The best argument against China is China. This week, in a cascading set of missteps, China tried to be tough, puff the chest, proffer bravado – demonstrating instead one of Communism’s profound blind spots: They think, act, and react with little or no self-awareness.
Follow me. Over the past several years, accelerating in the past one year, China has shown a remarkable inability to understand how the Western world – indeed most of the world – sees it. Broadly, China is viewed as indifferent to Western moral values, an oppressor of people – starting with its own – overtly ambitious, manipulative, self-serving, and untruthful.
Examples are legion, reaffirming China’s lunge for global power, behind a diplomatic silk fan that fools no one. From originating the COVID-19 pandemic, then denying and blocking global investigators, to accelerated military modernization; illegitimate takings in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, to illegal space weapons testing; currency manipulation and mass genocide, to signature cyber-attacks; manhandling multilateral organizations, like the WHO, WTO, and UN, to strong-arming regional allies, Taiwan, and small Africa and Western Hemisphere nations with usurious loans; angling to lease ports for military power projection to coercing participation in a prospective monopoly on global communications, including coincidental surveillance, through 5-G and “Road and Belt” gambits. The point is: People see all this, increasingly understand the full picture – Communist China’s raw ambition, blithe brutality, duplicity, and immorality.
In short, everyone notices, except China, noticing that we notice. Trump told them bluntly, get your hand out of the cookie jar. Admittedly, reactions before Trump were lackluster, but people are getting tired of the game – and not just in America. China meantime believes one of three things: The West does not notice, or does not care, or is scared to speak truth and level consequences. We must step up – and that means Biden’s team – or they will keep cheating.
But this is where things get interesting. Sometimes a “thing speaks for itself,” res ipsa loquitur, as the law and Latin says. In other words, things become so obvious that everybody gets the inference. If you have chocolate chip stains about your mouth, the jar is empty, and you look full, people draw the appropriate conclusions. A fat cat next to an empty birdcage is probably guilty.
On the serious side, Communism suppresses individual liberty, religious faith, material prosperity, self-determination, and basic human rights – like not being killed, sterilized, forced to abort your children, unjustly imprisoned, or forcibly “reprogrammed” for your opinions. At the core, China dishonors the sanctity of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The bigger point is they do so without realizing the vast majority of a civilized world condemns their worldview.
Which brings me to this week, proof in a nutshell. As China’s behaviors have become more egregious, hard to hear, harder to endure, even the Biden Administration has pushed back – or his Secretary of State has – on the lies, abuses, and mounting missteps. Trump was blunt, but Biden’s team adopted Trump’s assessment that China was guilty of genocide, systematically violating human rights, threatening Taiwan, illegally persecuting Hong Kong, blocking WHO investigators, and gaming the world on trade. Biden’s team needs to step it up, but this is a start.
Now comes the past week, when the Biden Administration – taking a page from Trump – sanctioned China over mass human rights violations. While Trump started the truth-fest, the Biden State Department joined on March 22, irking the Communist Chinese – who were just wrapping up a splendid annual Communist Party Summit, centered on China’s dominance. See, e.g., https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-sanctions-chinese-government-officials-uyghur;
So, what did China do? They demonstrated – with perfectly imperfect timing, classic blind spot-ism – that they are as tough as the West, just watch. They banned a short list of US and Canadian officials, including West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s wife, from traveling to China – for daring to say China violates human rights by imprisoning, abusing, brainwashing, and sterilizing millions of minority Uighurs in China’s Xinjian province. Take that! No more luxury trips to scenic Wuhan. The spectacle is just that – a spectacle.
Adding insult to injury, blind spot to blind spot, China attempted some long-distance reprogramming of Americans and Canadians, their foreign ministry telling members of the US and Canadian human rights community to “understand the situation and redress their mistakes,” perhaps confessing them fully in public, before coming to China.
Well, there you have it. And sanctions do not stop there. In an ironic confirmation of the human rights violations against which China protests the Western protests, the Chinese banned any citizen of Mainland China, Hong Kong, or Macau from “communicating” with any of the sanctioned personages. So, if a Chinese citizen is caught talking with a Westerner who thinks human rights violations occur in China, they will be punished to assure the sanctions against Western human rights protestors are enforced – through human rights violations.
You cannot make this stuff up. It is just reality, Communist China’s profound inability to see it is wildly out of sync with morality, decency, honesty, and truth. To point a fine point on it, hopefully not getting any Chinese citizen in trouble, the best argument against China is China.
