On Balance | Why a small election in Kentucky is bad news for Donald Trump – and China
- Not only could the electoral defeat of the US state’s China-friendly Republican governor Matt Bevin foreshadow the 2020 presidential election, but it also reflects the rapidly hardening attitudes towards China within the US establishment
A day before the election, President Donald Trump showed up in Kentucky to stump for Bevin, warning voters there about the onslaught of corruption and general hellfire that would ensue if the statehouse went blue.
While the excitement in Kentucky might have seemed just a sideshow in the three-ring circus of American domestic politics, those concerned about the state of United States-China relations should take a closer look at Bevin’s electoral misfortune because he was one of the biggest China boosters in the American political landscape.
“Constant improvement, continuous improvement, this is the purpose of this summit,” Bevin intoned at the opening of the US-China Governors Collaboration Summit he hosted with the National Governors Association in May. “We will establish relationships. We will establish friendships so that the next 40 years, and the next 400 years, and the next 4,000 years, we will have an opportunity to remember that this summit was the beginning of this constant change.”
The video then segues into footage of Bevin chatting happily with Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai, who agreed that “people-to-people” relationships would keep ties between the two countries intact.