In an overdue but positive step, the Peace Corps has announced it’s ending its China operations, starting this summer.
Sen. Marco Rubio hailed the decision, saying: “For too long, Beijing has fooled organizations such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization into believing otherwise so it could exploit our global institutions. It is time for these organizations, both U.S. and multilateral, to change the way they deal with China.”
Not everyone is so happy. A petition is circulating to overturn the decision. And previous Peace Corps volunteers are taking to social media to express their dismay.
Let’s be clear: This is the right call.
First, China is manifestly undeserving of this commitment of taxpayer money and citizen advocacy. Under Xi Jinping, Beijing has embarked on a strategy to replace the U.S.-led liberal international order with an authoritarian order that fuses military imperialism and feudal mercantilism. If China succeeds in this effort, it will make the rest of the world poorer, less safe, and less free. No one who values freedom wants it. Why on Earth should America serve our adversary?
Second, it is the Communist Party in Beijing and not the people of China who gain the outsize benefit of this program. The Peace Corps inadvertently admits as much. It currently has 134 volunteers in China who “are placed in Chinese colleges, technical schools, and universities to meet the demand for strengthening English language learning and teaching across the country.”
But here’s a question: Why is the Peace Corps teaching English in “technical schools and universities?” That means its volunteers are providing Chinese adults with valuable American language skills and cultural exposure with which to undermine U.S. interests. This is not a hypothetical point. Chinese universities are designed and operated to churn out new soldiers for Xi’s global strategy.
Moreover, the Chinese Ministry of State Security views young American visitors to its nation as particularly valuable targets for intelligence service recruitment. Many Peace Corps volunteers are idealistic individuals predisposed to careers in public service. We must thus ask how many of the more than 1,300 previous volunteers in China may have been recruited by the MSS during their time there. The number is likely very small, but unlikely to be zero. How many of those volunteers then returned home to take up employment in the State Department or another U.S. government agency?
Ultimately, we need to be clear-eyed here.
Yes, the Peace Corps does great work around the world. Yes, that work deserves taxpayer funding and continued citizen service. But the Peace Corps cannot exist in an apolitical vacuum. As long as it receives taxpayer funding, the Peace Corps must serve American interests alongside humanitarian concerns. And that is impossible in China. This decision will allow the organization to recommit its resources elsewhere around the world, to peoples and nations who seek American friendship, instead of our submission.
