Joe Biden was badly wrong to suggest on May 1 that China poses no significant challenge to America. In fact, China poses the greatest challenge to U.S. security, prosperity, and international order since the Soviet Union at its peak.
But if Biden changes course, he will deserve credit. As the Washington Examiner‘s Joe Simonson reports, Biden is expected to call on Tuesday for “a united front of allies to challenge China’s abusive behavior … we need to rally more than half the world’s economy to hold China to account for their cheating. And get a chorus of voices speaking out on China’s repression.” CNN adds that Biden will also assert that “We are in a competition with China, we need to get tough.”
Of course, good words on China aren’t enough. Especially when it’s Joe Biden. After all, as Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden must share in the responsibility for the debacle that was Obama’s China policy. In a near exact opposite approach to President Trump’s necessary realism on China, President Obama sought to win Xi Jinping’s trust via appeasement. It didn’t work.
When Xi escalated China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property, Obama had Xi sign a meaningless agreement to stop. The Chinese then simply altered the majority of their theft from Chinese intelligence activity to Chinese intelligence activity via thinly veiled cutouts. Obama authorized only the mildest of National Security Agency counterstrikes.
When Xi flagrantly breached World Trade Organization rules, Obama again asked him to stop. Xi did not.
When Xi replicated 1920s-1930s imperial Japan and aggressively seized and fortified vast areas of international waters, Obama sat idle. Eventually, only reluctantly, did he authorize meager U.S. Navy deployments near China’s constructed islands. In contrast, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ strategic vision has seen the U.S. Navy eyeball-to-eyeball with China’s aggressive imperialism. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has, albeit imperfectly, continued this effort. This has won new credibility for America in the Indo-Pacific, making America and our allies stronger.
When Xi expanded the use of his telecommunications firms as global intelligence collectors for Beijing, Obama ignored their threats and allowed U.S. allies to do the same without any response. In contrast, Trump has acted forcefully to restrain those firms.
What did Obama get for his appeasement? Nothing except an absurd second-Munich-style pledge from Xi to attempt to peak Chinese carbon emissions by 2030. China is already breaking that pledge.
The basic point here is that, no mater how inconsistent he has been on his own China posturing, Biden is at least recognizing something Obama never did: that China poses an existential threat to our international order of free trade and democratic values and a profound threat to American prosperity. If Biden’s words on Tuesday are the starting point to his better policy, they should be welcomed.
If they are words alone, unbound from the necessary connection of a strong military and robust action, then Biden deserves only scorn. We’ll see.
