US policy on China must pivot to cold-war stance from managing competition, two Republican policymakers say

Joe Biden accused of prioritising ‘a short term-thaw’ with Beijing’s leaders at expense of ‘a long-term victory over their malevolent strategy’

Mike Gallagher and Matthew Pottinger also urge increased US defence spending to deny Xi Jinping ‘a successful invasion’ of Taiwan

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US President Joe Biden (left) greeting Chinese President President Xi Jinping in Woodside, California, in November. Photo: The New York Times via AP

Published: 1:35am, 11 Apr 2024Updated: 4:38am, 12 Apr 2024

US President Joe Biden’s administration must stop efforts to “manage” competition with China and pivot to an explicit cold-war stance against the Asian giant, two prominent US Republicans who have guided Washington’s China policy said.

Matthew Pottinger, the top Asia adviser on former president Donald Trump’s National Security Council, and Wisconsin congressman Mike Gallagher, outgoing chair of the House select committee on China, accused Biden of “prioritising a short-term thaw with China’s leaders at the expense of a long-term victory over their malevolent strategy”.

Likening the Biden administration’s tack to that of detente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, the policymakers said in an essay published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Wednesday “the current approach will yield little cooperation from Chinese leaders while fortifying their conviction that they can destabilise the world with impunity”.

Gallagher made Washington policymakers’ concerns about China more prominent in the many events that his committee organised, some during prime-time viewing hours. And Pottinger testified at its first hearing, calling Beijing’s ability to present itself as a responsible interlocutor “one of the great magic tricks of the modern era”.

Republican congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin is the outgoing chair of a select committee on China in the US House of Representatives. Photo: Getty Images/TNS

The essay ran amid a series of high-level engagements that the Biden administration has conducted with Chinese counterparts, including a call last week between the US leader and President Xi Jinping that both sides called “candid” and “constructive”.