Mr. Kerry Goes to Communist China

In for a dime, in for a dollar. That’s the watchword as President Biden sends one lieutenant after another to try to appease the Chinese communists. The comrades are unhappy with us and threatening war over the Free Chinese republic on Taiwan. Secretary Blinken reacted by proposing better communications between our military and theirs. He got zilch. That’s when Mr. Biden sent over his treasury secretary.Secretary Yellen barely put up a fight. After being held in a meeting with Vice Premier He Lifeng for only five hours, she broke down and announced she would consider easing export controls on our technology. Why would she do that? China is building up a vast navy to confront us in the Pacific. We’re all for free trade, but why would we pick this moment to even think about easing export controls on technology to China?Now comes Mr. Kerry, who frames his trip as an urgent effort to push the communist regime toward meeting the left’s climate goals. Never mind that China has been since 2006 far and away the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, with no sign of changing course. Beijing has even won exemptions as a “developing country,” enabling it to run its factories full tilt while the West curtails its own growth in the interest of better weather.Mr. Kerry knows that Beijing will prove inflexible on pleas to curb its factories’ carbon exhaust, so he is instead nibbling around the margin of the problem. At “top of mind” for the climate tsar, CNN reports, are discussions on cutting China’s “emissions of super-polluting methane,” helping Beijing “move away from coal faster,” and addressing the scourge of “deforestation.” Such matters are hardly critical to the future of Sino-American relations.Mr. Kerry’s globetrotting climate diplomacy is also raising fears that he is “making climate deals or climate treaties that no one knows about,” our Lawrence Kudlow reports. The climate tsar refused to answer questions today before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Kudlow notes, suggesting that Mr. Kerry is “basically a rogue operation, and he is not held accountable to anybody.” No wonder China is eager to see him.The pretext for Mr. Kerry’s visit is the Biden drive “to revive relations that are at their lowest level in decades,” the AP says. Mr. Biden, though, overlooks the fact that Beijing is the cause of whatever tensions may prevail between China and America. Feature how, just before Ms. Yellen’s trip, Beijing, as a slap at Washington, announced export limits on key industrial metals. Now it turns out that China has been hacking our commerce secretary’s emails.Visits by America’s envoys after such behavior by China create an impression, as we have noted, of supplication. At the same time, Politico reports, Ms. Yellen hints that the Biden White House is weighing an executive order that would “impose limits on the investments of U.S. companies in China.” The idea is to “limit China’s ability to acquire technologies that could improve its military prowess,” the AP says.As Mr. Biden and his camarilla thrash around in search of a China policy, we’re reminded of the last president to think strategically in respect of Beijing, Donald Trump. He was attuned to how China was “cleaning our clock” by twisting the rules of global trade pacts and manipulating its currency to keep its exports artificially cheap. Yet Mr. Trump failed to address this adequately in the Congress, which is where the problem needs to be solved. Mr. Trump saw that what China fears most is an even playing field in the global war for economic supremacy. Without it, Beijing will keep an upper hand over America and the West. As for Mr. Kerry, he rationalizes his Beijing trip with the delusion that America and China can “build a constructive relationship.” Years after failing to grasp the true nature of the North Vietnamese regime, he clings to the notion that America can come to terms with communism.

Mr. Kerry Goes to Communist China

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