When a president proves he’s a toothless paper tiger.
The Communist Chinese regime will do whatever President Xi Jinping believes is necessary to surpass the United States, which President Xi considers to be in decline. President Joe Biden is proving to be President Xi’s perfect patsy to help him achieve his grand ambitions.
President Biden remains under the dangerous delusion that China is merely a vigorous competitor, not the U.S.’s chief adversary that is determined to replace America as the world’s number one military, economic, and technological superpower. President Biden is on a fool’s mission to explore whether there are areas of mutual interest where the Chinese regime might be willing to genuinely cooperate with the United States. There are none. Nevertheless, in desperation he has sent so far three of his administration’s cabinet-level officials to China to restore fruitless dialogue with their high-level Chinese counterparts.
President Xi believes only in China First and views every issue through the lens of China’s national self-interest. This explains why his regime has had no problem welcoming U.S. business leaders to China with open arms, while not giving an inch to the Biden administration’s cabinet-level officials who recently visited China.
China needs American businesses’ investments, trade, and especially their technologies to help bolster its sagging economy. China loves doing business with American firms as long as these firms operate on China’s own terms, like submitting to state surveillance, handing over access to valuable intellectual property, and abiding by China’s censorship requirements. American companies interested solely in maximizing profits are only too happy to oblige.
China’s dealings with Biden administration officials are another matter entirely. President Xi has shown no respect for President Biden and that disrespect has filtered down to how Chinese officials treat their American counterparts.
For example, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu rejected holding a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this spring on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum. The Biden administration had hoped such a meeting between the two countries’ defense chiefs would lead to restoring military-to-military communications to reduce the possibility of unintended military conflict. But the reaction from the Chinese side was a rude snub.
The United States has good reason to be concerned about China’s military intentions. One of China’s jet fighters flew directly in front of an American surveillance plane flying in international airspace. One of China’s warships came within 150 yards of an American destroyer conducting a freedom-of-navigation exercise with Canada in international waters. In one of its typical lies, the Chinese regime blamed the United States for these near misses.
When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to China in June and brought up the issue of military deconflicting, he got nowhere. His plea to keep the channels of communication open “to ensure competition does not veer into conflict” fell on deaf ears.
Secretary Blinken did not even succeed in getting China’s leaders to acknowledge, much less apologize, for China’s spy balloon escapade over the continental United States earlier this year, a clear invasion of U.S. sovereignty and national security. Why should they when President Biden said, shortly before Secretary Blinken’s arrival in China, that the spy balloon incursion was more “embarrassing” for China’s leadership “than it was intentional.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen fared a little better than Secretary Blinken during her subsequent trip to China and meetings with China’s top economic officials. Maybe that is because she bowed multiple times to Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in some sort of sign of respect that was not reciprocated.
While there was a softer tone coming from Chinese leaders during Secretary Yellen’s visit than during Secretary Blinken’s visit, nothing of substance was accomplished. There was no movement from either side on trade, investment, or technology issues that have divided the United States and China.
Treasury Secretary Yellen tried to assure her hosts that the United States was not seeking to decouple its economy from China’s economy, which would be infeasible anyway given the huge amount of trade and financial interrelationships between the two countries. But China’s leadership was not swayed by Secretary Yellen’s bows or conciliatory words.
The Chinese regime wants relief from U.S. tariffs and from limits the Biden administration, to its credit, imposed on exports of the United States’ most advanced semiconductor technology. China has placed restrictions of its own on the export of two metals essential to the production of computer chips. China produces more than ninety percent of the global supply of one of these metals.
Treasury Secretary Yellen’s visit did nothing to ease any of these economic tensions. Her takeaway was to “expect that this trip will help build a resilient and productive channel of communication with China’s new economic team.” But dialogue as an end in itself accomplishes nothing other than to give the Chinese regime a platform to berate the United States.
President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry was the next cabinet-level Biden official to make the journey to China. The purpose of Kerry’s trip was to persuade the Communist regime to do more to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases, especially from its use of coal. He failed.
China is.by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world and is continuing to build more coal-fired power plants than the rest of the world combined. The United States, while being the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, emits less than half as much greenhouse gases as China does today.
After three days of climate negotiations with senior Chinese government officials (but no meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who makes all the final major policy decisions), Kerry came away empty-handed.
All that John Kerry said he managed to accomplish was “having long and very detailed meetings with a lot to catch up on.“ In other words, more hot air was emitted into the atmosphere.
Mr. Kerry added that “we came here to break new ground … and it is clear that we are going to need a little more work to complete that task.”
While Kerry was failing to “break new ground” with President Xi’s subordinates on climate change policies, President Xi put a total damper on the discussions.
Xi told a national conference on environmental protection that China will tackle climate change in its own way. China, he said, will reach its announced goals via a “path, method, pace and intensity…determined by ourselves and will never be influenced by others.”
The U.S. climate czar chose not to argue the point.
Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer, and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, The United Nations & Radical Islam.
<
>
<
>
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.