May 4, 2021
Responding to Beijing's Hosting of 2022 Olympics Should Be a Team Effort
Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved an amendment to a comprehensive bill on China that would require a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The amendment, offered by Senators Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), would permit athletes to participate in the Olympics while withholding funding for high-level U.S. government participation in the Games. Such a move would express formal U.S. disapproval while stopping short of a full boycott—something which would dash American athletes’ Olympic dreams for political reasons, with little real impact.

Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Olivia Enos writes <[link removed]> that while a diplomatic boycott is a worthy option, it should be a back-up plan to a superior alternative: postponing the 2022 Olympics to select a new host country.

During the pandemic, the International Olympic Committee (IOC)—the de facto gatekeeper responsible for selecting the host of the Games—made the difficult decision to postpone the Tokyo Olympics originally to take place in 2020. The since-rescheduled Tokyo Games were postponed to 2021 a mere four months prior to when they were originally to be held in June 2020. The postponement of the 2020 Games demonstrates that postponement is not only possible, but preferable.

The CCP’s ongoing campaign against Uyghurs is among the worst human rights violations taking place in the 21st century. Beijing’s mass collectivization of between 1.8 million and 3 million Uyghurs in political reeducation camps has already earned it a choice spot in the history books. But that’s hardly all. Last year, the CCP undermined the freedom and autonomy of citizens of Hong Kong, persecuted various persons of faith, and covered up key facts about the coronavirus pandemic. 

To get the Olympics moved would require the Biden administration to assemble a coalition of allies across the globe to pressure the IOC to postpone and select a new host. The recent unified efforts undertaken by the U.S., the European Union, Canada and the United Kingdom to sanction CCP officials for their treatment of the Uyghurs is a good model. Such a coalition could also engage friends and allies in Asia. If that does not gain momentum, then the U.S., in concert with those same friends and allies, should impose a diplomatic boycott, among other actions. The Romney-Kaine amendment is a good way to get that backup plan on radar screens.

It’s encouraging to see lawmakers in Washington giving serious thought to how best to respond to Beijing’s wholesale human rights violations. Stripping China of its ability to host the most prestigious international sporting event is a good place to start. Doing so makes clear that the world will not overlook Beijing wanton disregard of values.

Dive Deeper: Click here <[link removed]> to read Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Olivia Enos' Backgrounder on a strong U.S. response to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

In Case You Missed It: Click here <[link removed]> to read Heritage Senior Research Fellow Brett Schaefer's lecture on China's goals in international organizations.
Protecting Taiwan Is Vital To Blocking Chinese Aggression In The Pacific
How should the U.S. respond in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? The answer to this question is often presumed to be the same as if an adversary were to invade NATO, Japan or South Korea, in which case the United States would respond promptly and forcefully to repel the adversary. But the reality is that Taiwan is not quite the same as any of these other partners.

To begin with, the United States does not diplomatically “recognize” Taiwan, or more specifically, the Republic of China (ROC). In 1979, the United States switched recognition from the ROC to recognizing the People’s Republic of China. (Beijing only allows you to have formal diplomatic relations with one or the other.) Hedging its bets, however, and not wanting to simply walk away from the people of Taiwan (the way the U.S. had in South Vietnam several years earlier), Congress enacted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), to govern U.S. relations with the island. The TRA is a law, not quite the same as a binding treaty, such as those that undergird the NATO alliance or the commitments to Japan and South Korea. While the authors tried to approximate best they could the U.S.-ROC security treaty the TRA replaced, the TRA does not contain the treaty’s explicit commitment to “act to meet the common danger.”

Heritage Senior Research Fellow Dean Cheng writes <[link removed]> that this does not mean that the United States can walk away from its multi-decade commitment to Taiwan without cost, however. The TRA did establish long-standing policy that “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means… (would be) a grave concern to the U.S.,” and that the president and Congress would determine appropriate action in response to such danger. This is close enough to a security commitment that a failure to respond to an act of naked aggression by the PRC against Taiwan would raise real questions about American commitments to those treaty allies.

