Taiwan Flails as Biden Courts China

U.S. presidential election keeps getting more unpredictable as DC monoparty sends money abroad

On Fox News: Biden courts Beijing and the monoparty establishment wants to throw more money at Ukraine. Video: https://fxn.ws/49IqNJ7

On “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News, I discussed President Biden’s embarrassing failure of a summit with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in San Francisco. I argued that Biden failed to achieve anything real and made harmful concessions on military use of artificial intelligence, while neglecting even to mention human rights issues like imprisoned dissident Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong or thousands of others in Beijing’s gulags who personify the regime’s true nature. 

This Christmas will be pro-democracy Hong Kong publisher and Catholic icon Jimmy Lai’s third in a Chinese jail. Why can’t President Biden raise his plight or that of other political prisoners in China? Jimmy told the BBC before his arrest: “If they can induce fear in you, that's the cheapest way to control you and the most effective way and they know it. The only way to defeat the way of intimidation is to face up to fear and don't let it frighten you."

I also differed with a lawyer from Trump’s State Department over throwing more good money after bad at Ukraine, which is losing and involves no vital U.S. interests. Please take a look at video above if you’re interested. 

Simon and Whiton

Meanwhile on Simon and Whiton, Mark and I discussed the latest with the U.S. presidential election and China’s economic tailspin plus the lamentable state of Taiwan. Video above and talking points (with my personal spin) below. 

• Taiwan’s ruling DPP party is bad on economics, and has little vision or promise.

• Aside from the soon-to-be-boring-again semiconductor industry, Taiwan’s economy is stagnant. 

• Its financial system is third rate. The last American bank (Citi) just split. The ruling DPP is good on opposing Beijing but sees itself as part of the international Left and has no vision aside from artsy woke piffle. 

• It thinks it has great support in the USA but doesn’t.

• The DPP would still crush the corrupt pro-Beijing KMT party, but an opposition alliance not headlined by the KMT could win.

• In accepting “free” weapons from Washington for the first time in recent history instead of paying for its own arms as it has for decades, Taiwan has risekd undermining its status with American voters tired of underwriting foreign liabilities.

• This development plus Taipei’s ongoing footsie with establishment mavens who always eventually bend to China (e.g., the business and political elite who just feted Xi Jinping in San Francisco) risk putting Taiwan in the same category as Ukraine. 

• Average American voters won’t accept another unfunded liability, especially if it could draw us into general war with a major power. Previous occupants of this liability category include Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Vietnam. They’re all doing fine, right?

• Despite verbiage and platitudes to the contrary, successive U.S. administrations of both parties have overseen the decline of US power in the Pacific since its post-Vietnam peak in 1987. 

• Chairman Mike Gallagher of the House China Committee just revealed we don’t even have adequate missile defenses at our most important Western Pacific bases. We’re basically asking for another Pearl Harbor from China.

• The feckless DC monoparty has blown ~$120 billion resisting Russia’s war with Russia junior—in which no U.S. vital interests are on the line—while neglecting the Pacific (and increasing the Iran threat). Will any president or Congress reverse this trend, especially with fiscal crisis on the horizon, or is it time to accept that our foreign policy establishment will remain too focused on Europe and backwaters like Syria and Iraq to deter war in the Pacific or prevent Chinese hegemony in the Western Pacific?

• The US cannot win a fight against China or prevent Chinese hegemony without a much more focused military and stronger allies.