Between Biden and Trump’s State Department, a China policy nightmare

One of the most important foreign policy issues facing the U.S. is just how we plan to engage with China. But if this week is anything to go on, the debate ahead of 2020 won’t be a nuanced attempt to navigate a shifting geopolitical landscape but a romp through simplistic narratives.

In public statements on China this week both Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic front-runner, and Kiron Skinner, the director of policy planning in Trump’s State Department, demonstrated profound misunderstandings of China, history, and current affairs.

Speaking at a security forum on Monday, Skinner outlined the basis of Trump’s China policy. He explained that it was based on the idea that China represents “a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology” and the bizarrely racialized idea that China is the first time Washington has faced “a great power competitor that is not Caucasian.”

Just a few days later, 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden said that China isn’t a competitor and brushed off the idea that Beijing is a rival, saying “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.” 

So, between Trump’s State Department and Uncle Joe, we’ve got either China as a non-Caucasian adversary that is a challenge primarily because of its a non-Western civilization, or China’s not trying to compete with the U.S. at all.

Both of these approaches are so far off base that they would be laughable if they weren’t espoused by the very people who are definitely supposed to know better.

Setting aside Skinner’s historical ignorance (she seems to have overlooked that Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan and that China is inspired by Marxism just as much as the USSR was, among other things), her analysis is based on more fiction than fact.

China isn’t a challenge because of race. China is a challenge because of a growing economy, a broad and ambitious foreign policy agenda, and a challenge to the global order that the U.S. built in the aftermath of World War II. Sure, China’s history and use of that history to articulate national aspirations are important, but such narratives are hardy unique to the Chinese Communist Party. This appeal to the “yellow peril” is not only ugly, but also fundamentally fails to consider the very real challenges posed by Beijing — and is unlikely to yield any real solutions.

Biden, although thankfully passing on the racism, similarly misses the mark. China is quite clearly a rival in terms of both global ambitions and direct economic competition. This isn’t exactly a new concern either. China has long faced U.S. legal action for practices such as forced technology transfer and industrial espionage.

Even worse, Biden seemed to be suggesting that there’s not much that we should be doing to engage with China. It’s no use and no help turning a blind eye to Beijing’s plans to develop new technologies and prevent the U.S. from prioritizing competition in education, industry, and development that made us successful in the Cold War.

Neither Skinner’s nor Biden’s comments and are a promising start to productive debates what should be a key 2020 issue. Nor do they bode well for resolving the trade war, mitigating potential conflict in the South China Sea, or successfully responding to China’s growing influence.

Simplistic narratives rarely hold real answers. With China, that’s especially true. If we truly want to defend our national interests we’d better hope that both Republicans and Democrats devote a little more time to thinking about China rather than just saying whatever seems like it sounds good in the moment.

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