You’ve got to “win the fight you’re in,” the sage advice goes. And right now, our leaders’ biggest fight is public health. They must focus on procuring coronavirus tests, obtaining protective equipment and ventilators, enforcing social distancing, and researching new vaccines and therapies.
But policymakers must also have staff working on plans for the next fight: confronting China.
It’s increasingly clear that the communist Chinese regime is largely to blame for coronavirus becoming a deadly global pandemic, killing thousands of U.S. citizens, and costing trillions. Despite the bizarre manner in which President Trump initially praised China’s handling of the pandemic, in reality, their godless communist leaders lied to the world about the lethality and transmissibility of the virus.
Whether Chinese President Xi Jinping is guilty of negligence or just dishonesty does not excuse Trump’s incompetent reaction to the pandemic. Nor does it exculpate certain Senate Republicans’ profiting from early, classified information on the coming misery, or the harm done by far-right populist blowhards who cynically dismissed the looming menace as a scam or nothing more serious than the common cold.
History will name and shame these bad domestic actors. But what should we do to China’s leaders in response to their misdeeds?
Trump’s tariffs, which are taxes on our consumers, are weak beer. And trolling Beijing with the phrase “Chinese virus” is the snarky response of a tween mean girl, not a serious or sufficient policy response.
If Trump had wartime consigliere as his advisers, rather than sycophantic court eunuchs, he might ask them: What do Chinese Communist Party leaders hold dear, and how can we put those things at risk? The answer is clear. China’s leaders seek to commemorate the centenary of their bloody communist revolution in 2049 by restoring their country’s lost glory as the “Middle Kingdom.” The United States and the civilized, God-fearing world should have a competing goal: the liberation of China from the evil of communism.
In furtherance of its goal, China pursues three key interests.
One is ensuring “state sovereignty,” that is, using Han nationalism to ensure the political primacy of the Chinese Communist Party, unity, and reunification. Important to this is the suppression of discussion of democracy and human rights in China, both at home and abroad.
The U.S. made a mistake, beginning in the Obama administration and worsening under Trump, in not speaking up in defense of international freedom enough. President Barack Obama seemed too embarrassed by times America historically failed to live up to her ideals to preach to others. Meanwhile, Trump routinely disregards those ideals entirely. In contrast, Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan’s frank talk about universal truths and values inspired Americans, allies, and citizens of captive nations to defeat fascism and communism. They were men with chests, in C.S. Lewis’s apt phrase.
Trump’s successors should speak up for the rights of Buddhists in Tibet, Muslims in Xinjiang, and Christians and the Falun Gong across China. He (or she) should talk about the success of democracy in Taiwan, and criticize its suppression in Hong Kong. Rather than fete Xi at Mar-a-Lago, meet President Tsai of Taiwan, the Dalai Lama, and Joseph Cardinal Zen — whether Beijing likes it or not.
A second Chinese interest is avoiding military encirclement, or the undermining of their strategic nuclear force. Well, the U.S. has a key interest in not having our citizens die from a global pandemic that could have been prevented. So, let’s see stronger ties with allies Japan and South Korea, which have somewhat frayed as Trump has questioned security relationships. Too, we ought to build more missile defenses, especially at sea, and increase freedom of navigation patrols in the western Pacific. One good move Trump has made is to strengthen our ties with India, and we should further accelerate this process.
A third Chinese interest is economic development under “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” What this really means is threefold: consumer goods sold at cut-rate prices thanks to the Chinese regime’s theft of the West’s intellectual property, using the profits obtained to issue infrastructure loans to the Third World at predatory terms under the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, and otherwise lining the pockets of regime leaders.
We must also stop Chinese intellectual property theft by sanctioning companies facilitating their espionage, such as Huawei and ZTE, by secondary sanctions if necessary. Trump repeatedly fades in the clutch on this: He rescinded proposed sanctions after Beijing offered trademark protections to his daughter’s handbag line, looking weak in the process. Future presidents must man up and hold the line on the 5G network. Otherwise, allied communications security will be fatally compromised for a generation.
Rather than pull back from the Third World, the U.S. should lean in, and not cede the field to China. Foreign assistance is pennies on the dollar, spent in our national interest.
We should also take a hard counterintelligence look at visas we give Chinese students to study science and technology at American universities and colleges. It may reveal that in some cases, these visas serve the interests of no one but the bursars of elite research universities.
Finally, China’s leaders are drawn from a narrow ethnic and socioeconomic slice of their country, which discriminates against minorities, and has known famine and vulnerability within memory. So we should help a free press report about the financial corruption of Beijing’s elite, and use our advanced technical means to get those true and juicy stories through the “Great Firewall of China.”
For now, let’s pray for everyone impacted by the coronavirus, better equip first responders and healthcare professionals, comfort the sick and bereaved, and sustain the unemployed. Once the coronavirus passes, and our dead are mourned, let’s rally ourselves again to the task of facing down China — and present the world a binary choice between tyranny and freedom.
Kevin Carroll was a senior counselor to the secretary of homeland security and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and a CIA and Army officer. His family members treat coronavirus patients. He is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
