Opinion | The Cold War pitfalls that Biden's China policy should avoid - The Washington... - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...dens-china-policy-should-avoid
cold war china policy biden Politics history
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President Biden argues that his ambitious domestic agenda — totaling some $6 trillion — is necessary to keep up with our primary geopolitical rival. As he told Congress last week: “We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century.”
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In so doing, Biden harked back to the Cold War, when national security was often used as a justification for initiatives that had little to do with the Pentagon.
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But the dark side of the Cold War should serve as a warning of how such competition, if it runs amok, can threaten our liberties and our lives.
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He rescinded the visas of 1,000 Chinese graduate students and researchers supposedly linked to the Chinese military.
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President Donald Trump often seemed determined to emulate the worst excesses of the Cold War by feeding anti-Chinese hysteria.
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He expelled Chinese journalists. He imposed visa restrictions on the Chinese Communist Party’s 92 million members (most of them ordinary bureaucrats) and their relatives.
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Most of these Trumpian initiatives — from the shuttered Peace Corps to the costly tariffs — remain in place.
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While reducing unnecessary friction, Biden should do far more than Trump to highlight Chinese human rights abuses, just as Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan did with the Soviet Union.
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Biden also needs to counter Chinese military aggression in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait while maintaining open lines of communication with Beijing to avert a war that neither country wants.