China is America’s adversary and must be restrained for the sake of global prosperity and freedom.
I note this in the context of some profoundly idiotic comments by Craig Allen, head of the U.S.-China business council on Tuesday. Debating the Trump administration’s constraint of China’s Huawei telecommunications firm, Allen lamented “The administration has provided no public evidence that Huawei is more dangerous than say Nokia or Ericsson.” He continued, “Prohibiting American companies from dealing with them is more like murder … if a stranger knocks at your door you don’t have to let [Huawei] in, but do you have the right to take a gun and shoot them. And that is the analogy that the Chinese use. I got that from a Chinese internet leader.”
Few statements are as stupid as “I got that from a Chinese internet leader,” except perhaps everything that came before it.
The open evidence is actually quite simple: as Allen himself admits, Huawei receives generous state support from the Chinese government. And China is stealing vast areas of international waters that are crucial to global trade, cheating in international trade, imprisoning millions of civilians, and attempting to imprison millions more. Oh, and China is also stealing extraordinary amounts of intellectual property and then using it to spy on the world.
Huawei is thus, quite openly, a servant of Xi Jinping’s efforts to dominate the world under a new order of authoritarian feudal mercantilism. And while most (but not all) of the details are not publicly available, Huawei is an active subordinate partner of the Chinese intelligence community. Again, anyone like Allen who understands how China operates should understand this.
But let’s go back to the analogy provided by Allen’s fantastic Chinese internet leader. Because the analogy isn’t just stupid, it’s the absolute opposite of reality. To be truthful, the actual analogy should be something along these lines: If a stranger has been breaking into your house and stealing your most valuable possessions, and you know that stranger also wants to make you and the rest of the neighborhood live as his servants, you certainly shouldn’t let him in. You should fortify your neighborhood against him, and you should make clear to him that if he keeps crossing the lines of your security you will shoot him.
Because that is what’s at stake with Huawei and Xi Jinping. The future of the world.
Allen’s position is at once utterly unpatriotic and intellectually absurd. But perhaps it’s not surprising coming from him. On his U.S.-China business council webpage, Allen’s profile photo shows him standing on a U.S. aircraft carrier deck. Guess who spends a lot of money building weapons to send those carriers to the bottom of the West Pacific?
Allen’s favorite door knocking stranger.
