{"id":319,"date":"2020-11-29T15:19:39","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T15:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=128454"},"modified":"2020-11-29T15:19:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T15:19:39","slug":"trump-was-wrong-about-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/11\/29\/trump-was-wrong-about-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Was Wrong About China"},"content":{"rendered":"
Trump\u2019s historic defeat by more than 6 million votes on Nov. 3rd has not stalled an aggressive campaign to continue a backward-looking foreign policy agenda. Establishment opinion-makers, U.S. intelligence apparatchiks, and business elites have gone to work in the editorial pages of the Washington Post to frame the limits of the Biden administration\u2019s China policy.<\/p>\n
Frankly obnoxious headlines like \u201cTrump wasn\u2019t wrong about China. But here\u2019s how Biden can do a better job<\/a>\u201d and \u201cBiden must not fall into China\u2019s smooth relations trap<\/a>\u201d suggest that Washington\u2019s political class is single-minded: maintain an aggressive, hostile stance toward China.<\/p>\n Trump was wrong about China. In 2016, as a presidential contender<\/a> and he launched a rhetorical tirade against China accusing that country of \u201craping<\/a>\u201d the U.S. economy. In 2018, he added that in addition to rape, it had caused the opioid crisis<\/a>. These accusations depended on racist stereotypes about China and worked to hide the ineptness of the profit-driven U.S. health system and poor innovation record of the economy.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s racially-driven rhetoric exposed the U.S. ruling class\u2019s deepening leadership incapacity in a crisis and its frightening inability to offer and implement rational solutions to complex problems.<\/span>Drug manufacturers such as Purdue Pharma<\/a>, a manufacturer of oxycontin, sought easy profits by giving kickbacks to doctors to promote their drugs to unsuspecting patients. Other large companies like McKesson, Teva, AmeriSourceBergen, and Cardinal Health<\/a> exploited a cash-driven political system and corrupt medical practices to drive up their profits and create the opioid crisis.<\/p>\n Hospital companies, pharmaceuticals, medical device companies, and even doctors themselves seem unable to innovate U.S. healthcare with a comprehensive healthy lifestyle and a publicly-funded program. Instead, their power and wealth depend on sick Americans and a corrupt, stagnant system.<\/p>\n Likewise, the hysterical response to Chinese technological developments made for easy political bombast and demagogy for Trump, his allies, and even Democratic opponents. Voices that made thoughtful calls for large-scale investments<\/a> in education and technological development<\/a> were drowned out by the shrillness of the political class. American leadership refuses to acknowledge that its paralysis on expanding educational opportunities is a major cause of this larger pattern of the displacement of the U.S. as a global technological leader. This short-sightedness and paralysis is symbolized in one of Trump\u2019s crowning corporate failures, Trump University, which has been rightfully recognized as a criminal scam. <\/p>\n Trump launched his racist hysteria against China in 2018 with deceitful claims about opioids, trade, technology, and continued in 2020 with demonstrably false allegations about COVID-19\u2019s origins. (Notably, recent media accounts<\/a>, including the U.K.-based Independent<\/a> and the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post<\/a>, have reported that COVID-19 cases appeared in Europe<\/a> far earlier than initially believed.) Trump\u2019s racially-driven rhetoric exposed the U.S. ruling class\u2019s deepening leadership incapacity in a crisis and its frightening inability to offer and implement rational solutions to complex problems.<\/p>\n Evidence for this botched leadership can be seen in the incapacity to adequately meet the COVID-19 danger. The U.S. government proved unable to deliver necessary medical equipment or to define a scientifically-sound national public health policy. It wasted time and resources and still seems incapable of controlling a contagion that has cost more than 263,000 lives.<\/p>\n This leadership incapacity hasn\u2019t vanished with the imminent elimination of Trump from power. Biden\u2019s public health advisers seem resistant to large-scale stay-at-home orders. And, an op-ed in the Washington Post, <\/a>published barely a week after Trump\u2019s historic defeat, attributes to Biden foreign policy adviser Kurt Campbell the claim that \u201cTrump was right\u201d about China. China\u2019s success in fighting the virus is seldom acknowledged. This anti-China line of thought provides no real insight into Trump\u2019s demented psychology or the validity of the establishment\u2019s China views. Instead, it only further exposes the persistent void in policy ideas on economic development and the ruling class\u2019s helplessness in leading innovation. Blaming China replaces reasonable interrogation of this failure of economic and social innovation.<\/p>\n