RBC,
What you chalk up to “blind spots” on the part of the CCP, I chalk up to total indifference on the part of the CCP as to what the West thinks about them. The CCP is acting exactly as every other communist government has before them. They are pursuing their own self interests and goals, by any and all means that benefit them, which President Xi has clearly laid out in numerous white papers and policy announcements. While at the same time, they have effectively thumbed their noses repeatedly at what they perceive to be a declining western culture that they will eventually overtake and rule over.
The so-called “blind spots” seem to be more on the side of the West, where a number of its leaders still cling to the 1990’s fantasy that somehow, if we pamper China’s leadership and look the other way long enough, China will magically transform itself from a ruthless communist regime bent on global domination into a “western style democracy” that shares all our values and interests. These “blind spots” have allowed communist China to grow from what was essentially a third world economy at the end of the 1990’s to the second largest economic and military power on the planet.
The only leader in the United States, over the last 30 years, to actually take any substantial, concrete actions to push back against China’s growing world dominance was just replaced by one of the lowest rated, least intelligent career politicians of the last half century. A leader who now suffers from a degenerative mental disease, not to mention China already has sway over Biden from past dealings. The official policy of the United States is now “China is not an enemy or a threat to the United States. They are merely a economic competitor.” So tell me, if you were President Xi and saw your greatest threat had been removed off the board (President Trump) and replaced by someone you already own (Biden), would you be terribly concerned about what the West thought of your actions?
Have we become such sell outs we need an excuse to point out the people behind the last years problems Are communist. Any one with common sense can see how they treat their own people.
China is still the world’s manipulator. Don’t think for one minute they aren’t aware of what they are doing and how it is perceived. The fox is in the hen house, coyly plotting his next move and conquest.
Nail CCP on Wuhan virus day 1 alone & forever war with US since end of Korean War.
& issues Trump had when in office.
See Hong Kong fail since last year
Have yet in my lifetime to deal with a chink-a-knees individual that was honest and told the truth !!!!!!
Take care not to ascribe the characteristics of a country’s leaders to its people…
To the rest of the World, we are a nation of nefarious, evil, senile, stupid fascists with idiotic ideas and the overwhelming ufge to spread our vision of democracy while subjugating others who would interfere with our self-aggrandisment.
I think it’s about time the hierarchy in China are eliminated in whatever way, shape, or form necessary. I swear they have some sort of brain disease as they don’t appear to think like normal rational human people! I believe there is a verse in the Bible and I can’t remember where it is stated, but it states something like : beware of the slant eyed people of the east! Ominous…YES!
this article is very interesting and to the point but to what end. dems dont give a shxx all they care about is lining their pockets and kissing up to radical groups like blm, george soros and his lying cronies as well of the rest anti christian anti law and order and anti american groups. voters better wake up before its too late or we will be spending time learning russian or chinese languages making english like churches and freedom obsolete.
Sounds like the sitting tyrannical politicians in Washington D.C.
Biden’s “team” may have SAID something about China but sat silent while the ChiComs castigated the US during their meeting the other day, Quite frankly Blinken (where’s Winken and Nod?)should have told the a-holes to go soak themselves!
Wait until after the Olympics and they go after Taiwan. Will Senile Joe or Kamala do anything other than talk? Don’t bet on it. It might cut Hunter’s income and “The Boss’s” cut.
To say that China is out of sync with the rest of the world is an understatement. They do everything politically and socially inside their country for one thing: power. They are likened to the Marxist Democrat party in the United States. People in our government who seek fame and fortune do it for power, and there is no shame by these leftists in connecting with the CCP. Just ask O’Biden and his family. China is already eating our lunch because the administration is going soft on sanctions and tariffs. President Trump was heading quickly in the direction of bringing pressure to bear on the Chinese, and O’Biden has already erased these gains in his first 70 days in office. He has yet to do anything for America since he has been in office. He plans to make America last at every turn.
This regime now in the white house has zero respect from CHINA/RUSSIA/IRAN/and the MEXICAN CARTELS to name a few//This pathetic old dementia filled Biden cannot function on his own and AMAC needs to be more aggressive in waking up the idiots who voted for this garbage//
RBC, All of this rhetoric goes nowhere. You are preaching to the Choir.
Get involved. Use your experience and leadership to aid the American people back to democracy.
