Editor’s Corner: Emmanuel Tran
In the context of COVID-19, the United States’ links to China, and the post-Nixon China consensus, in particular, are topics of debate once more. After Richard Nixon's decision to switch American support from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China at the United Nations, the United States has abandoned its historic dislike of the Chinese Communist Party. We embraced Chinese leaders who came and visited the United States. We started to move our factories and our industries there. American universities opened up campuses all over China.
The decision to open up economic and political links to China while it was still ruled by a communist dictatorship was a risk. The reason for taking that risk, in the eyes of our political establishment, was that Chinese people would demand democracy as soon as they had access to Western consumer products. Economic liberalization would come first; political freedom and the rule of law would naturally follow.
Yet, this enthusiastic optimism has turned out to be misplaced. China today is not more democratic or free than the China of Mao. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party seems more and more resolute to reduce the freedom of the Chinese people.
The camps of ethnically Turkish Muslims in East Turkestan and the attempts by the Chinese state to fix the nomination of the next Tibetan Dalai Lama are only two examples of this rise in totalitarianism. What’s more, China seems to want to expand its vision of economic prosperity with communist rule to the rest of the world. It has intervened heavily in many different African countries in an attempt to build a neo-colonialist imperial system. In a bit of dark humor, China ordered the nation of Sri Lanka to hand them a ninety nine year lease to a port in return for debt payment.
All of that context takes us to the COVID-19 crisis. This crisis has been a resolute demonstration of the failure of the People’s Republic of China, and indeed the problematic nature of Chinese Communist, Maoist political doctrine. As the COVID-19 epidemic struck China, the Communist Party took not the opportunity to deal with this epidemic but to suppress those, notably doctors in the city of Wuhan, who had raised alarm over the virus. In addition, they have prevented any international attempts to look into where COVID-19 came from, perhaps because none of the explanations reflect well on the CCP and its response to this pandemic.
So where should the United States proceed from here?
We cannot let the Chinese Communist Party continue to spread their dangerous ideas around the world. It is clear too, that the ultimate aim of the United States should be the replacement of China’s communist administration with a democratic one.
Our approach should, therefore, be multifaceted. Firstly, we must protect our economy. To do so, the United States should introduce protective tariffs in order to return production of key materials, such as face masks or ventilators, to the United States. In addition, the United States, Latin America, Britain and continental Europe should enter into a Western economic and military alliance in order to counter the expansion of China. Furthermore, we need to protect our secrets from scientific and corporate theft, so the United States should close off certain scientific laboratories to scientists from the People’s Republic of China.
In addition, the United States should support democratic nations in Asia that want to oppose the rise of Chinese communism. India, a democratic nuclear power with one of the most powerful militaries in the world and a border with China, should be our foremost ally in this combat. That said, other south Asian nations, notably Indonesia, must be part of this military alliance too. The United States should support the formation of an “Asian NATO,” an alliance of South Asian countries led by India that can stand up to Chinese dominance in Asia and prevent the spread of totalitarianism to other parts of Asia and the West. The defense of democracy and the West will require cooperation, sacrifice and combined effort. But if we fall behind now, it could be too late.