How Trump destroying US values undercuts criticism of China on human rights and unfair practices

The State Department’s narrative insisting most Chinese want to overthrow their government ignores US ineptitude and Communist Party dominance
Instead of indulging in fantasies of how the Chinese wish to adopt American values, Washington needs to reverse Trump’s efforts to undermine those values

Robert Delaney

Published: 3:15am, 27 Oct 2020

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At 5pm on Thursday, October 22 – when the priority mail delivery of my postal vote was supposed to have been delivered – I was still waiting for it. The ballot had arrived at the address where I’m registered in my home state of Pennsylvania four days earlier. A family member got it in the mail to me for the final leg of a journey that started when I sent away for it in mid-August.

Then the “priority” delivery of the ballot to me in Washington DC took five days, when in normal times it would have taken three using the standard, third-class rate.

A swing state that could end up deciding who will be in the Oval Office in January, Pennsylvania struggled to get its postal votes delivered owing in part to legal challenges in the state to Green Party candidates that had to work their way up to the state supreme court before ballots could be issued.

Complicating the process was a series of operational changes at the US Postal Service implemented by President Donald Trump’s postmaster general. According to the postal agency’s independent government watchdog, they “negatively impacted the quality and timeliness of mail delivery” across the country.

The Trump administration claims the spanner thrown into the mail works before an election taking place in the middle of a pandemic – requiring the need for more absentee voting – had nothing to do with polls showing Trump falling behind his challenger Joe Biden.

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This interruption looks as coincidental as the challenge that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posed for Trump’s buddy Vladimir Putin and the mysterious illness that almost killed Navalny. The same goes for the calls for political reform in the Arab world by Saudi government critic Jamal Khashoggi and his gruesome demise.

Those who would dismiss accusations that the US postal service’s operational changes amounted to voter suppression don’t see that Trump has already done far worse.

Trump, who tends to stand with autocratic strongmen against the values that the United States and its allies have defended for more than a century, sees scepticism about the integrity of US voting and a vicious culture war as his only hope for a second term.

His support for white supremacy and a QAnon movement that accuses Democrats of running a paedophilia ring is probably the most vile perversion of the US executive branch since it was established more than two centuries ago.

The Trump administration has pursued a hard line against Beijing. It is the only one that has taken concrete measures to address the complete lack of reciprocity that the Communist Party has felt entitled to for decades.

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It has put sanctions on the officials and government organs that have forced Uygurs and other Muslim minorities into vocational camps surrounded by watch towers and barbed wire.

Let’s not kid ourselves, though. China has proven its ability to challenge the US on every front – technological, economic, diplomatic or otherwise.

The US intelligence community and what Trump likes to call “the deep state” within Washington will not let him give President Xi Jinping the same pass that he gives to Putin, Mohammed bin Salman and Jair Bolsonaro. China is a more serious threat to Washington’s authority than Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil.

It has rightly drawn for Trump and his autocratic affinities a line where China’s territorial claims begin. Unfortunately, the US State Department’s efforts to call Beijing out for its unfair practices and human rights violations include a narrative insisting that the vast majority of mainland Chinese are eager to overthrow their government.

They overlook the limits that the Communist Party imposes on them because the government delivered them from two centuries of poverty and humiliation.

Also, they’re laughing at the ineptitude displayed by a US president seemingly determined to undermine confidence in what America holds out as its most sacred exercise – free and fair elections.

Instead of indulging in fantasies about how the Chinese wish to adopt American values, Washington first needs to reverse the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine those very values.

This brings us back to my postal vote, which finally arrived on the afternoon of October 23. I filled it out and immediately dropped it into the nearest postbox. Given the postal slowdown, though, I’m wondering if it will arrive by Election Day.

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief

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