The U.S.-China relationship is arguably at a new low.
Chinese state media has called State Secretary Mike Pompeo “an enemy of humankind” for criticizing China.
While the Trump administration has reportedly vowed to hold the Chinese regime accountable for the coverup.
With the 2020 election coming up, a recent article—written in Chinese—by a Chinese think tank has caught the attention of China watchers on Twitter. It has raised debate about what kind of candidate China wants, and it means for the future of U.S.-China relations.
A translation of the article is titled “In order to improve the U.S.-China relationship, why we must win over America’s left-wing?”
This came not long before President Donald Trump said he believes that Beijing “will do anything they can” to make him lose in 2020.
The author of the article referred to “those American left-wing or liberal elites” who think they know a lot about China as “China Knowers” or 知华派 (zhi hua pai), and he recounted their contribution to China’s rise over the years.
The article reads, “If not for the Clinton government’s policy to engage with China in the 1990s … how could China have had such a nice outside environment for economic growth?”
The article said that because the American Left is too naive and arrogant, they think the US engagement with China will eventually help the regime embrace more liberal democratic values.
It adds that “they had drawn wrong conclusions… it’s exactly their mistakes that we (China) took advantage of and won over opportunities for our own (Chinese) development, and reduced the resistance to our (China’s) uprising.”
The author noted that although past administrations—on both the left and the right—had pushed for engagement with China, the situation is different now.
“But today,” the article reads, “the gap between China and the U.S. interest is too huge. There is no overlap. There is no common strategic interest. If we want to improve the two countries’ relationship through America’s right-wing, that means we have to make huge compromises in our political system and economic model. … This is something we cannot accept.”
The author wrote that the so-called “China Knowers” are still important for influencing Washington’s China policies. Therefore, they’re still considered targets that China should try to win over.
The Washington Post’s China Correspondent Gerry Shih called the article “Frank & cynical.”
He Qinglian, a New York-based Chinese scholar, wrote on Twitter that China is ”looking for substitutes for the ‘Panda Huggers.’” The term refers to western academics and officials who had championed engagement with China and had believed that China’s rise would be a good thing for the world.
However, in recent years, some of China’s previous champions have become increasingly skeptical.
In 2018, thirty-three of the world’s top China experts published a report calling China out for its “covert, coercive, or corrupting” operations. Many of them had previously advocated for China’s rise.
The report pointed out that the regime has been trying to undermine America’s democratic process through its influence on the Chinese American community, Chinese students in the US, American civil society organizations, academic institutions, think tanks, and the media.
One China expert and a contributor to the report, James Mulvenon, told the Washington Post that the report “speaks to the disillusionment of an entire generation of China specialists who thought they were helping China emerge onto the world stage only to discover that the project had gone badly awry.”
A Taiwanese scholar called the report a “collective awakening of China experts.”
It remains to be seen how deep this awakening will run, but the Chinese regime’s influence on Washington’s China policies over the years cannot be dismissed.
For example, Chinese state media reported that in November 2008, right after the presidential election result was revealed, a research institute under the U.S. State Department reached out to their Chinese counterparts. It asked for their “expectation lists” from the new president on China policies.
The new president received the report immediately after he took power in January 2009. The report is titled “The Pivotal Relationship: How Obama Should Engage China.”
Half of it was written by a researcher named Liu Xuecheng from the China Institute of International Studies—an institute under the regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The researcher told state media that although it’s partly his report, “it actually represents China.”
It’s common for newly elected presidents to receive policy advice reports. But one co-authored by a Chinese national under a foreign regime’s central government, is unprecedented in U.S. history.
New York-based China scholar He Qinglian wrote at the time that it was “no different than telling Beijing: Please let me know, how shall I work with you in order to satisfy you.”
The policy report asked the White House to respect China’s “core interests,” to work with the Chinese regime on Taiwan issues, and not to arrange meetings with Tibetan activists.
The 2009 report expressed hope that “the new administration will make its broad points in public … but save its specific human rights questions, those about particular individuals, for private deliberations with the Chinese.”
The messages appeared to have been well-received. During then-President Obama’s visit to China in 2009, and his receiving Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington in 2015, Obama had faced criticism for his softer stance on China’s human rights issues.
His administration’s officials reassured the media that the then-president “pulled no punches” in private meetings.
But some say the reality we are facing today clearly proves that the “behind closed doors” approach hasn’t worked and needs changing.
“Where China wants to keep these issues is behind closed doors,” David Shambaugh, U.S.-based China affairs expert said in a Canadian Parliamentary hearing on March 9, 2020. “I noticed your previous diplomats who testified say we are working very hard behind closed doors to press the case of the Two Michaels and other issues. Well, that’s exactly where China wants to keep it, behind closed doors. I think, personally, going public about China’s egregious behavior in a wide range of issues whether it’s Tibet, the Uygurs, the Two Michaels, Liu Xiaobo, you name it … China just hates being internationally called out publicly.”
The United States is now suffering due to the Chinese regime’s lack of transparency and totalitarian rule. China’s silencing of whistleblowers and citizen journalists left the world in the dark for months about the severity of the current virus pandemic.
As the 2020 U.S. election approaches, President Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden are now in a race to see who can be tougher with China.
Trump, who has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas, is reportedly ramping up efforts to remove supply chains from China. He has also said he could use new tariffs to punish the regime for its handling of the virus outbreak.
At the same time, Biden has criticized Trump in a campaign ad for trusting China too much. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the former vice president’s current foreign policy advisers are almost all veterans of the Obama administration. Biden has yet to come up with specifics of his China policies.