There is NEVER DOUBT when you EXAMINE the ACTIONS OF COMMUNIST DOCTRINE, it is SO PREDICTABLE it is NEVER HIDDEN FROM PLAIN SIGHT. … They just think that they CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT and that they CAN GET AWAY WITH IT! … They MUST CERTAINLY THINK that the BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL CAVE INTO THEIR DEMANDS! … And most probably because of what they have over Hunter Biden that PAPA JOE WILL GIVE INTO THEM! … Scary, interesting and I believe that the Biden Administration’s response will be predictable, unfortunately!
The Biden administration got elected partly by creating a false narrative that human rights abuses (systemic racism) were rampant in the US. China has taken advantage of the Democrats own mantra and used it against the country by saying we need to figure our selves out before we can look to address the real human rights violations occurring in China. That leaves little way out for Biden and team beyond telling the truth and admitting it was all to get elected. That will never happen. When you build your government on a house of cards, it is inevitable it will fall.
If anyone is foolish to believe anything the Chinese government says then they are a fool. I lived in China on and off for almost 4 years and can say that the Chinese people are mostly delightful, hard-working and they generally like Americans. The Chinese government is brutal and the problem. A shame.
The best way to impact (if not to eventually defeat) China is through their pocketbook. Less money necessarily leads to less mischief.
America must strive to bring back as much manufacturing from China as possible to our shores. The rest of the western world should do the same. Doing so would reduce, if not eliminate, a great deal of China’s current economic advantage over the West. China has an ever-burgeoning population for which they need to provide employment, food, clothing, housing, etc.
Take back (as in, take away) an ever-increasing part of their manufacturing base and they will be severely hurt in their pocketbook. With less manufacturing, China will be increasing unable to provide employment for all its people, along with the other necessities. Taken to its logical conclusion, China will eventually implode, as did the USSR.
This will take time and will require a dedication and perseverance on the part of the West, and will probably cost Americans more money for the goods we purchase (it would be nice to see the “Made in the USA” label become ubiquitous again, rather than the rare exception it is today). But whatever the cost, it will be substantially less than an eventual war with China over some misstep they might take, such as, trying to annex Taiwan militarily.
Everything China is doing is because of us, the US and are policy’s. We put them on the game board (so to speak) back when Nixon was president and have aided them ever since.
If it wasn’t for all of our businesses sending everything to China so things can be manufactured cheaply and then sent back to the good old USA and sold for huge profit’s, we would never have been put it the situation we are in now.
Every last one of us are to blame. I’m just as guilty as the next guy, I like being able to buy that 70″ HD flat screen TV for $500 instead of the $4000 it would cost if made in the USA. The only problem is nothing is made in the USA anymore…At some point you have to ask yourself is it worth it.
I think everyone of us, knowing what we know now would gladly pay that extra money for products made in the USA.
There is or should I say was a solution, and that was being demonstrated by former President Trump. By putting tariffs on all of China’s products coming into this country he was leveling the playing field. American companies were even starting to come back home because it was no longer profitable to continue doing business as usual.
China is being China, I doubt if they give a rats a** how they are perceived by the rest of the world. I believe they know exactly what their doing and will continue to do so, so long as there is no real pushback from the only real country/power that can stop them…and that’s us, the USA.
And China now has a big buddy in HIden Joe Biden will be sidin’ with their spyin’! Notice that the Ruskies don’t tolerate one iota with appeasing China … they prefer their own brand of Communism and will no patiently look the other way if China gets in their grill!
I can’t believe people are so complacent about China’s role in the world. I guess they think that Communism means the same as Socialism, as long as they continue to get “free” everything. I guess they don’t realize by acceptance of the status quo, they are giving up their individual rights to complain. Well, this is my message to all the sheep, look out for the wolf wearing sheep’s clothing.
People need to put their China eyeglasses on to see what is going on! If USA is not careful, Democrats will turn us into them!!
Dems have always been soft on Communism, going back to the days of the Soviet Union. President Biden referred to our need to understand cultural differences. So a cultural difference we should understand is a “cultural need” to make people disappear if they say or do something the government doesn’t like. Another one is to allow a virus to be transmitted to the rest of the world in order to achieve shared misery and economic hardship. Or was it really created on purpose? I’m sure the UN will be right on that. Building armed islands in the sea is another all-time cultural need favorite.
We have too long swallowed the globalism Kool-Aid, can no longer make things we need and then want to hobble our nation’s economy with the Paris Climate Accords while China builds coal fired power plants one after another. We need to worry less about respecting China’s government and more about assuring our own ability to survive. What we will probably do is continue to inculcate our citizens with the notion that we are a racist society and our nation is irredeemable because founding fathers Washington, Madison and Jefferson owned slaves. China has already advised that we indeed are racist, and why wouldn’t they? The NY Times tells us that almost daily!
