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Why Biden Should Keep Trump's China Policy
A Chinese Maritime Police Bureau ship uses a water canon to harass a Vietnamese fisheries surveillance force vessel near the disputed Paracel Islands on May 27, 2014. (The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)
The Biden administration's China policy should recognize that CCP aggression is not just a U.S. problem, writes Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster in the Washington Post [[link removed]]. As one of the principal authors of the United States’ current Indo-Pacific strategy, McMaster argues that in the past year alone, the Chinese military attacked Indian soldiers patrolling the Himalayan frontier, sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat in the South China Sea, and menaced Taiwan with aircraft and naval vessels. Internally, the CCP is perfecting its technologically enabled police state, has demolished Hong Kong's political independence and continues its genocidal campaign against the Uighurs in Xinjiang. While there is no doubt room to improve America's strategic approach to China, the U.S. must pursue policies grounded in an understanding of the threats posed by the CCP to the free world.
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Yuan for All
QR payment codes for Alipay and WeChat Pay are placed near a copy of the book, "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China," at a news stand in Beijing on August 19, 2020. (Photo by Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
In one of his last acts as president, Donald Trump issued an executive order banning eight Chinese software applications, notes Nadia Schadlow and Richard Kang in Foreign Affairs [[link removed]]. People in China and other countries increasingly conduct all sorts of transactions over these apps—from paying electricity bills and buying food from street vendors to splurging at high-end boutiques. Trump’s ban sought to address concerns that these popular Chinese apps might allow Beijing access to sensitive data about Americans. Yet China’s emerging dominance in financial technology, also known as “fintech,” poses an even more fundamental problem for the United States. Beijing will likely use fintech to occupy the high ground in global commerce, bolster its surveillance state, and lay the groundwork to challenge the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny takes his seat in a plane heading to Moscow from Berlin Brandenburg Airport. Nalvalny returned to Moscow after spending months in Germany recovering from a poisoning attack that he said was carried out on the orders of Vladimir Putin. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)
If a treaty can be violated with impunity, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, writes Tim Morrison and Jamie Fly in The Dispatch [[link removed]]. Russia’s blatant violations of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Treaty, as evidenced by the poisonings of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and double agent Sergei Skripal, must be taken into consideration as part of the Biden administration’s arms control strategy. The administration should join U.S. allies in Europe, including the United Kingdom, to initiate a challenge inspection of the Russian facilities involved in the Navalny and Skripal poisonings, along with other sites suspected to be part of Russia’s chemical weapons program.
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Tomorrow's Radicalization Crisis
A vigilante stands in front of a burnt mud house in Gubio, northeast Nigeria, on May 26, 2015. A weekend attack by Boko Haram left 37 people dead, with more than 400 buildings destroyed by fire. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)
Religiously motivated violence is increasing across the African continent, writes Lela Gilbert in RealClear Religion [[link removed]]. The threats and attacks by groups such as Boko Haram, Islamic State in West Africa Province and al-Qaeda in the "Group of Five" nations—Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger—are being closely watched by military analysts and religious freedom advocates. History has shown that what happens in Africa is unlikely to stay in Africa—economically, politically, or militarily.
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Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen gestures to a U.S. official as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar looks on during his visit to the Presidential Office in Taipei on August 10, 2020, marking the highest level visit by a U.S. official in recent years. (Pei Chen / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
The attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month buried a consequential decision in the news cycle’s churn. On Jan. 9, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ended the self-imposed restrictions on contact between American officials and their Taiwanese counterparts. This was long overdue, argues Seth Cropsey and Harry Halem in The Hill [[link removed]]. By restricting American-Taiwanese diplomatic relationships, the U.S. propitiated the CCP's paranoia over its domestic legitimacy. The State Department’s lifting of these measures is a prudent step that demonstrates U.S. support for a crucial democratic strategic partner and American resolve in the face of China’s increasing aggression.
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Join us online this Friday for a discussion of the Republican Party's future, with Walter Russell Mead and the Washington Examiner's Michael Barone. The 2016 and 2020 elections unsettled many foundational assumptions about American politics, along with a shift that has led some conservatives to advocate new policies that would appeal to working class voters instead of middle-class suburbanites. Mead and Barone will examine whether pursuing this pathway is a viable strategy.
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