By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

Ever since President Richard Nixon signed the Shanghai Communique in 1972 that began the process of establishing relations between the United States and China, which was followed seven years later with the passage of the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations officially normalizing relations between the two adversaries.

Since these two historic events every American president has believed China will inevitably become more western and less authoritative, unfortunately, empirical evidence over the decades has shown this to be the opposite of what was promised.

Republicans and Democrats Fail to Understand China’s Aim

Democratic and Republican Administrations and prominent members of both political parties have failed to understand China’s real aim; the sad aspect is many former U.S. political leaders once leaving office have aligned their business interests which are closely aligned with China’s.

As the United States officially recognized the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from this point the U.S. began a “One China” policy by de-recognizing the Republic of China (ROC), and viewing Beijing as the sole legal government, with Taiwan given no consideration as a separate sovereign country.

However, one stipulation the United States didn’t give in to was the Chinese demand that it alone had sole sovereignty over Taiwan; the U.S. did in fact accept China’s position that Taiwan is integrally part of China.

As the years progressed China was able to gain international standing by joining a number of prestigious world organizations such as the IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, thus giving Beijing more opportunity for expansion in the global economic order.

China Granted Most Favored Trade Status

The greatest significant change in U.S.-China relations occurred in 2000, when the United States passed the U.S.-China Relations Act signed by President Bill Clinton, granting China permanent normal trade relations, essentially giving Beijing most favored nation status (MFN) as it later gained full membership into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.

President Clinton stated in support of this act, “Of course, trade with China will not in and of itself lead China to make all the choices we believe it should,” Clinton said. “But clearly, the more China opens its markets, the more it unleashes the power of economic freedom, the more likely it will be to liberate the human potential of its people.”

Clinton was proved wrong and China didn’t become less authoritative but became more authoritative as we would witness this play out over the years especially with the coronavirus and other global issues.

Democratic and Republican Administration Deceived by China 

Democratic and Republican administrations have been deceived into believing the rhetoric of China, with President George W. Bush followed the same policies as his predecessors.

In “Foreign Policy, Paul Blustein a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institute wrote that to gain entry to the Geneva-based trade body, China had agreed after lengthy negotiations to open its markets in ways that exceeded the requirements imposed on other nations, and Beijing also accepted that its trading partners could use several unusual mechanisms that could restrict the inflow of Chinese products into their markets. The assumption of China’s trading partners was that economic liberalization would put Beijing on a gradual path toward true free enterprise—if not fully unbridled then at least a form similar to that in, say, South Korea.

Blustein continued to state that starting around 2003 and continuing for a number of years thereafter, China kept the exchange rate of its currency pegged at artificially low levels, bestowing significant competitive advantages on Chinese exporters. That exacerbated a phenomenon that has come to be known as the “China shock,” which refers to the decimation of manufacturing companies in a number of U.S. blue-collar communities that were disproportionately affected by Chinese imports.

Current Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, who served as a national security adviser in the Bush administration was in the Oval Office when China’s vice premier promised President George W. Bush that his country would fix intellectual property theft. They didn’t, and the Bush administration let China get away with it.

China Steal Intellectual Properties

Under current Chinese President Xi Jinping accelerated its mistreatment of U.S. companies especially as it relates to intellectual property theft and forced transfer of American technology to China as U.S. companies just accepted this as standard way of doing business and had to adapt to this new reality if they ever wanted to enter the Chinese market.

Since joining the WTO, China agreed to decouple itself from its state owned enterprises, but instead under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) Beijing accelerated its control over its biggest corporate companies, giving it huge advantage over its rivals, especially foreign companies, including American.

As Mark Wu, a Harvard Law School professor, has written: ““Imagine if one U.S. government agency controlled General Electric, General Motors, Ford, Boeing, U.S. Steel, DuPont, AT&T, Verizon, Honeywell, and United Technologies. Furthermore, imagine this agency were not simply a passive shareholder, but also behaved as a private equity fund would with its holding companies. It could hire and fire management, deploy and transfer resources across holding companies, and generate synergies across its holdings. … In many ways, SASAC operates as other controlling shareholders do. It is happy to grant management operational autonomy so long as it delivers along the agreed-upon metric. The difference is that the metric is not pure profit, but rather the Chinese state’s interest, broadly defined.”

U.S. Companies Accept China’s Business Model 

American multi-national companies accepted this as a way to gain entrance into China, and understood this was a standard way of doing business, and dare not complain if they ever wanted to operate inside China.

Throughout this time frame China was allowed to devalue its currency, while western nations allowed their currencies to float on the international market, thus making Chinese products cheaper and imports more expensive.

Blustein even mentioned that “The general view was that we’re going to have bumps in the road with China, and they’ve just swallowed a huge elephant [i.e., WTO membership commitments], so we should be a little patient with them,” one high-ranking Bush administration policymaker told me. “Their policies will align with ours—not over months, but it’s going to happen. There was great confidence in that. And if you’re confident about the endpoint, it allows you to be more patient about missteps along the way.”

With U.S. administrations of both political parties failing to rein in China’s behavior as it pertains to its past and current commitments it only embolden Beijing to become more deceitful, duplicitous in honoring international agreements, the western nations especially the U.S. failed to understand China’s true aim is to dominate the world.

China Launches Made in China 2025

In 2015, Prime Minister Li Keqiang launched “Made in China”, (MIC 2025) which was set to modernize China’s industrial capacity in 10 strategic sectors, which would ensure that Beijing would dominate each sector thus securing China as a global powerhouse.

