Peter Navarro has been picked to lead US trade and industrial policy – a move that may upset Beijing

The Chinese government is a despicable, parasitic, brutal, brass-knuckled, crass, callous, amoral, ruthless and totally totalitarian imperialist power that reigns over the world’s leading cancer factory, its most prolific propaganda mill and the biggest police state and prison on the face of the earth.



That is the view of Peter Navarro, the man chosen by Donald Trump to lead a new presidential office for US trade and industrial policy, a move likely to add to Beijing’s anxieties over the billionaire’s plans for US-China relations.

China’s rulers initially appeared to embrace the possibility that improved ties with Washington could be negotiated with the deal-making US president-elect.

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“We must welcome him,” said one prominent foreign policy expert.

But that enthusiasm has dimmed after Trump angered Beijing with a succession of controversial interventions on sensitive issues including Taiwan and the South China Sea.

The appointment of Navarro, a University of California, Irvine business professor, to run the White House’s newly created national trade council, represents a further blow to those hopes.

Trump’s team described the 67-year-old academic, who is infamous in China watching circles for being a radical hawk, as “a brilliant policy mind and a tireless worker”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peter Navarro Photograph: Courtesy of Peter Navarro

But Beijing is unlikely to second such emotions.

Navarro has penned a number of vociferously anti-China tomes including Death by China and Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World.

In The Coming China Wars – a 2006 book that Trump has called one of his favourite on China – Navarro portrays the Asian country as a nightmarish realm where “the raw stench of a gut-wrenching, sweat-stained fear” hangs in the air and myopic, venal and incompetent Communist party officials rule the roost.

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The Harvard-educated hardliner accuses “cheating China” of destroying both American factories and lives by flooding the US with illegally subsidised and “contaminated, defective and cancerous” exports.

American politicians must “aggressively and comprehensively address the China problem” before it leads to full-blown conflict, Navarro writes.

In a 2012 Netflix documentary based on Death by China, which Trump has described as “right on”, Navarro blames Beijing for the loss of 57,000 American factories and 25m jobs.

“The repressive communist government [is] now victimising both American and Chinese citizens alike,” the film claims.

“Help defend America and protect your family: don’t buy made in China,” Navarro tells viewers in an introduction to the 80-minute polemic, which is narrated by Martin Sheen.

Navarro, who has also dubbed China a “global pollution factory” and “disease incubator”, made no secret of his distaste for its rulers during Trump’s election campaign.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An image from Peter Navarro’s 2012 documentary Death by China Photograph: Netflix

Speaking to the Guardian in July at a resort near his home in Laguna Beach the academic railed against how China’s “brutal, authoritarian communist government” had decimated the US economy.



He painted China as a ravenous bully and said he agreed with Trump’s claim that Beijing was guilty of “raping our country” over trade.

“It’s an apt description of the damage and carnage that China’s trade policies have wrought on the American economic heartland. What’s happening is rapacious,” Navarro said.

Speaking shortly before Navarro’s appointment was confirmed, Andrew Nathan, a China expert at Columbia University, said Trump’s plans for relations with Beijing remained an enigma despite the presence of several prominent China hawks in his camp.

“Trump has shown two sides to his personality in dealing with everybody. One is: ‘Let’s make a deal, we are deal-makers.’ And the other one is: ‘You hurt my feelings and I’m going to bomb the shit out of you because I never lose – I always win’,” said the political scientist.



“I don’t know whether he is setting up China for a deal. In fact, I don’t know if he is that deliberate or whether his mood just changes from time-to-time depending on how the other side treats him.”

Nathan, the author of a book on foreign policy called China’s Search For Security, said he believed Beijing would still be banking on its ability to win over the tycoon.

“I think predominantly they understand Trump as a businessman – and that for them is a glimmer of hope,” he said.



Christopher Balding, a Peking University finance professor, said that for all Navarro’s “alarmist” and “inflammatory” musings on China, he was unlikely to be able to follow through on his most radical beliefs once in government.



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“I think Navarro is going to quickly realise the constraints that he is under,” he said.

“They come as professors, they come as businessmen and they get into office as the secretary-of-whatever and they quickly realise ... that they cannot just implement their pet idea or their classroom theory,” Balding said, predicting there would be “strong push-back” from the US business community were hefty tariffs to be imposed on imports from China.

Li Yonghui, the head of the school of international relations at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said Navarro’s rise was consistent with Trump’s hawkish thoughts on China and would leave Beijing “a little worried” even if he still believed a radical shake-up of US-China relations was unlikely.

“We should stay vigilant. We have to be prepared,” the academic said. “Trump will certainly place unprecedented pressure on China.”

Asked for Beijing’s reaction to Trump’s hire, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry replied only that it was closely monitoring the transition and possible policy directions.

“As two superpowers, China and the US have extensive common interests,” Hua Chunying told reporters. “Cooperation is the only correct choice.”



Additional reporting by Christy Yao

