What to Do About China

George Templeton

It’s weird for me to advocate the position I’m going to express about China in this piece. As a young and idealistic teenage conservative, I believed what a lot of people in authority said about trade with China democratizing that country: Trading with the Chinese government would make them a partner in world affairs and might even make them a friend. I swallowed that thinking completely.

A lot of politicians, foreign-policy experts, and I were as wrong as wrong could be. Since the United States and China normalized trade relations in 1998, democratic ideals and yearnings haven’t blossomed in Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party’s grip on authority is tighter than ever.

What has it brought America? Lots of job loss because of manufacturing heading to China. Lots of intellectual property stolen, either through outright theft, the requirement that American companies investing in China must allow Chinese nationals part ownership, or Chinese students taking advantage of the college system in the USA to take ideas back to their native lands. Gigantic profits for big tech companies and sports leagues that are prepared to be chief bootlickers for the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for access to the Chinese market.

China is now an economic superpower and they’ve not been shy about using international systems to their advantage. Despite their membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Chinese regularly flout the rules. China is engaged in currency manipulation, it has used tariffs to protect its own companies, imposed rules on foreign companies that are anti-competitive, and engaged in dumping steel to hurt other countries’ steel industries.

All of this has made them a handful to deal with internationally as well. China’s incredible growth allowed them to buy whole countries in Africa, assert influence over the administration of the Panama Canal, and build man-made islands in the South China Sea to increase its territorial claim there.

China has been a malefactor on the world stage for quite a while now. They’ve bullied and menaced their neighbors and enabled Kim Jong-Un’s behavior in North Korea. And with American business joined at the hip with China, the U.S. government has done very little to try to stop China’s bad acts internationally.

Now we have a worldwide pandemic that started in Wuhan, China. COVID19 is causing economic ruin and mayhem all over the world. Tens of millions of people are losing their jobs and no one has any idea how or when the world will recover.

Despite the protestations of certain media outlets, the incompetent World Health Organization and desperate Democratic politicians, this crisis is China’s fault.

We’ve heard a lot of variations of “send China the bill” from pundits and politicians on TV here. I’ve seen people like Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) talk about China writing off American debt. Others, including President Donald Trump, mused about China paying for the relief / stimulus packages that were passed into law.

As awful as this crisis is, it presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the United States and the industrialized world to strike back at China’s aggression and malfeasance. Their incompetence, whether intentional or not, has wrecked the international economy and will kill hundreds of thousands of people all over the world before it is done.

The United States, Europe, and the advanced economies in Asia, the Middle East, and South America need to come together to wage economic war on China. No more doing business with them. No more taking their investment money. No more letting Chinese companies buy businesses in their countries. No more outsourcing manufacturing to China. No more lobbying firms or media outlets taking Chinese money, either from official government entities or from businesses owned by Chinese nationals.

And Trump is the one American President with the cojones to convince the world of this strategy. Use every tariff, every sanction regime and, most importantly, secondary sanctions, to get the world to join in this economic war. It is time to put China back in its box. It’s time to reverse all of the gains the Chinese communists have made and end their dream of being the number one power in the world.
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The only way China can avoid this massive and richly-deserved penalty is to agree to the following list of demands:

1. Current President Xi Jinping reverses his decision to stay on beyond 2023 and follows the recent tradition of Chinese leaders and serves only 10 years as president.
2. End currency manipulation. The Renminbi will float on the currency exchanges as the dollar, the Euro, and every other currency do.
3. China will follow every rule of the WTO. That means reducing tariffs and dropping barriers to entry for businesses outside China. No more requirements for part-Chinese ownership for businesses setting up inside the country.
4. Destroy the man-made islands in the South China Sea and end all claims to territorial waters that go beyond what is established in international law.
5. No more interference in Hong Kong’s political system. No more CCP-approved lists of candidates for Hong Kong’s elections. The deal between the United Kingdom and China called for two systems, one China. And when that deal ends, Hong Kong will have a free, fair, and internationally monitored referendum on independence.
6. Release the Uighurs from the concentration camps we know they are in and compensate them for all the abuse they’ve suffered. Nike will also compensate their families for all the products that were produced in those camps.
7. Allow the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and international health organizations entry into the country to completely investigate the origins of COVID19.
8. The Chinese government will publish the actual numbers of cases and deaths due to the coronavirus.
9. China will close the Wuhan Institute of Virology and will work with CDC and other international health organizations to find a suitable site for its replacement with strict guidelines and protocols on the things it can and cannot study.
10. China will recognize Taiwan as a sovereign independent country and the rest of the world will follow suit and allow them to take a seat in the United Nations and other international organizations.
11. China will stop persecuting the Dalai Lama and grant independence to Tibet
12. China will not oppose any efforts by North and South Korea to unify if such efforts ever come about.
13. China will stop any plans to build a new canal in Central or South America and divest itself of deals with governments in that part of the world.
14. China will write off all the debt that is owed to it.
15. China will end all contracts with college professors and other academics in American colleges and universities and will agree to limit the number of spots for Chinese students in American higher education.
16. China will face heavy tariffs on its products and industries for the next 10 years. These tariffs will lessen over time as they fulfill all these commitments.

This is a long list of demands and yes it will represent a total surrender by China on the world stage. And every one of these demands must be met or the international community will wage full-scale economic war against China. That is what has to be done. It won’t be easy and there will be howling from all corners that are accustomed to enriching themselves from China.

A world run by China will be one of repression, less freedom, and even more economic stratification than now. This is the moment to stop it for good. This is the opportunity we must take.