The self-defeating logic in Steve Bannon’s rallying cry against China-friendly corporate America

Although US foreign policy hawks do have valid concerns about China’s creation of a non-rules-based world order and American businesses’ problematic embrace of China, blaming or even persecuting US companies is not the answer

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In a rallying cry, former White House adviser Steve Bannon has said stopping China’s advance, as the United States did with the Soviet Union, is “the defining event of our time”. Photo: AP

Published: 1:00am, 16 Apr 2019Updated: 8:15pm, 16 Apr 2019

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon made a splash in Washington last week with his call to brand those who have profited from business relationships with China as traitors.

The audience at the event erupted in cheers, not surprising given that it was comprised mainly of members of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, the latest iteration of a group originally formed in the 1950s to lobby Washington to take a harder line against the Soviet Union – in other words, God-fearing foreign policy hawks.

At the discussion, Senator Ted Cruz spoke about “the Chinese Communist Party’s academic and military espionage” and Saliah Hudayar of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, a Uygur advocacy group, gave a speech about the Chinese communists’ “war on faith”.

In a rallying cry, Bannon said stopping China’s advance, as the United States did with the Soviet Union, would be “the defining event of our time”.

“One hundred years from now, this is what they’re going to remember us for, and I guarantee you that we’re going to identify those members of the elite that sold us out and continue to sell out the American people and sell out the Chinese people.”

And then what? Let’s leave aside the fact that Bannon cares as much for the Chinese people as current White House adviser Stephen Miller does for the Latin American children separated from their parents at the US border. Bannon did cleverly work in a few words of praise for the Chinese people to provide cover from any accusation that his anti-China vitriol is racist.

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