Media reports suggest that the Trump administration is considering banning Chinese Communist Party members and their families from entering the U.S. On paper, such a ban seems like a good way to pressure Beijing. In effect, it would do more harm to American interests than any benefits it might generate.
Don’t misunderstand me. Communist China needs active and aggressive countering across the range of its malevolent activities. Xi Jinping is attempting to shred the American-led liberal international order, an order that has made us all safer and wealthier. Xi’s cyber-armies are engaged in an insatiable campaign of intellectual property and private data theft. In the South China Sea and along the Indian border, Xi’s military is shredding the inviolable principle of sovereign territory. Xi’s broader foreign policy is defined by a mixture of treaty breaches, as in Hong Kong, and, as with his carbon emissions commitments, unrepentant deception. Only an American-led mobilization of the international community can prevent Xi’s advancements in these areas.
Still, a ban on Chinese Communist Party travel to America is a mistake for three reasons.
First off, it would preclude the effective conduct of foreign policy. Were a blanket ban introduced, the State Department would have to provide specific visa waivers for all the many Chinese government officials who visit America every year. While it’s true that most Chinese diplomats come to the United States with a view to extracting concessions rather than cutting compromises, that’s not always the case. American interests are better served by retaining some flexible cordiality in these interchanges.
As an extension of this point, a blanket ban would also hurt U.S. intelligence community efforts to recruit Chinese agents. Many Chinese visitors are Chinese Communist Party members, those trusted to travel and return home with continued loyalty to the state. The access to regime patronage and business opportunity that comes with party membership also means those able to afford U.S. travel and/or study are far more proportionately likely to be members. This dynamic offers an opportunity to the CIA, in particular, in allowing its targeting officers to identify Chinese students, government officials, and influential business persons who might then be willing to return home as spies for the U.S. The value of this opportunity-interest should not be discounted. Note, for example, that Vladimir Putin’s constitutional reform includes a ban on foreign residency permits by top Russian officials. That reflects Putin’s concern over the U.S. government’s ability to forge Russian relationships outside of Putin’s control.
Finally, allowing U.S. travel affords an opportunity for young Chinese to see a flourishing democracy in action. That experience makes it likelier that these citizens return home with their own new ideas on Chinese political reform. True, some Chinese will travel to America and see our present partisanship and civil disquiet as evidence of a flawed democratic system. But many others will see our robust public interchange and high living standards as proof that freedom and a mutually beneficial prosperity can co-exist. We need to focus on these minds. In the long term, political-reformist thinking is the best way to ensure that China abandons its hostility towards the U.S. international order.
So, yes, the Trump administration should double down on its efforts to constrain Chinese imperialism. But while a ChineseCommunist Party travel ban might sound good, ultimately, it would be a mistake.
