A truism of the US is that its elections affect more than just Americans, but for communities threatened by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the occupant of the Oval Office is a matter of existential importance.
Polls have revealed that Taiwanese strongly prefer US President Donald Trump to win next month’s election. Hong Kongers have mixed opinions, although they narrowly prefer Trump’s policies.
These results are unsurprising, given the president’s “tough on China” rhetoric, his support from prominent activists and the supportive legislation passed under his administration.
Despite this partisan slant, activists should realize that they have overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats, making this one of the few issues on which Americans are united.
Trump undeniably deserves credit for raising global awareness regarding the CCP, but his administration has been inconsistent on the issue, and has overseen diminishing support for US allies and partners.
Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that would have greatly increased US engagement and trade in the Asia-Pacific region, while excluding China. The first few years of the Trump administration saw more tariffs levied on US allies than China.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to reduce military forces in South Korea and Japan that are critical to support democratic partners and allies in the region. He even abandoned Kurdish partners in a spur-of-the-moment decision, leading to their invasion and undermining the credibility of US security partnerships.
Imagine the shudders this created in Taipei, especially when Trump considered cutting support for Taiwan as a bargaining chip in trade talks with China.
Accordingly, global confidence in the US was plummeting even before the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by erratic foreign policy decisions and a failure to support allies and partners.
Confidence in the US president to “do the right thing” was 74 percent under former US president Barack Obama and fell to 29 percent under Trump. Today, confidence in Trump is even worse than in Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
While Trump isolated fellow democracies, he lavishly praised dictators like Xi, even praising Xi for making himself “president for life.”
His admiration for Chinese dictatorship goes back years: In 1990, Trump said that the Chinese government showed “the power of strength” during the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and during the 2014 “Umbrella movement,” wrote that then-president Obama should “stay out of the Hong Kong protests.”
Former White House national security adviser John Bolton said that Trump went as far as telling Xi that he was the “greatest leader in Chinese history,” and that Xi’s policies in Xinjiang, where millions of Uighurs are forcibly held in concentration camps, were “exactly the right thing to do.”
US Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican, said of Trump: “The way he kisses dictators’ butts, I mean, the way he ignores that the Uighurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang right now. He hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong Kongers ... the United States now regularly sells out our allies.”
Despite this, US support for Hong Kong and Taiwan has grown immensely, even if the roots of this did not originate from the White House.
The people of Hong Kong deserve some credit for their brilliance at garnering international support. Through a global diaspora and international grassroots mobilization, their struggle was forced onto global headlines and sympathy protests around the world were impossible to ignore. Hong Kongers further caught the attention of Americans by marching with US flags and singing the US national anthem.
Still, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRDA) faced an uphill battle. Even after the US Congress passed it nearly unanimously, Trump threatened to veto it in favor of a trade deal, saying: “We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi. He’s a friend of mine, he’s an incredible guy.”
Thanks to bipartisan congressional pressure and the horrible optics of vetoing such legislation, Trump reluctantly signed the act into law. It passed not thanks to Trump, but in spite of him.
The pandemic marked a significant turning point in how Trump viewed China. Initially, he praised Chinese efforts to combat the virus, even writing that Xi was “strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the coronavirus.”
As he began turning toward the election, Trump’s political calculations favored a tougher China policy. When the virus began ravaging the US and Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) blamed its origin on US soldiers, Trump quickly turned from commending China to blaming it for the virus. Suddenly, the administration became “tough on China.”
In July, as soon as Beijing imposed its Hong Kong National Security Law on the territory, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act (HKAA) sailed through the US Congress unanimously, becoming law in less than two weeks. For comparison, the HKHRDA took five months from introduction to enactment.
Sanctions and tough talk by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others soon followed, as the administration’s hawks found their wings. Importantly, hawkish sentiment toward China is increasingly shared by both parties at all levels of government.
Much of this was an own-goal scored by Chinese diplomats. “Wolf warriors” threatened the “health and safety” of Canadians, insulted Australia, invaded India, provoked the Czech Republic, vowed a “forceful counterattack” against the UK, and beat up Taiwanese diplomats while threatening to invade Taiwan.
