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.