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.