The Dems’ China Tilt
Why Biden-Harris is the Chinese communist regime’s dream team.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the Chinese communist regime’s dream team. If they prevail in the November election, China’s nemesis, President Trump, will be replaced by the soft-on-China Joe Biden. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks,” Biden said last year. “They’re not competition for us.” As President Trump said following the Democratic National Convention snooze fest, “China will own our country, if he gets elected.”
The Chinese communist regime was not even mentioned at the Democrats’ convention. The speakers, from Biden on down, ignored the elephant in the room while portraying President Trump as America’s mortal enemy who had wreaked the coronavirus on Americans. For months, the Democrats have aided the Chinese regime’s propaganda campaign to deny the regime’s responsibility for the coronavirus that originated in Wuhan China.
Chinese Communist Party officials early on censored the hashtag #WuhanSARS. They also attempted to shift the blame for the virus to the United States. Joe Biden put out a statement last April complaining about President Trump’s calling the coronavirus the “Chinese Virus.” This was in keeping with Biden’s initial opposition to President Trump’s restrictions on travel from China that the president announced on January 31st. Using words that the Chinese communist party propagandists could have written themselves, Biden accused the president of xenophobia and fear mongering.
Last May, Kamala Harris obliged the Chinese regime when she introduced a resolution in the Senate that singled out the terms “Wuhan Virus” and “Chinese Virus” as examples of language that should not be used.
On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo came up with another regional name for the coronavirus. “The European virus infected the Northeast while the White House was still fixated on China,” Cuomo said. This blowhard thinks it’s OK to scapegoat the Europeans while conveniently leaving out the fact that the coronavirus originated in China and traveled from China to Italy as well as other parts of Europe via infected Chinese visiting or returning to their residences in Europe. It then spread to the Northeast of the United States from Europeans traveling here who were infected with the Chinese Virus. Cuomo made things far worse with his directive forcing nursing homes to accept elderly coronavirus patients from hospitals.
There would have been no coronavirus pandemic crisis if Chinese authorities had come clean when the virus could have been prevented from spreading widely beyond China’s borders. Instead, by early January 2020, Chinese authorities had already ordered COVID19 virus samples destroyed, silenced Wuhan doctors, and censored public health concerns online. They also allowed international travel from China to continue as usual, while restricting the movement of the Chinese people within China itself. The regime misled the World Health Organization (WHO) by initially discounting the virus’s human-to-human transmission, which WHO accepted at face value. The blood of more than 170,000 Americans who lost their lives to the Chinese Virus is on the Chinese regime’s hands, not on President Trump’s. Nevertheless, Biden, Harris and their fellow Democrats are doing China’s bidding in trying to deflect blame from China to President Trump and his administration.
During his acceptance speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, Biden recklessly blamed the president for the 5 million Americans infected with the virus and the more than 170,000 Americans who have died to date. Kamala Harris spewed out the same vitriol in her own convention acceptance speech the night before Biden spoke. Harris was even more vicious during her joint appearance with Biden following her selection as Biden’s running mate, when she charged that the president was the reason “an American dies of Covid-19 every 80 seconds.” These lies are calculated to inflame passions and divide Americans amongst themselves, playing right into the Chinese regime’s hands.
President Trump has already done everything that Biden or his proxies have recommended to deal with the virus health crisis. Indeed, the president has done far more, starting with the travel restrictions that Biden initially opposed. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that President Trump’s travel restrictions helped to slow the spread of the virus in the United States and saved American lives.
The Obama-Biden administration had left the Trump administration with grossly inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment and ventilators, as well as antiquated testing capacities. President Trump turned things around in record time. Democratic governors, including Andrew Cuomo, applauded the president’s responsiveness as he arranged for private companies to shift production to supplying masks, ventilators, hand sanitizer, and testing supplies, and he directed his administration to distribute them quickly to states in need. Cuomo is now pretending otherwise for crass partisan reasons.
Biden falsely claimed in late July that the Trump administration had not done “any planning” for vaccine distribution and had no “command officer” in charge of it. President Trump had already put the Army’s top logistics officer in charge, with numerous federal officials working on vaccination prioritization and distribution plans. But what Biden does not seem to realize is that safe and effective vaccines must first be developed and produced on a mass scale before they can be distributed. President Trump launched Operation Warp Speed with the goal of producing and delivering 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021. The Trump administration has forged partnerships with industry by providing unprecedented investments in leading vaccine candidates to simultaneously produce them as they are clinically tested and developed. All this happened while Biden was still mostly hiding in his basement.
