It took more than a year, but the press and public health “experts” have finally begun to take seriously the possibility that the coronavirus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If this turns out to be true, the potential punishment issued against China’s communist regime could make the Treaty of Versailles look like a parking ticket.
Even before the pandemic, the Chinese communists were responsible for torturing and surveilling their own citizens, committing genocide against its Uyghur population in Xinjiang, funding the North Korean dictatorship, and militarizing its occupation of the South China Sea. The neoliberal bet that liberalizing economic ties with China would bring about political liberalization has failed. At last, a popular consensus of dislike and distrust of China has coalesced, not just between the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans, but also among our allies, ranging from the United Kingdom and Germany to Australia and Japan.
The time to punish China is now. President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are all on board. But the question is how the hell can they get the rest of the party to put down partisan interests to re-aim political fire toward the Chinese dictatorship.
Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken has rightly echoed the Trump administration, branding China’s actions against the Uyghurs a genocide. DNI Avril Haines was one of the earliest in the Biden administration to contradict the World Health Organization’s conclusion that the coronavirus did not emerge from a lab. But Biden has to counter the moral rot of his Obama alumni as well as the growing tankie faction in Congress.
John Kerry, as Biden’s climate czar, has already proven willing to lick the boots of Xi Jinping. Despite bipartisan condemnation of the Xinjiang genocide, Kerry has downplayed China’s human rights atrocities.
“We have differences on economic rules, on cyber,” Kerry said during a Foreign Policy interview. “We have other differences on human rights, geostrategic interests, but those differences do not have to get in the way of something that is as critical as dealing with climate.”
Kerry’s China sycophancy isn’t limited to his role as a climate envoy. Although the official line of the Obama administration was to embarrassingly embrace the chance to cooperate with China, few went as far as Kerry, who hosted Yang Jiechi, a top Chinese diplomat, at his own Boston home to develop their personal relationship.
On China dovishness, Kerry had then-national security adviser Susan Rice as an ally, who also viewed smooth relations with China as a key to securing Obama’s legacy. Rice may explicitly be the director of the United States Domestic Policy Council, but there’s a decent chance that like Kerry, Rice is expanding her authority in ways that would necessitate appeasing China.
The problem extends to Congress, where old school Democrats such as Schumer and Pelosi face internal opposition to their attempts to crack down on the Chinese communists.
Although the Senate managed to pass the Endless Frontier Act, one that crucially invests in means to compete with China, with a rare 86 votes in favor, the socialist “Squad” has chafed against leadership.
“We need to distinguish between justified criticisms of the Chinese government’s human rights record and a Cold War mentality that uses China as a scapegoat for our own domestic problems and demonizes Chinese Americans,” sophomore Rep. Ilhan Omar said. Her absurd non-sequitur came in direct opposition to party leadership. Omar’s freshman ally, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, declared that he strongly rejects “any anti-China rhetoric associated” with the Endless Frontier Act. Again, the idea that criticism of China’s government is somehow racist or hostile toward Chinese Americans has no basis in reality. It is an idea straight out of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda playbook.
Perhaps communists will just always align with communists, even at the expense of human rights.
There is absolutely no moral equivalence here between their government and ours. For all of its flaws, the U.S. government is limited by our free press, fair elections, and judicial guardrails. The Chinese dictatorship, in contrast, violently oppresses its own people as a rule and is actively committing genocide right now.
Trump and his China hawks shifted the Overton window on the China question. Biden now stands to benefit, if only he takes advantage and holds the mainland Chinese regime accountable. For once, our overseas allies and our domestic partisan interests have perfectly aligned. The only threat to this ambition is within Biden’s own party — an ugly alliance between the dregs of the Obama era and the socialists taking Congress by storm.
