. They also know to a certainty that the Chinese App called TikTok will never take down an Osama bin Laden rant. 

Nixon understood that sometimes you need to do business with unsavory characters. It’s called foreign policy and diplomacy. It might not work, but if we do not have semi-normal relations with China, we will not have any leverage at all. 

So, the Biden policy toward China could be worse. The problem is that America has very little leverage in the relationship. It is playing from weakness and that is not the best position to be in.

After all, like it or not, China is interested in doing business. Joe Biden is interested in saving the climate. Do not imagine that our adversaries respect such inanity. Our great minds think that China wants to rule the world and that we must shriek at its human rights abuses. Henry Kissinger was closer to the truth when he explained that China has never been an expansionary power.

The unfortunate part is that Biden has a weak hand. Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza-- his administration has a series of colossal failures. It’s not about tough talk, but about building on success and commanding respect. 

Kotkin sums it up, its a record of failure:

Some in the West insist that China will never conquer the “commanding heights” of the world’s technology-driven economy. But last year America’s net deficit in high-tech trade was $242 billion, with the country relying on factories in China for military goods. 

What’s more, China now has a freer hand militarily. Tied down in Ukraine and the Middle East, the Institute for Strategic and International Studies has warned that the West now lacks “sufficient residual inventories for training and to execute war plans”. Chong Ja Ian, a political science professor at the National University of Singapore, added that Xi is following the pattern which Mao referred to as “talk and fight, fight and talk […] That is, to talk while building up forces.”

The many failures and failings of the Biden presidency have given China a strong hand. More Biden failures will only strengthen its hand.

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