The Democrats relegated their discussion of China to their party platform, which few people bother to read and which Biden is free to ignore. The platform claims that “Democrats will be clear, strong, and consistent in pushing back where we have profound economic, security, and human rights concerns about the actions of China’s government. Democrats will protect the American worker from unfair trade practices by the Chinese government, including currency manipulation and benefiting from a misaligned exchange rate with the dollar, illegal subsidies, and theft of intellectual property.”
The Obama-Biden administration had eight years to confront the long-standing threats from the Chinese regime with effective counteractions. They floundered around instead. In fact, they made things worse. In 2010, on the Obama-Biden administration’s watch, China “surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy, and overtook the US in manufacturing output and power generation,” according to the World Economic Forum. “By purchasing power parity (PPP), China overtook the US as the largest economy in 2014,” the World Economic Forum added. “At the end of 2015, China’s total manufacturing output represented 150% of the US, or was equivalent to the combined total of the US and Japan—an unprecedented record in Chinese history.” The World Economic Forum concluded that the Obama-Biden administration’s “rebalance to the Asia-Pacific” policy – including galvanizing the support of allies in the region to counter China’s rising power – was “unsuccessful.”
Obama looked to his vice president, Joe Biden, for help in forging a constructive relationship with China because of Biden’s experience in dealing with foreign leaders and his supposed ability to forge personal relationships with them. Starting in early 2011, Biden developed a close relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping, who was China’s vice president at the time. When Biden visited China in December 2013 on an official diplomatic mission, President Xi greeted him as “my old friend.” Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who accompanied his father to China on the December 2013 trip, was busy leveraging the Biden name to go after lucrative business deals with Chinese state-owned firms.
As even the Biden-friendly New York Times noted in an article published in early July, “Mr. Biden is facing uncomfortable questions about why he didn’t do more to stiffen Obama administration policy toward Beijing — about why his strategic empathy didn’t come with more strategic vision.”
President Trump set about reversing the mistakes made by Obama and Biden in letting the Chinese regime play them. For example, the Trump administration has imposed tough tariffs on imports from China to wrest valuable trading concessions from the Chinese regime. Biden and Harris have foolishly criticized what they and the Democratic party platform referred to as the president's “unilateral” tariffs. It took such stern unilateral measures to push China into negotiating trade terms more favorable to the United States than anything Obama and Biden were able to accomplish during their eight years in office. As usual, the Democrats have not offered any specific alternatives other than mushy globalist appeals to multilateral cooperation.
The Obama-Biden administration zealously pursued the Paris climate change agreement with China’s help, leading them to ignore more pressing security and economic threats to the United States posed by the Chinese regime. The Obama-Biden administration committed to impose far more stringent and immediate carbon emission reductions on the U.S. economy than China agreed to impose on its economy, even though China is the number one producer of greenhouse gasses. Biden and Harris intend to rejoin this totally unbalanced pact if they are elected despite the grossly unfair economic advantage it gives to China over the United States.
The Trump administration has also taken steps to prevent the Chinese-owned telecommunications giant Huawei and the Chinese-owned social media platforms TikTok and WeChat from being used to jeopardize U.S. national security, steal American intellectual property and spy on American citizens. Aside from calls to work more closely with our allies, the Biden-Harris team has offered nothing of substance to combat the Chinese regime’s cybersecurity threats.
According to a statement issued on August 7th by William Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, the U.S. government has assessed that “China prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing sees as unpredictable – does not win reelection.” Based on what we have seen so far, the Biden-Harris team will be putty in China’s hands and China's communist regime knows it.
JOE BIDEN, SERVANT OF RED CHINA… .Just
follow the money through Hunter’s pockets.
Well, it
looks like the makeover has begun.
Corrupt
Joe Biden, who used his office to enrich himself and his family, to say the
least, is now the foreign policy maven, particularly on China. That's the spin from the
New York Times, which has beclowned itself badly, trying to tell the audience
that something smelly is shinola.
To voters unsettled by President Trump’s
disruptive approach to the world, Mr. Biden is selling not only his policy
prescriptions but also his long track record of befriending, cajoling and
sometimes confronting foreign leaders — what he might call the power of his
informal diplomatic style. “I’ve dealt with every one of the major world
leaders that are out there right now, and they know me. I know them,” he told
supporters in December.
Brett McGurk, a former senior State Department
official for the campaign against the Islamic State, said Mr. Biden had been an
effective diplomat by practicing “strategic empathy.”
And
unlike Trump, Biden was oh so personal, as well as "not an
ideologue."
Mr. Biden made a quick “personal connection” with
the Chinese leader, even if he sometimes confounded his Mandarin interpreter by
quoting hard-to-translate Irish verse, said Daniel Russel, an aide present at
several of the meetings.
“He was remarkably good in getting to a personal
relationship right away and getting Xi to open up,” Mr. Russel said.
