I was extremely disappointed by Christopher Hill’s piece in Foreign Affairs. In it he asks a question: what does Washington want from China? He never actually ventures an answer.
Moreover, much of the piece is baloney. Here are a few examples:
But although China seemed to be covering up the outbreak during those chaotic days in December, it is also very possible that Chinese health and security agencies simply didn’t know what they were dealing with in Hubei Province as thousands of citizens descended on an overmatched health system.
It is already documented that the Chinese authorities were claiming that SARS-CoV-2 was not being communicated via “community spread” when they knew that it was.
The world rightly gave a rapidly developing China membership and appropriate status in a panoply of international financial and economic institutions, hoping—never a sufficient foundation for decisions of this kind—that China would become a responsible stakeholder in an international system that made it a beneficiary.
That is a misstatement. It would be more correct to say that “the world hopefully gave a rapidly developing…etc.” It was never right and that was pointed out at the time. Its management was also bungled thoroughly.
To some extent, China’s rise has suffered from poor timing. Its emergence coincided with increasing automation among its partners, and China, rather than technology, was blamed for the inevitable job losses.
That’s balderdash. The numbers on this could not be clearer. It wasn’t automation that cause the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the U. S. following China’s admission to the WTO. It was China.
China’s effort to supply PPE to countries in desperate need of such equipment was greeted with suspicion in some quarters as a new effort to gain preeminence and broaden China’s malign and nefarious influence in the world.
It didn’t help that so much of what the Chinese authorities sent was defective.
I honestly don’t know what Amb. Hill’s purpose in the piece was. It certainly was not to inform. Was it intended as encouragement? Propaganda? Application form for a role in a future Biden Administration?
C. Application form for a role in a future Biden Administration.
As odious as Donald Trump can be, he’s been yelling about the great sucking sound of manufacturing jobs siphoning off to China for over a decade. Want to hear more sucking sounds? Vote Democratic. Right now I can’t think of one blessed politician with a ‘D’ after their name who isn’t some sort of China apologist, if only in reaction to OMB.
It’s worse, Tars. They are getting paid.