Good article. One of the funniest things is China thinking that banning someone from going there means anything when most of us have zero desire to have anything to do with that immoral, completely corrupt, lying bunch of trash that constitutes the Chinese Communist government. I wouldn’t accept a fully paid 5 star vacation anywhere in that country.
Rbc,
You have made some great insights into the CCP’s beliefs and actions. I have some thoughts that should be discussed. First, we should never say China but rather the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army. The Chinese people are NOT our enemies, our enemies are the CCP and the PLA. Every time you do that you allow the CCP to go the the Chinese people and say, “See the US hates you and we (CCP) love you and will protect you. We have many citizens here that have family in China and they love this country but do not want their family to be hated. I saw enough of this BS when I was in Vietnam. In order to defeat a country, you have to determine the real enemy.
President Biden is doing what Nixon and Kissinger thought to be a better way to handle the CCP. However, after 50 years that approach is not working. He should not rejoin the WHO or the UN Human Rights Commission, unless they change policies. The WHO was not honest about the current coronavirus pandemic and should be admonished for it. You listed the human rights violations by the CCP, so why should we rejoin the organization w/o changes first?
I can’t say that I agree with everything in the article, but I do most of it.
I conducted commerce with Chinese companies for two decades. They are as capitalistic as we are…make money, But the Chinese government operatives oversee and approves almost every strategic and tactical decision. Nothing is done w/o the approval of government.
The big difference however is that they have plan that looks ahead generations, even centuries. They still respect age and knowledge. They are concerned primarily with current stability and future growth. In the west it’s the quarterly report that matters most, followed by annual results. Five years-out is a pipe-dream.
China’s society is now diamond shaped, as is ours. The middle class erupted and grew from pear shaped in the last generation. Now the government has to keep that satisfied. To do so they must continue to fuel their economy with exports. Cut-off their prosperity and their will be upheaval.
The military keeps people under control. But remember, today’s China is a forced, unnatural, affiliation of diverse cultures. They do not naturally mesh. The military needs $$$ to maintain control. Or the members will revert back to their natural “tribes”.
If the West will take the long view…20 years for us!…China can be reigned-in. But, who will lead that charge and sacrifice the next election cycle?
Mr. biden and his family love China; that is where they made all of their money. Bidens are bought and paid for by China; laughing all the way to the bank…
I sure hope that this isn’t the future of AMERICA with the democrats in charge.
By making America the major world oil exporter it cut off Russia’s main source of income (so much for the dimwits claim the Putin interfered FOR Trump in the past two elections). Simple by threatening the Chinese economy with tariffs and sanctions Trump could keep the CCP under control. By building the border wall and enforcing immigration laws he keep the migration invasion under control. 2020 was a world wide effort for one thing, get rid of Trump.
Sounds a lot like Western leftists.
The fact is that these are all things that educators knew and taught in the 1950s and early 1960s. Those of us who served the country during the Viet Nam conflict know of the role that China played. Anyone should be aware that the only way that war was ended was by Nixon’s initial overture to Beijing in February, 1972, so crucial was the Chinese support for the military success of the North. Moreover, the nature of communism and the horrendous cost to the peoples it controlled were widely known. The fact is that the leftists in American politics are willfully ignorant and, like liberals, devoid of a fundamental perception of cause-and-effect logic that understands the cost and consequences of flawed, human nature and actions which are predicated in it. Generations of Americans have been lulled into a sense of “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” by an education system that has failed to teach the history of systems which have caused the greatest amount of ideology-caused death and destruction to the world that it has ever known. The two systems both had dictator-imposed socialism at their very core and, the effects of this causality are known by those who lived through them. Americans need to listen to the immigrants from the former Soviet Bloc nations, the refugees from Castro’s Cuba and wake up to the fact that there is no Utopia under socialism. It is a myth of promise without fulfillment.
Older generations of Americans know these facts. The fact that the label “Made in China” dominates our retail store shelves is indicative of the failure of intelligence and foreign and domestic policy over the past 60 years. Unfortunately, even the current president does not want to accept the reality that we have been played. Wake Up, America!
China is in the White House!
Sounds like our Federal and many of our State governments.
More evil! We’re getting more like China everyday. Less freedom, especially in speech. Let’s get crackin’ America……..speak up! Happy Easter everyone. Don’t forget, the Lord will conquer!!!!
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