US-China ‘thaw’ didn’t last long, thanks to Biden

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing was touted by President Biden as the beginning of a long-overdue “thaw” in relations between the People’s Republic of China and the U.S. after they had approached Cold War levels of mutual hostility in recent months.

But the thaw didn’t last longer than Biden’s next alleged slip of the tongue.

At a fundraiser in California last week, he referred to Xi Jinping as a “dictator” who was “embarrassed” by supposed ignorance of the Chinese spy balloon incident. China’s political and diplomatic establishment immediately protested in irate terms, calling the U.S. president’s comment “absurd and irresponsible” and contrary to international norms. 

Why they should have taken such offense is a bit mystifying. The Marxist-Leninist state prides itself on such authoritarian concepts as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “democratic centralism,” and Xi repeatedly demonstrates that he has accumulated total political power and can exercise it at will. 

He summarily ordered a total lockdown of China during the pandemic one day, then months later abruptly reversed course to direct a complete opening of the country. In an equally cavalier manner, he used the high-visibility occasion of the 20th Party Congress to set up a public humiliation of his predecessor, Hu Jintao, by ordering his brusque physical removal from the prestigious gathering.

These and other Xi actions evoke some of Mao Zedong’s erratic behavior during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which created vast ideological, economic and social turmoil in China.

Even Mao’s successor, the putative Great Reformer Deng Xiaoping, manifested the Chinese Communist propensity for dramatic moves in one direction, followed by massive policy reversals.

When the Chinese people responded enthusiastically to Deng’s economic liberalization and the softening of Marxism and began practicing peaceful political expression, the hammer and sickle of Leninism came crashing down on their heads. Thirty-four years ago this month, Deng turned the tanks and guns of the People’s Liberation Army against the “liberated” Chinese people, crushing the peaceful gathering of students and workers in Tiananmen Square.

Given Chinese Communist history, Biden could well have responded to Beijing’s criticism by saying that he thought he was paying Xi a compliment by the standards of the CCP. After all, the dictatorial practices of Xi’s regime are in the grand tradition of totalitarian governance, whether of the Chinese, Soviet, North Korean or Cuban variety or the earlier rule of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Beijing might have bridled at Biden’s calling Xi a despot because it exposes the lie that it is a normal government, morally equal to those in the democratic West. The effort is especially directed at Europe, which Xi has tried to split off from its close, values-oriented relationship with America.

But “People’s Republic” no longer convinces the rest of the world of China’s democratic bona fides, any more than adding “Democratic” enhanced the North Korean regime’s legitimacy. Part of the pro-democracy information campaign is the predilection of Chinese leaders to use the title of “president,” a uniquely Western term for democratic leaders, rather than General Secretary, Paramount Leader, or Communist Party Chairman. George Washington was the first national leader to assume the title of president, and it has been emulated ever since by authentic democrats and by tyrants posing as such.

Xi and his declared no-limits strategic partner Vladimir Putin have added a new twist to the moral equivalence gambit. Their Joint Statement of Principles in February 2022, just weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, proclaimed, “It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one.” 

Under the Xi-Putin dictum, when the rulers deprive the people of a voice, the rulers themselves decide what to call their governing model. Xi and Putin have looked at what they have done and found it good, as have self-justifying tyrants elsewhere. As the Red Queen said in “Alice in Wonderland,” “When I use a word, it means whatever I say it means.”

That posture conveniently dispenses with the whole idea of universal, objective principles such as those enshrined in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the most recent international human rights doctrine, the Responsibility to Protect.

The new Xi-Putin Unilateral Declaration of Human Rights and Democracy, if accepted by other governments, would mark a total regression in international law and norms. This new moral relativism would enable regimes to get away with calling themselves democracies when they rule entirely in undemocratic and antidemocratic ways. It would also empower them to define away genocide, war crimes and other offenses against humanity, such as the basic international crime declared by the Nuremberg Tribunal, the war of aggression. Putin has already attempted that sleight of hand by calling his aggressive war against Ukraine a “special military operation.”  

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs labeled Biden’s comments “extremely absurd and irresponsible” without specifying which words were untrue — that Xi is a dictator, that he allegedly didn’t know that for over a week a Chinese spy balloon was traversing the North American continent hovering over America’s most sensitive strategic sites, or that he was embarrassed about being in the dark.

Biden seemed to be accepting at face value Beijing’s representation that the flight was an innocent mistake or a rogue espionage operation that was kept from the Paramount Leader. Being caught red-handed apparently was deemed more damaging by the communist regime than admitting that Xi was out of touch. 

If Biden was “naive” in giving Xi the benefit of the doubt, he has now turned Xi’s professed ignorance of the event against him and laudably refuses to retract his characterization of Xi’s authoritarianism, “just not something I’m going to change very much.” An all-powerful dictator might be even more embarrassed at being mocked by a puny democrat.

Putting the best face on it, Biden may have gained some gamesmanship points from the balloon incident. But the bottom line is that China has reaped untold quantities of critical U.S. national security secrets — and the Biden administration owes the American public a complete accounting.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA