China is a Serious Issue, Not a Campaign Meme – By Kevin Baron (Defense One) / May 20 2020
‘Beijing Biden’ is a baseless political smear, trivializing one of America’s most complicated challenges.
“China, China, China.” One long year ago, Patrick Shanahan, then acting defense secretary, was announcing his top priorities for the Pentagon. It was a message largely welcomed by the national security and intelligence communities, and one that seemed to resonate with Americans and their allies. Then came the coronavirus, and things took a weird turn. While it would be great if American presidential campaigns, partisans, and their political mouthpieces took Beijing more seriously as a threat to Western influence, power, and freedom, something worse has happened. China has become a meme.
Have you heard of ‘Beijing Biden?’ It’s a relatively new smear campaign being shouted by the Trump reelection campaign, gleefully amplified by the president and his son, and gaining steam across the voter landscape. Trump’s super PAC, American First, launched a campaign on the phrase last month, set up a website at BeijingBiden.com, and aired $10 million in ads to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
It’s a clever counterplay to the criticism of President Donald Trump as soft on China and how he was trying to deflect criticism of his response to the coronavirus pandemic onto China. The premise seems to be that painting Biden as cozy to China follows the right’s attempts to convince voters that Biden and his son Hunter were too cozy with another foreign regime, in Ukraine. It’s Biden, not Trump, that American voters should be rejecting, they argue.
Trump’s critics — including President Barack Obama’s former national security advisor, Susan Rice, in a New York Times editorial on Tuesday — took the bait and are fighting back, defending Biden’s record on China and accusing the president of mishandling and personally “kowtowing” (of course) to Xi Jinping, China’s president for life.
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