Had
enough? The translation, according to Peter Schweizer's Profiles in Corruption
is:
For Vice President Joe Biden, effective diplomacy
was about forming personal relationships with foreign leaders. "It all
gets down to the conduct of foreign policy being personal." The vice
president had a series of important and tense meetings with Chinese officials
on a variety of critical matters in the bilateral relationship. The trip
coincided with an enormous financial deal that Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont
Seneca, was arranging with the state-owned Bank of China. What Hunter did
during the official visit to Beijing we cannot know for sure. Other than a few
photo ops with his father, he was nowhere to be seen.
...and...
Approximately ten days after the Beijing trip,
Hunter Biden's Rosemont Seneca Partners finalized a deal with the Chinese
government worth a whopping $1 billion. The deal was later expanded to
$1.5 billion. As of this writing, the fund's website says its investments
amount to more than $2 billion.
It's important to note that this deal was with
the Chinese government--not with Chinese company, which means that the
Chinese government and the son of the vice president were now business partners.
Now
he's Mr. Congeniality, the perfect opposite of President Trump who confronts
China rather sternly on issues. To the Times, that's a bad thing. To the
average 'hey fat' out in the American heartland as Biden puts it, Trump's
diplomacy is actually standing up for the interests of Americans.
It's
also a disgusting double standard. Trump is no China hater - he does his best
to cut the best deal possible for main street America by driving a hard bargain
the Chinese know they have no choice but to accept. Any time Trump says
something concilatory to the Chinese, it's denounced as sucking up to
dictators, while any time Joe does it - pocketing the profits, which any
non-ideologue is adept at doing - he's Mr. Personality.
As
Mickey Kaus well observed:
When Trump does it it's coddling dictators, with Biden it's Strategic
Empathy! @michaelcrowley is at least a bit skeptical. https://t.co/Pnc9SqxAk4
— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) July
6, 2020
Here's
the problem with this kind of 'personal' diplomacy. It is very personal indeed
to Joe, given the wealth it has brought is family members. It's also very
dangerous, given that every string and hook China's oligarchs can get into him
makes him an even bigger sock puppet than he already was. Combine with the
world's dodgiest players considering Biden a non-entity (Osama bin Laden
considered Biden a fool) and the picture is a very ugly one for America's
interests.
Here's
the second problem: This apparent media makeover for Joe, painting him as the
great personal-touch diplomat who can get along with everyone is clearly the
new party line being promoted in the press, and we can expect to see lockstep
echoing of this embarassing face-lift. The JournoList talking points have gone
out and now the shots are fired. As those shots went out, attempting to boost
Joe while taking down Trump, the Chicoms themselves have been very active, too.
Just days ago, according to a report in the Daily Caller, the Chinese
investment firm that made Hunter a very rich man has quietly removed Hunter's
name as a board member. That's to help Joe win his presidential bid for sure,
which ought to make voters very wary given whose interests are being boosted.
Worse still, the Caller reports, they allowed him to keep his sizable stake in
the company - worth milions at least. No wonder he's comfortably ensconced in
the Hollywood Hills these days, bored and playing 'artist,' dodging release of
his financial statements to an Arkansas judge over a babydaddy case with a
stripper looking for child support. No wonder he apparently settled with the
woman and swept the whole thing off the front pages.
Now
the makeover is on, with the media ignoring the pocket-lining entirely -- the
New York Times makes simply no mention of it -- and the cash spigots still
going.
The
whole thing -- pocket-lining and media coverup is a disgusting double-load
of corruption that anyone with a brain can see right through. The GOP must keep
the heat onto this issue because it's being distorted beyond recognition.
Photo illustration by Monica
Showalter with use of images
by Gage
Skidmore, via Flickr // CC
BY-SA 2.0, Acaben,
via Wikimedia Commons // CC
BY-SA 2.0, PxFuel public domain,
and SKopp
via Wikimedia Commons // public domain
We're not buying Joe Biden's 'tough on China' Act
Joe
Biden is running away from his record as the "pro-China" candidate so
quickly that his defenders in the liberal press can't make heads or tails of it. Ordinary
Americans are equally confused.
Biden
spent over three decades opening American markets to Chinese goods, ignoring
China's abhorrent human rights record, and dismissing the challenge posed by
our greatest rival for global leadership. The "made in
China" era coincided with the closure of tens of thousands of American
factories, stagnant working-class wages, and the loss of America's ability to
produce essential goods domestically — a vulnerability that took on incredible
significance when we learned that we were dependent upon China to produce the
medical equipment needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
This
disaster was facilitated by politicians of both parties, and no one was
more gung ho than Joe
Biden, poster child for the globalism that reigned supreme until the
2016 presidential election, which Donald J. Trump won by campaigning on a
platform diametrically opposed to the "open markets and open borders"
philosophy of the D.C. establishment. In the White House, President
Trump became the first American leader in decades to take a firm stand against
China's malfeasance and demand a genuinely fair and reciprocal trade deal for
American workers.
