When it comes to China, thousands of U.S. Government officials and diplomats in Washington and Beijing repeat the same familiar words: “We need to get tough. We need to send a message. We need to sanction. We need some measure of reciprocity.” These empty phrases never trigger action.
Others describe the status quo but make no meaningful recommendations. Anti-Beijing scholar Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China (2001), has tumbled into this trap. In this February 28 video montage, he outlined the impact that Russia’s war on Ukraine is having on China. Chang missed the point.
Beijing may have been emboldened by President Joe Biden’s August 2021 debacle in Afghanistan. But Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine scares the daylights out of China, as a cautionary tale related to Taiwan. Beijing sees the world imposing crippling restrictions on Russia, arming Ukraine, and encouraging everyday Ukrainians in their countrywide uprising against Putin’s troops. Beijing can look forward to at least this kind of treatment if it tried to subjugate Taiwan. Unlike what Chang said, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is now scared of Taiwan emulating Ukraine’s defiance.
Describing this situation is easy. Offering meaningful, deployable recommendations is tough. So, how should America and its allies confront China?
RECOMMENDATION 1: Arm Taiwan to the teeth.
RECOMMENDATION 2: Washington should tell the world that Xi is Putin’s BFF, a stone-cold killer. America must communicate this message directly with the Chinese people.
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RECOMMENDATION 3: Declare war on China for killing Americans with Fentanyl, imprisoning Uyghurs, brutalizing Hong Kong’s citizens, shredding the Hong-Kong-protecting Sino-British Joint Declaration (registered with the United Nations), subjugating hundreds of millions of people in China and beyond, stealing intellectual property, and much, much more.
This would be a new type of war. How would it look?
For starters, if America discovered a vessel shipping Fentanyl, U.S. GIs would board it, bomb it, or both. The civilized world should blacklist Chinese Communist Party members and their families. Congress should modify the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to empower American citizens and businesses to sue China for the devastating results of its negligent homicide stemming from COVID-19’s almost certain escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Rather than Gordon Chang’s recitation of problems without solutions or Joe Biden’s policy of seemingly nothing at all, the West needs clear-cut insightful recommendations and Volodymyr Zelensky-like leadership.
Biden and his team must stop China’s transgressions. New agreements with China make zero sense. The recent Sino-American trade deal and the 2021 Report to Congress On China’s WTO Compliance both confirm that China breaks its word without blinking.
China easily could have complied with its U.S. trade deal by purchasing oil from America rather than Russia. No such luck. Meanwhile, having lied its way through the COVID-19 atrocity that roared out of Wuhan, the CCP sells Fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels who use it to kill Americans. The time is now for U.S. patriots to stop China.
Brad Good began living and working in China in 1988. He holds an MBA and Masters in East Asian Studies from the University of Chicago and a BA from U.C. Berkeley. After spending COVID in China, Good now resides in Austin, Texas.
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