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When Republican candidates gather in Milwaukee on Wednesday for the first debate of America's 2024 presidential race, China will in all probability receive only glancing attention. That's understandable: Americans are absorbed by domestic issues. Newsweek's sentiment tracker, conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, in July shows that only 4 percent of U.S. voters listed "Foreign Policy" as a "most important issue."
But ignoring China could prove to be a mistake. With one bold move, Xi Jinping can make himself the only issue of consequence in the campaign. After all, he can't stop talking about war, he's getting ready to fight it with nuclear weapons, and his regime is fast preparing to invade one of their neighbors. And the Communist Party has identified the United States as China's main enemy.
So where do the Republican hopefuls stand on China?
Free-trade Republicans support views that track some Chinese Communist Party positions, but the GOP base is focused on national security concerns when it comes to China, campaign rhetoric has been overwhelming anti-CCP. "I think China's an enemy," said Nikki Haley on CNBC's Squawk Box in late July.
The former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador gets an "A" for ditching nuance. China's People's Daily, the self-described "mouthpiece" of the Communist Party, declared a "people's war" on America in 2019, a signal for future hostile action. It's important, therefore, that candidates understand and speak out loud about the nature of the struggle with Chinese communism.
Someone who merits a "D" or perhaps an "F" on this score is exciting newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy. Like Haley and others, he wants to get American businesses out of China, and that's good, but on Taiwan, Ramaswamy shows little understanding of what's at stake.
"Xi Jinping should not mess with Taiwan until we have achieved semiconductor independence, until the end of my first term when I will lead us there," he told Hugh Hewitt on his radio show this month. "And after that, our commitments to Taiwan, our commitments to be willing to go to military conflict, will change after that, because that's rationally in our self-interest. That is honest. That is true. And that is credible."
Ramaswamy's idea is also shallow and misguided. For one thing, America is unlikely to gain "semiconductor independence" in just four years. More importantly, Ramaswamy does not understand Taiwan's critical importance to America, especially because the island has become the test of America's credibility after President Joe Biden's infamous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Letting China take Taiwan would be akin to Neville Chamberlain giving the Sudetenland to the Third Reich. Ramaswamy promotes an "America First" agenda, but allowing the world's most dangerous aggressor to seize such a prize would be catastrophic for America's standing in the world. His foreign policy inexperience shows.
Someone who has lots of experience is the clear frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, who will not be on the stage in Milwaukee. Trump has well-prepared position papers on China, as does the struggling candidate in second place, Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor in his July 31 "Declaration of Economic Independence" promised to "end our abusive relationship with the CCP." He has also talked about deterring China over Taiwan, and he will soon be giving a major China speech. DeSantis has a track record on China: In May, he signed a bill banning Chinese parties from buying land in his state.
Trump's track record on China is understandably longer. That record is not perfect, of course; China predictably violated its obligations in his Phase One trade deal of January 15, 2020, and Trump failed to hold the Chinese to their promises. And in early 2020, he allowed himself to be swayed by critics into not fully stopping arrivals from China.
Yet the 45th president's record on China is nothing short of historic. Most fundamentally, he turned his back on three decades of failed "engagement" policy, which not only put Communist Party interests above America's but also encouraged belligerent Chinese behavior by rewarding it.
The generous engagement policy, essentially appeasement with a new name and rationale, was a complete failure, but a string of presidents—Republicans and Democrats and liberals and conservatives—nonetheless pursued it. Incredibly, Biden is trying to go back to that approach now.
Trump on the other hand ended engagement and thereby restored common sense to America's China policy.
Among other things, Trump stopped the import of electrical equipment from China to protect America's grid. He imposed costs for the theft of U.S. intellectual property with his Section 301 tariffs. He ordered a ban on TikTok and WeChat, both used by the Communist Party to subvert America. Trump moved to end tech transfers to China's Huawei Technologies, and he tried to onshore pharmaceutical production. And his renegotiation of NAFTA, resulting in the USMCA agreement, naturally redirected trade flows from China to this hemisphere.
Trump also kept Beijing and its friends—Russia, North Korea, and Iran—in line. There were four years of peace while he sat in the Oval, a time of calm sandwiched between the serial aggression of bad actors during both the Obama and Biden years.
Yes, Republican candidates are mostly saying the right things about China now, but they will have to show the American people they can do better than Trump's four consequential years.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