While
Joe Biden was the vice president of the United States, conversely, he was downplaying the consequences of
China's rise — even as his own family tried to get rich through
deals with Chinese state-owned companies.
How
is it possible, then, that Biden has suddenly tried to recast himself as the
"tough-on-China" candidate in the 2020 race?
Biden's
campaign even ran an ad claiming the
president had "rolled over for the Chinese" in response to the
coronavirus that Beijing unleashed on the world. It's one of the
most poorly executed flip-flops in American electoral history, coming just
months after Biden called President
Trump's life-saving ban on most travel
from China "hysterical xenophobia."
No
one is buying it. Everyone knows about President Trump's record of
success in bringing China to the negotiating table through strategic
counter-tariffs. The "Phase One" trade deal that was inked
earlier this year represents the first major trade concessions from China in a
generation. Even the fanatical free-traders who actually liked Biden's
globalism see right through his new façade. The libertarians at the
Cato Institute, for instance, published an article
acknowledging that Biden's reversal is "futile" and "inherently
lacks credibility."
Even
the intellectual left is aghast at Biden's fake toughness on
China. The Atlantic called it "utterly
futile" and "pointless — even dangerous." The New
York Times published an op-ed all but begging Biden to drop the
act.
If
even his own supporters are rolling their eyes at Biden play-acting as a China
skeptic, why are he and his team even bothering to attempt the deception?
The
answer is simple. Americans have finally woken up to the economic
and national security threat posed by China. The coronavirus pandemic made that
threat impossible to ignore. No one wants to go into this November
as the "pro-Beijing" candidate.
Unfortunately
for Joe Biden, he's been the "pro-Beijing" candidate throughout his
political career, and there's a decades-long record to prove it.
Ken Blackwell served as mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio treasurer, and a
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. He currently serves on the board of
directors for Club For Growth.
Image: Marc Nozell via Flickr.
Hollywood is importing Chinese censorship to
the United States
by Zachary Faria, Commentary Fellow |
|
August 11, 2020 07:31 AM
Hollywood likes to hold
itself out as a progressive pioneer of social justice, but a new report
highlights how the desire to get films into the Chinese market leads major film
studios to violate their own social justice dogma. In fact, it often leads them
to import the values of the Chinese Communist Party — the organization with the
highest body count in human history.
The report by PEN America, a
nonprofit organization that promotes free expression in literature, examines a
collection of films that bowed to Chinese censorship in order to get access to
the Chinese movie market. China allows 34 foreign films
to be released in the country each year, and in 2018, quarterly revenue from
China surpassed the United States for the first time. Before the pandemic, it
was projected that revenue from China in 2023 would reach $15.5 billion.
Some Chinese censorship
is minor, propaganda that can only be caught by alert viewers. Paramount cut
the Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise’s jacket for the Top Gun sequel,
while the DreamWorks film Abominable (a collaboration with
China’s Pearl Studio) featured the nine-dash line, a propaganda map asserting
China’s control of the South China Sea.
Hollywood studios will
often run afoul of the tenets of social justice they often push in the U.S.
Marvel notably whitewashed a major Tibetan
character in Doctor Strange to avoid offending the Chinese
government. Studios ranging from Warner Brothers to Paramount to Twentieth
Century Fox have either removed scenes of same-sex kissing from films or had
them removed by China when the films aired. A complaint from a religious group
in the U.S., on the other hand, would only draw mockery.
The most troubling
takeaway from the report is not that individual scenes are being censored or
self-censored but that studios have decided to base major film decisions on
China, sometimes even unprompted. Marvel infamously brought in
Chinese regulators during the filming of Iron Man 3 to ensure
the movie stayed inbounds and added extra scenes to the Chinese version of the
film showing Chinese doctors saving Iron Man’s life.
The days of Hollywood
backing human rights in its work have disappeared. The 1997 film Seven
Years in Tibet, portraying China’s 1950 invasion of Tibet, led to the
blacklisting of director Jean-Jacques Annaud until his groveling apology 12
years later. Film star Brad Pitt was also penalized for the movie, which likely
helped bar World War Z from a Chinese release.
Change is not a lost
cause. The industry’s biggest stars have the power to push for it, as when
Quentin Tarantino refused to sign off on a re-cut of Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood to appease Chinese censors. But if Hollywood’s other
influential voices are unwilling to even stand up for their own creative
freedom, why would they take a stand on behalf of the human rights of people
they will never even meet?
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