NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The United States is facing a multi-generational threat from communist China, and must act to immediately insulate its economy and technologies from the regime, according to several lawmakers and experts.
To ensure that the nation does not spiral into economic and societal collapse, great strides need to be made to sever the outflow of labor and capital from the United States to China, said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) at an April 20 summit of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
“We face in China an adversary the likes of which we have not seen in any of our lifetimes,” Hawley said.
“China has the ability to be a true competitor to the United States in a way we simply have not seen in over a century now.”
Hawley said the decision to grant communist China permanent status as a most-favored trade partner in 2000 was “one of the most colossal errors any global power has made in its history.”
The result, he said, was the continued guaranteed gutting of the American working class.
This outflow of jobs and wealth, he added, contributed directly to the Chinese communist regime’s military expansion and modernization, which now directly threatens global stability and U.S. interests.
“After we let China into the [World Trade Organization], our trade deficit exploded. Over 3 million jobs vanished. Not Wall Street jobs, Main Street jobs,” Hawley said. “China has built its military on the back of our middle class.”
The United States, Hawley said, was at one of the “great crossroads” and “a time for choosing” between the well-being of the nation and unbridled corporatism was nigh, he said, echoing a famous speech by President Ronald Reagan.
The United States, he added, must be proactive to counter the threat posed by China’s communist regime, wherever it presented itself.
“We face a rising adversary in China,” Hawley said.
“We do not have to be a global hegemon, but we do have to defend American interests and American security.”
Leaders Embrace ‘Strategic Decoupling’
Hawley’s comments were embraced by key D.C. insiders at the summit, chief among them the former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.To prevent U.S. decline and deter military conflict with China, Lighthizer said, the nation should pursue “strategic decoupling,” systematically pulling flows of capital, research, and technology away from China for the benefit of national security.
Operationally, the strategic decoupling process should start from Congress, Lighthizer told The Epoch Times after his speech.
So long as the United States is economically dependent on communist China, he said, the nation will continue to falter.
“If the American way of life depends on $580 billion of Chinese imports, then we are doomed,” Lighthizer said.
Lighthizer added that the United States should drop China’s most-favored trade status, which grants it special privileges, and apply tariffs on “everything coming in from China” to help balance the continued trade deficit between the two powers.
Above all, he said, it was vital that U.S. commercial interests understood any investments they made in China were effectively propping up the state and military of the nation’s greatest adversary.
“If you’re shipping money to invest in China, you’re shipping money to help the state. Period. Full stop.”
“Would you have done it with the Soviet Union? Would you have done it with Nazi Germany?”
US-China War a Possibility
Related to the issue of Sino-American economic entanglement was the ever-present question of the potential war with China.When asked whether the United States and China would go to war this generation, Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Michael Pillsbury spoke candidly.
“Yes,” he said.
“There may not be a nuclear war in which we all die,” Pillsbury added ironically. “There may just be a small one.”
On a more hopeful note, however, Pillsbury said that China’s communist regime may opt not to invade Taiwan, which it claims as its own, if it felt the United States was not encouraging the continued acceptance of Taiwan as an independent nation.
“They’re certainly thinking about it,” Pillsbury said.
“We need to take it very, very carefully, the issue of deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”
Pillsbury said the greatest danger currently is the potential for a catastrophic miscommunication between China and the U.S. militaries or political leadership. Without serious, frank communication between the powers, the world’s two largest economies could sleepwalk into a war of terrible consequence.
“I’m very nervous about misperception between the United States and China … by accident leading to another war like Korea,” Pillsbury said.
Asked if the United States could win such a brutal war if it needed to, Pillsbury was confident enough.
“Yes,” he said.
