On Saturday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi offered optimism that the Biden administration would end the Trump administration’s constraint of Chinese imperialism.
Speaking to state media, Wang claimed that the Chinese Communist Party seeks only “an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world.” He explained that Biden’s election means “Sino-U.S. relations have come to a new crossroads and are expected to open new windows of hope. It is hoped that the new U.S. government will regain its rationality, resume dialogue, return bilateral relations to the right track, and restart cooperation.”
The choice of language: “restart cooperation” alongside restored U.S. “rationality,” is telling.
Beijing has been deeply frustrated by the Trump administration’s constraint of its activities in cyberspace, the South China Sea, and many other areas. Were Biden to pare back this constraint, Beijing would view that shift as a return to “rationality.” To push Biden in that direction, Xi Jinping’s Communist Party is dangling new concessions in areas such as trade and climate change. But with words that might provoke raised eyebrows from FBI agents, Wang claimed that “China has never interfered in the internal affairs of the United States, and is willing to live in peace with the United States and cooperate for a win-win situation.” This “win-win” descriptor is a laughable trope. But alongside its cultivation of sympathetic U.S. businesses, China hopes Biden will be persuaded to adopt an appeasement policy.
The rosy rhetoric aside, however, Wang is clear that Beijing has no intention of improving its human rights record.
“The United States should respect the social system and development path chosen by the Chinese people,” he said, “and respect the legitimate rights of the Chinese people to pursue a better life.” The challenge, here, is that the Chinese people have not ever “chosen” this path and, if Xi has his way, will never be able to. Beijing’s definition of “pursue a better life” entails the shredding of basic rights and its international treaty commitments in Hong Kong. Oh, and China’s continued treatment of Uighur Muslims in much the same way that the Soviets treated political prisoners, the Nazis treated Jews, and the U.S. southern states treated black Americans. Will Biden be able to close a blind eye to this terror?
We shall see.
But we should not lose sight of the fact that Wang’s message isn’t actually his own. Instead, it comes straight from the mind of Beijing’s foreign policy chief, Yang Jiechi. The head of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, Yang is the mastermind of Xi’s use of economic influence to earn foreign political deference. And considering Biden’s prior record on China, the refusal of some Democrats to support the U.S. military against China’s threat, and Beijing’s recent triumph in securing the European Union’s support for a major trade agreement, China’s optimism is credible. This is not to say that President Trump’s China policy has been perfect. Trump’s failure to support Australia against escalating Chinese pressure has been disappointing, for example.
Still, U.S. interests demand that Biden reject China’s poisoned olive branch. Xi seeks to replace the U.S.-led liberal international order with a China-led order of authoritarian China-led order of feudal mercantilism. If Biden tolerates that Chinese ambition, Americans and the world will ultimately be less free, less secure, and less prosperous for it.
