On BalanceAnti-China voices in US often miss the mark but on trade, they have a point

Two critics of Biden’s China policy have called for a strategy similar to Ronald Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union

Despite building regional alliances, the Biden administration has shied away from restarting free trade negotiations with allies and partners in Asia

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US President Joe Biden speaks at semiconductor manufacturer Wolfspeed, in Durham, North Carolina, on March 28, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 5:30am, 16 Apr 2024

In America’s hyperpartisan environment, opinions about what’s wrong with Joe Biden’s China policy are as unnecessarily numerous as the surgical masks clogging up our utility drawers and glove compartments.

Pontification from lawmakers who assume that Singaporeans have ties to China’s Communist Party because of their ethnicity, or those claiming that “China has a 5,000 year history of cheating and stealing” should be put in the same bin as the overused masks.

But if you’re determined to find something in the anti-China echo chamber that’s worth debating, read the Foreign Affairs essay by former US National Security Council official Matthew Pottinger and US representative Mike Gallagher, calling for a pivot to what would amount to Ronald Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.

The central premise is logical. They contend that Beijing seeks to exhaust Washington by taking contrary positions – or simply declining to act at all – on Ukraine, the Middle East, the Red Sea or any other locus of international conflict in which the US has a stake.

The gusto with which the Chinese leadership has still embraced Moscow after Russian forces invaded Ukraine – as we saw with last week’s visit to Beijing by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – and the way China and Russia lock arms at the United Nations on Gaza, backs the authors up.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration will never be a US ally. The Biden administration’s wish to get Beijing to use its leverage to end these conflicts in a way that takes Israel’s and Ukraine’s security interests into consideration will never come true.