Is the Biden Administration’s China Policy as Tough as Advertised?

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the U.S. response to the high-altitude Chinese balloon and three other objects that were shot down by the U.S. military over American airspace, in the South Court Auditorium at the White House complex in Washington on Feb. 16, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Commentary

A coherent U.S. policy toward communist China needs to be clearly delineated in terms of goals, objectives, consequences/penalties, and supporting actions that are integrated and mutually supportive across multiple domains.

Chinese aggression must be decisively deterred and met with concrete counteractions. As the run-up to World War II proved, there is no room for appeasement (engagement), which only leads to disaster over the long haul.

How would one describe the Biden administration’s China policy? Is it competition? Engagement? Deterrence? An amalgamation of competing (if not contradictory) principles? Is the “new China policy” as tough on the Chinese regime as the administration and its supporters claim? Or is it just rhetoric without backbone?

Let us examine the topic.

To Tariff or Not

In 2020, when President Biden Joe Biden was running for office, he campaigned on lifting his predecessor’s China tariffs (a signal of reengagement), claiming that former President Donald Trump’s tariffs were hurting U.S. consumers, farmers, and manufacturers. But that didn’t happen. In fact, part of the “new Biden China policy” includes retaining Trump-era broad-based tariffs and adding $18 billion of new tariffs targeted at electric vehicles, solar cells, steel, aluminum, and certain medical equipment.

As with federal taxes in general, there are always winners and losers with tariffs. Tariffs have been used as a U.S. economic policy tool to “protect” and grow U.S. industries since the country’s founding. Free traders were adamantly opposed to the Trump-era China tariffs but have suddenly become silent in the face of President Biden’s recent tariff actions.

To Deter or Not

In March 2022, President Biden had a two-hour phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which Biden told Xi that there would be consequences for Beijing if it provided “material support” for Russia after it invaded Ukraine. Those unstated consequences were ostensibly intended to deter Chinese actions.

However, the communists have apparently been making bank in supporting Russia’s war effort. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted the following during an April press conference with G7 ministers on the Isle of Capri [emphasis added]: “When it comes to Russia’s defense industrial base, the primary contributor in this moment to that is China. We see China sharing machine tools, semiconductors, [and] other dual-use items that have helped Russia rebuild the defense industrial base.” The Straits Times identified some of that support as “drone and missile technology, satellite imagery, and machine tools that fall short of providing lethal assistance” to Russia.

Deterrence without consequences fails every time it is tried. The U.S. response to China’s crossing of that red line has been limited so far to the Commerce Department’s adding 37 Chinese entities to a trade restriction list on May 9, but that list (in the works since the Chinese balloon flyover incident last year) had been in the works for months.

To Enforce Policy or Not

Deterrence of communist Chinese aggression must be a core element of any coherent U.S. policy on China. That includes deterring People’s Liberation Army (PLA) actions in the Taiwan Strait and East and South China Seas in support of U.S. allies. The goal is to deter the Chinese regime, not to be deterred by it. The latter includes formulating U.S. policy based on the interests of those who support engagement with China, as well as PLA threat deflation that would obviate the need for improving U.S. military capabilities to counter PLA actions.

The Biden administration appears to be speaking to Beijing in contradictory terms. On the one hand, the U.S. Navy and American allies have conducted routine freedom of navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait. The United States has also deployed new military capabilities, including the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center-Exportable (JPMRC-X) to the Philippines and recently concluded Exercise Balikatan 24, which focused on territorial defense in response to recent Chinese actions in the West Philippine Sea near Second Thomas Shoal.

However, senior U.S. officials, including Mr. Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, have visited Beijing to continue promoting U.S.–China cooperation and engagement.

The New York Post editorialized in April that the Biden administration has not taken a single concrete action against the Chinese regime while it “provokes Taiwan incessantly, sends fentanyl ingredients to Mexico, utterly abandons its treaty promises to let freedom ring in Hong Kong, deploys spy balloons over America, [and] claims the South China Sea is its territory.”

Moreover, according to RealClearPolicy, the administration wishes to reward bad Chinese behavior by “[putting] the interests of Chinese airlines before the interests of American ones” by increasing Chinese airline flights in and out of the United States.

Concluding Remarks

The problem with the Biden administration’s China policy has to do with enforcement, including the wherewithal and will to effect that enforcement.

The United States has never recovered military capability after the precipitous (calamitous?) downsizing following the Cold War. The Biden defense budget in 2023 resulted in 1 percent growth, which amounts to a de facto cut given high inflation. This in light of the need to replace/modernize our entire nuclear triad (which is already operating beyond its projected lifespan), including nuclear submarines (a main deterrent against Chinese aggression in East Asia), strategic bombers (the United States only has 19 aging stealth bombers with six new B-21 Spirits under construction), and the force of aging land-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is required to restore U.S. military capabilities in order to successfully deter all threats, especially communist China.

In short, the United States needs to return to the Reagan-era policy of “peace through strength,” which deters the actions of smiling potential adversaries and their emissaries.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.