More to the point, a Chinese victory over Taiwan would drastically alter the strategic environment in the western Pacific. The so-called “first island chain,” stretching from Japan through Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines, to the Straits of Malacca can serve as a shield for both sides. In Western hands, it limits China’s ability to break out into the central Pacific where it can threaten Japan and South Korea’s sea lines of communications, and imposes attrition on Chinese forces trying to roll back the U.S. to Guam or Hawaii. The recent costs imposed by simply one ship blocking the Suez Canal gives a glimpse of the costs imposed on the Japanese and South Korean economies should China conquer Taiwan.

In Chinese hands, the first island chain protects China’s economic center of gravity, which has moved to the coast over the past four decades. Chinese bombers on Taiwan could more easily reach Guam, without having to detour around the island; conversely, American bombers seeking to hit Chinese targets would now be detected hundreds of miles and vital minutes earlier. Similarly, American submarines hoping to snipe at Chinese naval forces and its merchant marine would now have to transit well-known gaps in the island chain.

Most important, however, is the question of the nature of the war that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would begin. Over the past several years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has demonstrated his willingness to flout both international treaties and “the good opinion of all mankind.” The crackdown on Hong Kong is in direct contravention of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which guaranteed a “high-degree of autonomy” for 50 years. That agreement seems to have expired over two decades early.

Above all, it would demonstrate that Beijing has concluded that the general status quo that has ruled the Taiwan Straits region for the last six decades is no longer acceptable. Threats, coercion, and intimidation are already testing that status quo, but an open invasion—which would jeopardize not only the population of Taiwan but the thousands of Americans, Japanese, Europeans and others who are living on the island—would indicate that Beijing has truly changed its view of its intended relations with the rest of Asia and the world.
UNCLOS: China, India, and the United States Navigate an Unsettled Regime
In a Heritage Backgrounder, Heritage Research Fellow Jeff Smith writes <[link removed]> that while there is a widely accepted international law of the sea, reflected in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the great powers of the world are divided over competing and, in some cases, incompatible, domestic maritime laws or interpretations of UNCLOS. The areas of disagreement extend to fundamental principles, such as which waters lie under a nation state’s jurisdiction and what it is entitled to do, and forbid, in those waters.

Compounding the problem, some of the sharpest divisions have emerged between the world’s two increasingly antagonistic superpowers, China and the United States. Their diverging approaches have already prompted several dangerous encounters at sea. Worse still, the rift has manifested in one of the most hotly contested and strategically volatile waterways of the world, the South China Sea.

Further complicating matters, India, the other rising demographic giant of the Indo–Pacific region, differs in important ways from both the U.S. and China on key questions related to freedom of navigation. From a legal perspective, Indian laws and domestic legislation in some ways bear greater resemblance to China’s than to America’s. From a geopolitical perspective, however, India’s enforcement, activities, and diplomacy on questions of freedom of navigation, including in the South China Sea, have begun to more closely align with the United States.

Today, the South China Sea is serving as a key battleground in a larger, more consequential struggle. How these three countries define freedom of navigation, develop their maritime strategies, and navigate their differences will leave a lasting impact on the maritime order of the 21st century.

The United States, one of the few major powers not to ratify UNCLOS, has ironically become the de facto guardian of the UNCLOS regime as it regards freedom of navigation and overflight. China, the non-compliant signatory, has emerged as the greatest potential threat to that regime. Straddling a position somewhere in between, India’s approach to UNCLOS and freedom of navigation has begun evolving in ways that are aligning more closely with the U.S. and the established law of the sea.

For India and the U.S., freedom of navigation has become yet another geopolitical fault line over which the two democracies find themselves increasingly, albeit imperfectly, aligned. However, the escalating China–India rivalry and the Chinese military’s entry into the Indian Ocean have created competing tensions and incentives for the Indian government. The U.S., for its part, will remain undeterred from navigating vital waterways it has routinely patrolled for decades.

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