The MIC 2025 establishes nine priority tasks, including (1) improving manufacturing innovation, (2) integrating technology and industry, (3) strengthening the industrial base, (4) fostering Chinese brands, (5) enforcing green manufacturing, (6) promoting breakthroughs in 10 key sectors, (7) advancing restructuring of the manufacturing sector, (8) promoting service-oriented manufacturing and manufacturing-related service industries, and (9) internationalizing manufacturing.

The 10 sectors identified in the State Council’s 2015 plan are (1) next-generation information technology, (2) high-end numerical control machinery and robotics, (3) aerospace and aviation equipment, (4) maritime engineering equipment and high tech maritime vessel manufacturing, (5) advanced rail equipment, (6) energy-saving and new energy vehicles, (7) electrical equipment, (8) agricultural machinery and equipment, (9) new materials, and (10) biopharmaceuticals and high-performance medical devices. The plan also seeks to establish 40 manufacturing innovation centers by 2025.

As witnessed in 2003 with President Bush, Senator Sullivan saw history repeating itself in 2015, when Chinese President Xi Jinping promised President Obama that China wouldn’t steal U.S. intellectual properties through extensive cyber hacking and would cease to militarize the South China Sea; in both instance’s the U.S. caved and Beijing continued its efforts unabated.

With the passage of the U.S.-China Trade Relations Act in 2000, one that was supported by both Democrats and Republicans further accelerated the transfer and outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing to China, America is now witnessing first hand this short-sided policy.

China Hollows out U.S. Manufacturing with Washington’s Support

This act further hollowed out the manufacturing base of the United States, forcing millions of Americans to lose their jobs and set up the current situation the U.S. finds itself in struggling to cope with the lack of medical equipment to combat the coronavirus.

The coronavirus has opened the eyes of Americans who are now asking why almost all medical equipment needed to fight COVID-19 is made in China. Why is that 90% of prescription medication needed is made in China, and that around 80% of all generic medication comes from China.

The coronavirus should be a wake call for the United States, as China routinely acts in a deceitful, malicious and duplicitous manner and knew of the virus months before the international community, but let hundreds of thousands of infected individual’s travel abroad thus turning a local virus into a global pandemic.

The coronavirus has shown the duplicitous nature of the Chinese leadership, as they now control the World Health Organization (WHO) and its director who throughout this entire pandemic has followed the talking points of Beijing.

China try’s to Gain Influence in World Organizations

Just last month, China lost its bid to win the leadership of the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), this coming from a country that for decades has a stated policy of stealing the intellectual properties and forced technology transfer of various companies if they want to do business they must follow China’s rule, and we want Beijing to control the WIPO?

China has now seen its nationals rise to the top job in four U.N. agencies: Qu Dongyu at the Food and Agriculture Association (FAO); Fang Liu at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); Zhao Houlin at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU); and Li Yong at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

One needs to understand that China’s goal is to dominate and control these various international organizations into doing the bidding of Beijing and if they can’t do it one way they will accomplish it by economic coercion.

Just last year, China forgave the debt held by the African country of Cameroon, as it withdrew its candidate to head the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and threatened to cut off exports from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay if they failed to back China’s choice of Qu Dongyu who now leads the organization.

Even the Washington Post reported that China is the sole contributor to the U.N. Peace and Development Trust Fund, thus giving China four of the five steering committee seats. The trust funds advises the U.N. secretary general on which humanitarian project to fund, this gives Beijing ample opportunity to lobby for funding that backs its  Belt and Road international infrastructure investment program.

China Abuse of Human Rights

Even with the massive abuse of human rights in China, such as Beijing’s treatment of pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong, its placement of over one million Uyghur Muslims into concentration camps located in Xinjiang and autonomous territory in northwest China. Add in China’s massive surveillance placed on its own citizens often assisted by U.S. tech companies such as Google, IBM and others.

With China’s massive abuse of human rights it’s incredulous that China was appointed to a panel on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based human rights watchdog, first reported the development in Geneva, and reacted furiously to the move, saying it was “absurd and immoral” for the U.N. to allow the Chinese regime a key role in selecting human rights officials.

“Allowing China’s oppressive and inhumane regime to choose the world investigators on freedom of speech, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief,” said Hillel Neuer, U.N. Watch’s Executive Director said.

The U.S. needs a wake-up call, but many in the national security community such as President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice who last month criticized the Trump administration classification of the virus, as the Wuhan virus, is unacceptable and undermines global cooperation. Viruses can arise anywhere, Rice said, adding that “Wuhan virus” is “race-baiting” and “shameful.”

Rice continued, “It doesn’t serve us well, it doesn’t serve the objective of squelching the virus globally, to brand in nationalistic, or xenophobic, or racist terms. We all have to work together…”

Rice was never asked in the interview if she would lift the travel ban from China, and how China was cooperating when it kept silent on the virus allowing it to become a global pandemic.

Just last year in May 2019, presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden at a campaign rally stated that China wasn’t a threat to the United States, but later he had to walk it back, but does he truly believe China isn’t a threat to America or is he pandering to voters by not explaining his true intentions.

As the 2020 presidential campaign continues, one should be asking Biden about his support for U.S. China policy since joining the Senate in 1973, and since 1981, Biden was either ranking minority member or chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee which dealt with U.S. foreign policy toward China, before serving as vice president under President Barack Obama.

Additional questions should be asked of Biden on how his relationship’s and policies toward China while as senator and vice president have affected the United States, since he was Obama’s point person on China while serving as vice president.

Maybe the coronavirus will be a wakeup call on the actions by China, will America understand China will not become less authoritative; remember Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Karl Marx all had three versions of the same statement: “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”