These and countless other diplomatic faux pas, along with ham-fisted propaganda that accompanied the pandemic, contributed to record-high unfavorable views of China around the world and bolstered commitment to the Quad alliance.
While Xi and his wolf warriors made their aggression all but impossible to ignore, the Trump administration did well to shine a spotlight on these issues and began mobilizing the government to address these concerns.
In an election year, Democrats can be expected to criticize nearly every action of a Republican president. They have not criticized Trump’s actions on China, and instead have stood up to China and strengthened support for regional partners and allies.
Support for Hong Kong, Uighurs, Taiwan and countering Chinese aggression and coercion enjoys significant bipartisan support.
Much of this support originated from the US Congress instead of the White House.
Republicans have been the most vocal. US Senator Marco Rubio introduced the HKHRDA, and US senators Rick Scott and Ted Cruz went to Hong Kong themselves to join the protests and meet with activists.
However, as Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies revealed, legislators from both parties sponsor legislation in nearly equal amounts, and congressional Democrats are by no means weak on such issues.
The Democrats’ leading voice in the US Congress, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was galvanized by the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and fought to protect the 40,000 Chinese students in the US at the time from the “butchers of Beijing.”
On a trip to Beijing in 1991, she unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square that read: “To those who died for democracy in China.”
The HKHRDA, HKAA, Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, Taiwan Travel Act, Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act, and other legislation sailed through the US Congress either unanimously or close to it. Nearly all of the representatives who passed these bills would remain in office next year, so there is little chance that congressional support would abate any time soon.
Earlier this year, former US vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, called Xi a “thug” and repeatedly criticized him for holding a million Uighurs in concentration camps and for his actions in Hong Kong.
The Biden campaign has labeled China’s treatment of Uighurs “genocide” and its Web site says that “Joe will speak out against the internment camps in Xinjiang and hold the people and companies complicit in this appalling oppression accountable.” He also congratulated President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on her re-election and second inauguration.
Along with many Americans, Biden’s views have changed since he was Obama’s vice president. It is not just Trump who has woken up to the threat China poses to US friends in the Pacific: It is the US populace and government as a whole.
The Wall Street Journal wrote that regardless of the election result, “the US has turned a corner in its relations with China and is likely to maintain a harder line.”
Kurt Campbell, who was US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs under Obama, said that “there is a broad recognition in the Democratic Party that Trump was largely accurate in diagnosing China’s predatory practices.”
According to the Washington Post, Chinese experts believe that a Biden administration would be more dangerous for Beijing because he would “work with allies to target China, whereas Trump is destroying US alliances,” and he “might resort to more sophisticated and coordinated tactics against China.”
The Post concludes that there is little chance of a sharp change of course under a Biden administration.
Michele Flournoy, the presumptive secretary of defense under a Biden administration, has already discussed bolstering US engagement in Asia and strengthening ties with regional allies and partners. She suggests building the capability to “sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours” to deter China from invading Taiwan.
The US is an extremely divided country: There are few policy issues which Democrats and Republicans agree on. However, Americans and their leaders are united in their concern about an increasingly aggressive and authoritarian China.
Whether Trump or Biden occupies the White House next year, the next administration would continue pushing back against Beijing and standing up for Hong Kongers, Uighurs, Taiwanese and other marginalized groups.
It is unsurprising that activists have found a lodestar in Trump, thanks to his “tough on China” approach, but this is a long battle against the CCP that might span several presidential terms. For US support to last, it is crucial that this “toughness” remains bipartisan. Treating Trump as a savior or spreading conspiracy theories about Biden risks politicizing the struggle and turning it into a partisan affair.
Hong Kong protesters talk about not “cutting the mat” — a Chinese expression that calls for unity amidst political or ideological divisions. The same rationale applies to US politics. Bipartisan support for democracy in Asia continues to grow. Activists should encourage cooperation and partnership instead of creating a divide where none exists.
Gerald Brown is an analyst with Valiant Integrated Services, where he supports the US Department of Defense, focusing on nuclear deterrence and East Asian security. Sasha Ramani is a financial technology professional and strategy consultant, who has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University and works with Hong Kong activists around the world.
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