Friday, March 19, 2021
Eating Joe's Lunch
A little over a year ago, top Chinese officials came to Washington, D.C., hat in hand to sign a trade deal they hated. They did so because Donald Trump made it clear that the days of America being taken for suckers were over.
Contrast that to how the Chinese communists walked into yesterday's negotiations on our territory. They claimed that communist China speaks for the world, not America.
When U.S. officials raised concerns about the communist regime's crackdown on Hong Kong and its genocide against ethnic Muslim Uyghurs, Beijing's lead diplomat shot back:
"China is firmly opposed to U.S. interference in China's internal affairs. . . On human rights, we hope the United States will do better. . . There are many problems within the United States regarding human rights. . . The challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated. They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as 'Black Lives Matter.'"
He went on to claim that American blacks were being "slaughtered." Well, at least the Chinese communists and the Biden Administration found one thing they could agree on. They both cite the Black Lives Matter movement as proof that America is evil.
But I wonder why we never hear about the "Uyghur Lives Matter" movement in communist China. Of course, no such movement exists. It isn't allowed to exist. And if the communist dictators in Beijing get their way, the Uyghurs may not exist for much longer!
I don't know where this is going, but I wouldn't be surprised if communist China and the Biden Administration announced some agreement to help both sides save face, likely pledges to fight COVID-19 and climate change. That's really all President Biden wants our relationship with communist China to be about. And that's also what communist China wants.
It doesn't want to address "internal matters" of Hong Kong, Taiwan, religious persecution or genocide. It doesn't want to talk about national security threats, cyberwarfare, espionage and intellectual property theft. But communist China is happy to talk about climate change.
What Didn't Come Up
In the litany of things we raised with the communist Chinese, I saw no mention of COVID. That alone tells you that the Biden Administration has no courage and no logical policy.
Let me repeat what we do know. The virus began in Wuhan, China. China's communist officials knew early on it was deadly. They lied to the world about the danger of human-to-human transmission, and they got the World Health Organization to lie too.
And while communist China was lying to us, it was cornering the market on medical supplies that they knew everyone would need once the world understood the danger.
While they knew how dangerous the virus was, they locked down Wuhan and stopped travel inside China, but allowed international travel to celebrate the Chinese New Year. (Here and here.) They seeded the world with the coronavirus.
They wrecked Western economies, and caused us to go dangerously into debt. While they did all this, they had the extra bonus of contributing to Donald Trump's defeat and the election of their preferred candidate, Joe Biden.
Killer Instincts
I know Joe Biden likes to think of himself as a foreign policy expert. Well, let me remind you what Robert Gates, Barack Obama's defense secretary, said about Joe Biden's foreign policy: "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
It seems we're about to find out.
In a predictably softball interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Biden said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "a killer." He does that in the same week we're sitting down with communist China, when we should be trying to play one of them off the other.
When Trump met the threats of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by mocking him, the entire media complex and every prominent liberal in Congress immediately set their hair on fire. They screamed that the ignorant Trump, who didn't appreciate the nuances of diplomacy, was going to get us into a war with a dictator who has a dozen nuclear warheads.
Joe Biden just called the head of Russia, who commands thousands of nuclear warheads, "a killer." Other than a few conservative commentators, there is virtual silence in the media about just how irresponsible that was.
Putin's response was very telling. First, Russia recalled its ambassador to the United States. But Putin also wished Joe Biden "good health." Of course, that was sarcasm. Putin and the leaders of the world know that Joe Biden is a failing man.
That's why after wishing Biden good health, Putin threw down a challenge. Putin said he wanted to debate Joe Biden "on the condition that we actually do it live, without any delays, directly in an open, live discussion."
Putin added, "I think it would be interesting for the people of Russia and the people of the United States and many other countries," and said he was free today or Monday.
Of course, Putin knows Biden would never agree to such a "discussion." His handlers would never let him do it because he can't handle it. Every day we all see -- the whole world sees -- the evidence of Biden's cognitive decline.
Yesterday, for example, while speaking about a vaccination center in Arizona, Biden referred to "President Harris and I." At no point did he correct himself. And today, sadly, the president fell multiple times while attempting to board Air Force One.
Fighting Back
While the Biden Administration struggles for a strategy to handle communist China, I am pleased to report that a number of conservative senators are stepping up to the plate.
Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), Rick Scott (R-FL) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) introduced legislation yesterday to repeal "most-favored nation" trade status for communist China.
Referring to the urgent need for this legislation, Senator Inhofe said:
"I said it 20 years ago and I will say it again: We cannot allow the pursuit of trade to blind us to certain realities about the ruling communist regime in China. To continue to ignore these actions as if they can be separated from what we do in our trading relationship is dangerously misguided."
Senator Cotton noted:
"For twenty years, China has held permanent most-favored-nation status, which has supercharged the loss of American manufacturing jobs. It's time to protect American jobs and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their forced labor camps and egregious human rights violations."
I agree completely! Communist China never deserved this special trade status in the first place. But we were assured at the time by our political and corporate elites that trade with communist China would change communist China. That was a lie. It changed us!
American multinational corporations became apologists for the Chinese Communist Party, while heartland communities were gutted by closed factories and shattered dreams.
While American corporations enriched communist China, the regime's behavior got worse year after year. Communist China hasn't stopped its military buildup. To the contrary, it now has a larger navy than we do.
It didn't stop spying or stealing intellectual property. To the contrary, Chinese spying has gotten worse.
And while China's communist party bosses complain about our "meddling" in their internal affairs, they installed propaganda centers, knows as Confucius Institutes, at dozens of American universities and colleges.
Why we have tolerated communist China's behavior for so long and continued to reward it with most-favored nation trade status is incomprehensible. Revoking that status is the bare minimum we should do considering the regime stands accused of genocide!