With President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline now more apparent than ever – both to the American people and our adversaries abroad – mounting evidence suggests the Chinese Communist Party is working overtime to take full advantage of Biden’s frailty during his final days in office.
Amid fears of a new Cold War between the United States and China, Beijing’s frequent and calculated violations of U.S. sovereignty on multiple fronts under President Biden’s watch have exposed both Biden’s weakness and the misguided nature of his hopes of a rapprochement with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
During a “farewell summit” with leaders from Australia, India, and Japan (the so-called “Quad Alliance”) in September, Biden postured a great deal about his efforts to contain China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific. But he has done very little to stymie growing Chinese influence on the U.S. mainland.
The fentanyl crisis has exploded under Biden’s watch, with record amounts of the deadly substance flooding in across the U.S.-Mexico border. Fentanyl now kills more than 200 Americans every day and is the leading cause of death for those aged 18-45. As the House Select Committee on the CCP reported earlier this year, “The PRC, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the ultimate geographic source of the fentanyl crisis. Companies in China produce nearly all illicit fentanyl precursors, the key ingredients that drive the global illicit fentanyl trade.”
Xi Jinping has successfully used the fentanyl crisis – which Beijing has at best ignored and at worst actively facilitated – as a point of leverage over Biden, extracting concessions in exchange for empty promises to curb the illicit production of fentanyl precursors.
On the trade front, Biden has allowed China to skirt U.S. tariffs and trade laws, hurting American producers. One particular oversight, on the de minimis provision, was so egregious that House Democrats last month signed an open letter criticizing Biden and urging him to take action. As the letter states, along with providing “a conduit for dangerous contraband such as fentanyl to enter the U.S.,” the de minimis provision creates an unfair advantage for Chinese companies to drive American companies out of key markets.
The border provides another stark example of Beijing taking advantage of Biden’s weakness in his final months as president.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that more than 37,000 Chinese nationals illegally crossed the border in 2023 – a new record. According to a House Homeland Security Committee report out earlier this year, that number only looks to be increasing in 2024.
Chinese citizens have ample reason to flee their homeland, not the least of which is economic stagnation and Xi Jinping’s oppressive regime. But as former President Donald Trump has warned, many Chinese illegal aliens could be looking to harm the United States. According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, “Washington has tracked about 100 incidents involving Chinese nationals trying to access American military and other installations” which appear “designed to test security practices.”
These incidents, some of which appear to be clear cases of Chinese espionage, include one in March where a Chinese national in the U.S. breached a Marine Corps base in California and refused to leave. In another case, Chinese nationals were caught scuba diving near a government rocket-launch site in Florida.
And of course, Americans will no doubt remember the shocking scandal of a Chinese spy balloon that floated over the United States, including over sensitive military installations, for a week in early 2023. Perhaps more than any other single incident, Biden’s complete failure to do anything about this lumbering national security threat for six days – and his subsequent failure to hold China accountable for violating American airspace – made clear to Beijing that it could push Biden around.
Beijing has even succeeded in violating American constitutional freedoms on U.S. soil. As The Washington Post reported last month, CCP-linked entities succeeded in suppressing criticism of Xi Jinping during his visit to San Francisco last year. In April 2023, the FBI announced that it had evidence of “expanding espionage and security activity by the Chinese government on U.S. soil,” including Chinese security officials setting up an illegal overseas “police station” in New York City.
In other words, the Chinese government is actively and openly carrying out operations on U.S. soil targeting U.S. citizens and lawful residents, and Biden is doing nothing about it.
Nonetheless, Biden has persisted in his delusion that some incremental progress in U.S.-Sino relations can be accomplished through a growing pile of concessions to America’s top geopolitical rival.
Along with dispatching John Podesta, Biden’s top climate diplomat, to Beijing for further meaningless talks, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited the Chinese capital a few weeks ago in a half-hearted attempt to ameliorate soaring tensions.
With the clock ticking on Biden’s presidency, Americans are left simply hoping that he will exit the White House before Beijing can score any more victories as a result of his failures.
Neil Banerji is a proud Las Vegas resident and former student at the University of Oxford. In his spare time, he enjoys reading Winston Churchill and Edmund Burke.
