Two weeks after taking office, President Joe Biden went to the State Department to deliver a speech on his foreign policy.
One point he emphasized repeatedly in that speech: he would not let the People’s Republic of China take advantage of the United States.
“American leadership must address this new momentum of advancing authoritarianism, including China’s growing ambitions to rival the United States,” Biden said at the start of his speech.
“We must begin with diplomacy rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values: defend freedom, defend opportunity, defend universal rights, respect the rule of law and treat all people with dignity,” Biden said.
“And we will also face directly the challenges posed to our prosperity, security and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China,” Biden declared.
“We will confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive and coercive action; to repel China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property and global governance,” he said.
So Biden focused specifically on the well-being of the American working class — including how that related to America’s relations with China.
“Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take into account working American families,” Biden said. “Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class requires an urgent focus on our domestic economic renewal.”
“If we invest in ourselves and our people,” Biden said, “if we fight to ensure that American business is positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade are not against us, if our workers and property intellectual property are protected, so there is no country on Earth – not China or anyone else – that can match us.”
So how did Biden go about his strategic goals of “curbing China’s assault on human rights” and keeping “American working families top of mind” in every action the United States takes abroad?
The State Department’s 2021 report on human rights in China described the Chinese regime’s systematic attacks on the human rights of the Chinese people.
“Genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year against predominantly Muslim Uighurs and members of other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjian,” the State Department said. “These crimes continued and included: arbitrary arrest or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians; forced sterilization, forced abortions, and more restrictive enforcement of the country’s birth control policies; rape; torture of a large number of arbitrarily detainees; forced labour; and draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and freedom of movement”.
“Government officials and security services often committed abuses with impunity,” the report concluded.
While China continued to inflict these abuses on its own people, it also continued to run a huge trade surplus with the United States.
In 2021, according to the Census Bureau, the United States exported just $151.442 billion worth of goods to China, while importing $504.935 billion. As a result, the United States had a bilateral trade deficit of US$353.493 billion in one year.
So far in 2022, the Census Bureau has published international trade figures for the nine months of January through September.
But things have not improved in US-China trade relations. They got worse.
In the first nine months of 2021 (when the US was on track for that $353.493 billion 12-month deficit), the US had a $253.507 billion trade deficit with China.
In the first nine months of this year, the US had a $309.23 billion trade deficit with China. This represents an increase of US$ 55.723 billion – or about 22% – compared to the first nine months of last year.
This week, while attending the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, Biden met with Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
A report from The New York Times suggested that the Chinese government was happy with the outcome of the Biden-Xi meeting. The headline read: “After Biden-Xi meeting, Beijing signals optimism on relations with Washington”.
“An upbeat photo in China’s leading newspaper and comments by the foreign minister suggested that Beijing believes its relationship with Washington can improve,” the official said. Times🇧🇷
“The photo’s prominent position on the front page of China’s main official newspaper says a lot: in it, the nation’s leader, Xi Jinping, smiles and shakes hands with President Biden against a backdrop of Chinese and American flags.”
The Times reported that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters about the Biden-Xi summit: “This meeting was a continuation of the exchanges so far and a new starting point.”
The new starting point that the United States must establish with Beijing is not one that will make the Chinese Communist Party happy. It must be one that puts pressure on China to stop its human rights abuses and eliminate the trade imbalance that in the first nine months of this year resulted in the American people net sending $309 billion to the communist regime.
Terence Jeffrey is editor-in-chief of CNSNews.com
©2022 The Daily Signal. Published with permission. Original in English.
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