An aerial view of container ships docked at the Port of Oakland in Oakland, California, on March 6, 2019. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

China’s Wait and See Strategy Will Bring Misery to Its Economy

By Tony Shaffer

Commentary

China already knows who it wants in the Oval Office after the 2020 presidential election—his name is Joe Biden. Well, anyone with a “D” after their name would do, but “Beijing Joe Biden” is the preferred candidate.

China hasn’t had it easy under President Donald Trump, who came into office vowing to renegotiate harmful, outdated trade deals that put U.S. workers at a disadvantage for far too long. The new Trump trade doctrine rewards countries that agree to genuinely free and fair trade agreements, but applies strategic counter-tariffs on those that refuse to stop exploiting American workers and businesses.

China has unquestionably been the most egregious and persistent offender, so naturally, China has also faced some of the heaviest pressure to mend its ways. Undoubtedly, bad U.S. trade policy has encouraged China’s bad habits and enabled its acquisition (during the Clinton administration) of technology that helped Beijing perfect its intercontinental nuclear missiles. Now is the time for the bad habits and reckless behavior by China to end.

Earlier this year, after China reneged on several of its previous commitments, the president announced that this pressure will gradually intensify, unless Beijing shows that it’s willing to negotiate in good faith. Despite granting a temporary reprieve as part of a one-on-one agreement with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Trump regrettably had to announce that China is once again acting duplicitously, forcing him to renew the imposition of new tariffs.

“Trade talks are continuing, and during the talks the U.S. will start, on September 1st, putting a small additional Tariff of 10 percent on the remaining 300 Billion Dollars of goods and products coming from China into our Country,” he recently wrote in a tweet.

Make no mistake, this isn’t a good development for China—the regime’s economy is currently struggling under the strain of the existing tariffs, recently posting its slowest economic growth in almost three decades. Additional tariffs are only going to make that bad situation worse.

But China seems to be gambling that the 2020 election will offer a solution to its problems: While Trump is pressuring the communist regime to stop stealing technology from American firms, the Democratic candidates are vowing to reverse every aspect of his approach to trade.

While all of the Democrats would undoubtedly give China the tariff reprieve it seeks, Beijing Biden is their real favorite. Not only does he offer the most consistently pro-China policies, but he also has a long history of backroom dealing with communist Chinese leaders, so they already know that he would be a compliant president.

In fact, recent reports suggest that Beijing Biden’s son did big business in China while his dad was vice president, securing a $1 billion private equity deal in 2013 with the help of the communist government. Biden reportedly even helped to facilitate the negotiations, flying his son to China aboard Air Force Two, just days before the business deal was concluded.

Biden, who once cavalierly dismissed China as a serious competitor, hasn’t let up on his soft-on-China rhetoric since.

The policies Beijing Biden talked about during the debate would benefit China in the long run, while crippling the U.S. economy, putting us in an even worse position than before Trump was elected to clean up the mess left by Biden’s old boss. Sadly, the former vice president seems to be completely oblivious to the threat China poses—earlier this year, he declared that the Chinese are “not bad folks,” insisting that the communist regime is “not competition” for the U.S. economy.

Beijing Biden isn’t the only Democratic presidential candidate who is weak on China, of course—as Trump noted at his recent rally in Cincinnati, China would be happy with pretty much anyone but him in the White House.

The president is right—China will be rooting hard for the Democrat candidate in 2020, and Beijing Joe Biden is by far their favorite son.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer is a retired senior intelligence operations officer and president of the London Center for Policy Research.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.