Obama’s China Hands “Advise” Trump To Stick with Obama’s Confrontational Policies

A team of mostly Obama-era China hands released a two-year study sponsored  by the Asia Society titled, “US Policy Toward China: Recommendation for a New Administration.” Unfortunately, they are all recommendations to continue Obama’s belligerent and confrontational policies, which Trump appears to be properly ignoring. Among the authors: Kurt Campbell (Obama’s Asia hand at State), Thomas Christensen (Campbell’s deputy at State), Evan Medairos (Obama’s NSC for Asia), and Andrew Nathan (one of the organizers of Color Revolution in China).

The report claims to be aimed at providing “levers to defend US interests and encourage China to act in ways that are not inimical to the interests of the United States and other countries.” It argues that Trump’s “highest priority” must be stopping North Korea’s nuclear program, and that “If China fails to respond and continues to frustrate efforts to pressure Pyongyang, the Trump administration must be prepared to impose secondary sanctions on Chinese banks, firms, and individuals still doing business with North Korea.”

They are still clinging to the dead horse of TPP, telling Trump to “seek whatever changes are needed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership to gain bipartisan ratification in Congress.”

They accuse China of “protectionism,” calling on Trump to “strengthen US laws to counter unfair trade and investment practices.”

Writing as if the Philippines’ dumping of Obama’s confrontation policy with China had never happened, they call on Trump to “reinforce international law” in regard to China’s “assertive actions in its maritime disputes in the South China Sea and East China Sea,” by “maintaining an active US naval and air presence in the area to underscore that it will respond resolutely to China’s use of force against the United States or its treaty allies.”

This gaggle of has-beens held a forum Tuesday to present the results of their “expertise,” but other than a recommendation to keep to the “one China” policy, most of what they had was the same old garbage. Charlene Barshefsky, a former trade representative under Clinton, was one of the worst. In her presentation, she complained that China was resorting to “mercantilism” a mortal sin for this free-trade fanatic. EIR’s Bill Jones pointed out that the American people had rejected “free trade” in the last election, and that we would probably see a bit of “mercantilism” coming out of the U.S. as well, again reflecting the renewed influence of Alexander Hamilton. As both countries adopt a similar policy, there is no reason that the two countries cannot negotiate on the basis of their mutual interest, Jones said.

Barshefsky replied that the United States has benefited greatly from free trade! Any economic problems that may exist, she continued, are simply a result of faulty “income distribution,” which is a social, not a trade, problem, she insisted. Jones also noted that the report was really a return to status quo ante, that is, before the rise of China as a major economic power. China, he said, would like a different relationship with the United States that reflects its new role in the world, but the U.S. has refused to recognize this change. Kurt Campbell complained that now and again China raises this issue, but creating a special relationship with China would “alienate” our other allies.

This disdainful attitude was also reflected in the response to another questioner, who asked about the Belt and Road. This time, Susan Shirk, also from the Clinton Administration, said that this was an initiative that reflected China’s desire to play a bigger role internationally, and since it benefited other countries, we should not try to stop it. Not exactly a warm embrace from a person who profiles herself as pro-China.

While the report lists a lot of people who contributed to it, some of whom were much better than the speakers present, not all of them have signed off on it, indicating that not all the China hands mentioned in the report are happy with all the conclusions.

Their Executive Summary concludes: as China “asserts its maritime and territorial interests in ways that threaten the interests of the United States and our allies and partners,” and as “China’s protectionist economic policies have led to an increasingly inequitable situation in trade and investment,” and as “Authoritarian government controls have caused the relationship between US and Chinese civil society and media organizations to deteriorate,” and “cyberhacking has opened a new front of antagonistic contention,” Trump had better follow Obama’s path to confrontation.