Jessica Chen Weiss
Washington faces growing criticism for pursuing open-ended competition with China without defining what success would look like. Even as China’s coercive capabilities and threatening behavior have rightly focused U.S. attention on the risks to American interests, the absence of clear metrics for success leaves the door open for partisan aspersions of the Biden administration’s approach. The administration’s defenders, meanwhile, rebuff these attacks by pointing out that its policies align with a broad consensus about the challenge China poses and the steps necessary to counter it.
To be sure, both Democratic and Republican politicians have engaged in the typical campaign ploy of sounding tough on China. During their recent debate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris accused former President Donald Trump of selling out American interests and praising Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Trump erroneously claimed that “China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars” under his administration’s tariffs (which the Biden administration has expanded). Meanwhile, the drumbeat of hyperbolic rhetoric and congressional hearings on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party has blurred the line between legitimate commercial, scientific, and educational pursuits involving Chinese entities and those that pose unacceptable security risks or invite other vulnerabilities. Fearing that what might have been welcome yesterday could be deemed disloyal today, companies, researchers, and students have pulled back from many of the activities that have underpinned U.S. economic and scientific leadership.
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