Awaken to the China threat: President Biden and America must understand the dangers posed by our Asian competitor – New York Daily News
The ugly China of today is sometimes called an anomaly. Analysts suggest the unwelcome developments and trends are the product of its current leader, that his personality is the driving force behind the Wolf Warrior diplomacy as well as the regime s recent moves to close itself off from the world and its relentless drive to reestablish totalitarian controls at home.
Yet Xi and his hero Mao are the inevitable products of communism. The so-called reform era, the four relatively benign decades sandwiched between Mao and Xi, is really the aberration.
China is not trying to get along inside the existing international system as it sometimes says it is trying to do. It is not even trying to change that system so that it is more to China s liking, as analysts believe. It is, as we can see from Xi s own words, trying to overthrow the Westphalian order, which means that once again the Chinese state is ruled by a revolutionary.
In periods of Communist Party vulnerability, Washington periodically came to the aid of the party, most particularly in 1972 when Nixon went to a country severely weakened by the Cultural Revolution; in 1989, when George H.W. Bush assured the murderous Deng Xiaoping of American support in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre, and in 1999, when Bill Clinton signed a generous trade deal that paved China s entry into the World Trade Organization.
Each of these moves had their benefits; hundreds of millions of Chinese people are more prosperous as a result. But in retrospect, aiding the regime was a mistake. With this help, China was able to later threaten the international system. Today, it can continue to cause havoc only if the world provides more money, technology and diplomatic support.
Gordon Chang.