One Million Uighurs

compared Trump on China to Ronald Reagan on the Soviet Union—ahead of his time in confronting its malevolence...... The Chinese Communist Party may worry about its ability to preserve its control. Otherwise, why would it need to build a surveillance state, to put 1 million Uighurs in “reeducation camps,” to ostracize and imprison human-rights lawyers, or to “disappear” the head of Interpol? But it doesn’t appear to be anywhere near actually losing that control.......... Previous American presidents theorized that China would see the advantages of becoming rule-abiding. Trump theorizes that the American economy is strong enough to force Chinese submission. Those different approaches portend very different kinds of relations for the United States with China: The first would make them partners in prosperity; the second would reveal them supplicants........ Treasury Secretary Wilbur Ross thinks not only that the U.S. will win the trade war, but that it may result in social unrest that challenges Communist Party control in China. So we are back to regime change, but this time by threatening penury rather than luring with prosperity.

China Isn’t Cheating on Trade Democrats and Republicans echo Trump’s anti-Beijing rhetoric, but escalating tensions could leave Americans far worse off. ......... in the coming weeks, the United States and China will sign an agreement that repeals the tariffs the two nations have been levying on each other’s goods for the past nine months. If past behavior is any guide, Donald Trump will call it the greatest deal ever, and global markets will breathe a sigh of relief. ......... Trump has already begun to renege on commitments made as part of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, which he hailed as “incredible” in October. ......... Politically, Beijing is growing more authoritarian, as evidenced by its Orwellian domestic-surveillance policies, its mass internment of Muslim Uighurs, and the cult of personality now developing around Chinese President Xi Jinping. Militarily, China increasingly dominates the South China Sea. .............. “a new consensus”—that only a far tougher U.S. trade policy can prevent Beijing from continuing to rip off America—“is rising across America.” .......... top Democrats have scrambled to out-hawk Trump on trade. .......top Democrats and Republicans in Congress are warning that Trump’s China trade deal won’t be tough enough...... Complaints like these have come to dominate Beltway discourse not because the evidence underlying them is particularly strong. It isn’t. They have come to dominate Beltway discourse because Democrats and Republicans both believe that Trump’s anti-China message helped him win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and that the path to the presidency runs through those states again in 2020. The political incentive to be tough on China over trade today is blinding politicians to the risks of an escalating conflict that could leave Americans poorer, less free, and—perhaps—even at war. .......... Beijing’s economic policies are actually quite typical of a country at its stage of development. Like many regimes in the developing world, Beijing fears the “middle-income trap,” in which rising wages undermine its advantage as a center of low-cost manufacturing before it develops the capacity to produce higher-value goods. China worries that unless it moves from assembling iPhones to inventing them, economic growth will stagnate and popular unrest will follow. ....... China therefore erects tariffs to protect industries it hopes will help it make that leap. So did the United States when it was industrializing. ......... China has a lower trade-weighted average tariff than Argentina, Brazil, India, South Korea, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. ........ ranked countries on how well they protect the intellectual property of foreign companies, China scored fairly well among developing nations: just below Mexico and Malaysia but above Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, and the Philippines ........... A 2017 study of cases in which foreign companies sued for patent infringement in Chinese courts by Renjun Bian of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law found that foreign companies actually prevailed at higher rates than did Chinese litigants. ........... Beijing pours money into promising companies in ways the United States and most European governments do not. But this isn’t unusual among developing economies either. ...........China actually intervenes less than India, Vietnam, and Brazil, some of America’s best friends in the developing world. .......... “unlike many of its [developing economy] peers, China is making concrete progress in building a 21st century national IP environment.” ....... a “natural evolution. Countries tend to be slapdash about IP until they get sophisticated enough to have a lot of their own IP to protect.” ........ National Counterintelligence and Security Center last year admitted that, while China still hacks into American companies (something the United States has also allegedly done to Chinese companies), such activity occurs “at lower volumes than existed before the bilateral September 2015 U.S.-China cyber commitments.” In other words, diplomacy worked........ the best way to accelerate China’s transition is to build alliances with other governments concerned by its economic practices, and to use that common leverage to press Beijing. That was part of the strategy behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership, through which the United States and 11 other Pacific nations would lower their barriers to trade and investment. When the TPP’s prospects looked bright, China reportedly began considering joining itself, which could have compelled it to make some of the very changes Trump is demanding now. But in 2016, Trump, with the help of progressive Democrats such as Sanders, made TPP politically radioactive........ rather than making common cause with Canada, Japan, France, and other democracies aggrieved by China’s trading practices, his administration has slapped tariffs on them. All of which has isolated the United States and left it seeking concessions from China that would be easier to secure were the Trump administration not working alone........ Historically, the United States has been one of the WTO’s most successful plaintiffs. But according to Simon Lester of the Cato Institute, the Trump administration has brought only two new cases against China at the WTO. And Trump officials, in keeping with their general hostility toward international organizations, regularly trash the organization........ But it’s not Xi who is crippling the WTO. It’s Trump. ....... “China does a reasonably good job of complying with WTO complaints brought against it.” The Trump administration, by contrast, has systematically blocked the reappointment of judges on the WTO’s dispute-settlement body and thus, according to Reuters, has “plunge[d] the organization into crisis.”.............

the self-destructive absurdity of Trump’s behavior

......... If Chinese companies forge high-tech collaborations in Europe and Chinese students forge scientific breakthroughs at laboratories in Australia, American politicians—in their effort to quarantine China from global innovation—may end up quarantining the United States instead....... the United States has a long history of anti-Asian bigotry, especially during periods of conflict with Asian governments........ Since 2009, according to a 2017 study by the Chinese American Committee of 100, Asian Americans have been twice as likely as other Americans to be the subject of bogus prosecutions (prosecutions that don’t result in a conviction) under the Economic Espionage Act. Trump himself in August reportedly claimed that “almost every student that comes over to this country [from China] is a spy.” .......... The more trade hawks decouple America and China economically, the less incentive the two countries will have for mutual accommodation, since, as the Rand Corporation’s Ali Wyne has observed, “there are few factors … besides trade interdependence that compel the United States and China to exercise mutual restraint.” ....... The “painful adjustments” that America must make to accommodate China are more painful because the United States government has done so little to cushion Americans from the dislocation caused by China’s economic rise.

If Americans who lost their jobs didn’t also lose their health care; if they had access to generous government wage subsidies, retraining programs, and even guaranteed federal jobs; if paying for college didn’t plunge them and their children into debt—then the political incentive to scapegoat Beijing might not be as great. Over the past two decades, American politicians have not proved weak and inert in responding to China’s real and imagined misdeeds. They have proved weak and inert in responding to their own citizens’ needs. The reckoning Washington requires is not with China. It’s with itself.