The World's Most Dangerous Delusion: Biden Thinks China Wants Stability
by Gordon G. Chang • June 26, 2024 at 5:00 am
Americans may think they are at peace with China, but China's ruling organization has already announced otherwise.
[I]n May 2019, People's Daily... carried a landmark editorial declaring a "people's war" on America.
This phrase sounds like meaningless propaganda to American ears, but it has special significance to the Party. "A people's war is a total war, and its strategy and tactics require the overall mobilization of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, military, and other power resources, the integrated use of multiple forms of struggle and combat methods," declared a column carried in April 2023 by PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People's Liberation Army.
China has in fact weaponized just about everything. In 1999, two Chinese air force colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, in Unrestricted Warfare, listed 24 methods of warfare and advocated the use of all of them against the United States.
[U]nrestricted warfare contemplates the turning of everything into a weapon, from business interactions to tourism to terrorism to illegal drugs to disease.
All of these incidents are in defiance of about a dozen written and oral warnings, from the Biden State Department and President Biden himself, that the U.S. was prepared to use force against China to discharge America's obligations to Manila pursuant to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty
The American political class—both Democrats and Republicans—refuse to see Chinese hostility and act appropriately against it. The Communist Party, therefore, did not have to deceive Americans because Americans were determined to deceive themselves.
Xi Jinping has made it clear that his goal is to bring down the international system, to "crack skulls and spill blood" as he announced in a landmark speech on July 1, 2021.
"It's very hard for China to take certain steps without harming its own economy," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on June 12. "And I think we now understand that economic performance is central right now to what is important to President Xi."
"Campbell," Reuters reported, "told Washington's Stimson Center think tank China needed to reassure investors and others that it has a plan for its economy and would not be looking to create frictions that could escalate in unpredictable and dangerous ways."
The Communist Party of China, according to the Biden administration, wants stability. That is a dangerous self-delusion. Moreover, it is a view that is indefensible in light of Beijing's actions, some recent.
