China: Crisis-Testing US Presidents
by Lawrence A. Franklin • August 11, 2021 at 5:00 am
Trump's adoption of a realistic relationship with China successfully slowed any CCP plans for military expansion in the South and East China Seas. What ended any possibility of a warming trend in US-China diplomatic ties was Beijing's repeated lies that there was no human-to-human transmissibility of its Wuhan virus. Soon, Chinese propaganda organs were labeling America racist for closing US airports to flights from China, even as the CCP itself had already stopped all domestic flights out of Wuhan.
China's deceit, and its continued refusal to help investigate the cause of the release of the Wuhan virus, not only killed more than 4.3 million people worldwide, but shattered countless economies. To date, there have been no reprisals and no accountability.
To date, Communist China has not been held accountable for any of its damage or duplicity, or for obstructing all investigations into the origins of the Wuhan virus, or for enslaving and torturing more than a million Uyghurs, or for destroying Tibet and Hong Kong. Instead, China is being rewarded for unspeakable behavior by being allowed to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
This event presents Biden with an opportunity: there is still time to move the Olympics to a country more deserving -- one that will not potentially use the DNA of the world's greatest athletes to genetically-engineer its future newborns. Will the US finally stand up to Communist China's provocations, let alone future ones -- whether to Australia, Taiwan, Japan, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Jamaica or the Bahamas -- that are already on the way?
China has tested the mettle of all recent US presidents, usually early in their terms of office, and China's Communist Party (CCP) has already certainly been testing President Joe Biden. Just four days into the Biden presidency, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) fighter aircraft violated Taiwan's Air Defense Zone. The provocation was a clear message to remind the new president of China's "Red Line": not to build upon the Trump administration's increased military cooperation with Taiwan.
Beijing's harsh rhetoric, accusing the US of hypocrisy on human rights at the March 2021 meeting in Alaska with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, was probably an indication that China is still calculating to what degree it can intimidate the Biden administration into settling for policies more accommodating to Chinese military, political, security and commercial interests.