Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-US vice-president Joe Biden raise their glasses in a toast during a luncheon at the State Department in Washington on September 25, 2015. Image: Agencies / Pool
Grant Newsham, Asia Times: Biden restoration cause to rejoice in Beijing
There is no shortage of officials, companies and Wall Street firms eager for a return to pre-Trump softly-softly policies on China.
Sixteen months ago I wrote that China’s DF-21 missiles, J-20 stealth fighters, hypersonic weapons and aircraft carriers had America’s attention, but Beijing might add another awesome weapon to its arsenal: the R-2020.
R-2020? The Restoration 2020. If Beijing waited 16 months and Trump lost the next election, we would see a restoration of the China hands whose policies had created the current difficulties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
A letter was about to come out – placed in a major newspaper and signed by dozens of American Asia specialists, civilian and military – lambasting the Donald Trump administration for its allegedly counterproductive China policy.
Competing foreign policy approaches are nothing new in Washington. Nor are ill-tempered full-page ads in major newspapers. But in the case of that particular letter, one of the approaches to dealing with China could be vetted against 45 years of empirical evidence. That made for grim findings.
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WNU Editor: My contacts and friends in China are beyond happy right now. The above post by Grant Newsham does a good explanation on why they feel this way.
