Chinese Vice President's Instructive Debates

When CBS moderators asked Governor Walz about deviations regarding his story of staying in China during the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the video feed throughout China turned into an error screen. This error was, of course, the latest example of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship silencing speech on sensitive topics in China.

In some ways, the CCP's censorship is a teachable moment for Americans. We tend to take the democratic process and regular, free and fair elections for granted, but the world's most powerful authoritarians take them extremely seriously and feel threatened by them. For the candidates, the discussion on Tiananmen Square was just an incidental part of the broader context of the debate. For the CCP, this triggered its broadcast kill switch.

On another level, however, the current situation signals a deeper problem, not for China, but for America. The Republican and Democratic candidates for president and vice president have debated three times since late June. In none of these national discussions did the moderators ask any questions about the Chinese Communist Party and the threat it poses to American voters.

That's not to say the candidates didn't mention Beijing. They cited China more than 30 times during the three debates combined and often used the issue to attack each other. In his month of June debate Along with President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump warned that China would own us if Biden was re-elected. On another occasion, Trump accused Biden of being a Manchurian candidate for Beijing. In her debate With Trump as the new Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris criticized Trump for selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military. Both Harris And Waltz criticized Trump's tariffs against China.

To be fair to the candidates, debates are not times to educate people about politics, but rather opportunities to define the discourse and define one's opponent. Despite this, Xi Jinping, the CCP general secretary, is dumping jet fuel from the Indo-Pacific to the United States. The People's Liberation Army is increasingly belligerent towards friends like Taiwanallies like the Philippinesand strategic partners like India.

In the words of the new NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, Beijing is refuel Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine. The CCP extended an essential economic lifeline for the mullahs of Tehran in 2021 that has economically stabilized the regime. More recently, the PRC supported Iran and its proxies following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. In America, Beijing has infiltrated state capitals with its malign influence to great effect. Even more dangerous is TikTok, the CCP's Trojan horse on the phones of 170 million Americans that Xi can use. enable sow disinformation and politically divide Americans.

Xi Jinping's ambition to create a Marxist-inspired world order (or, as he puts it, world order) eclipses these threats. Community of Common Destiny for All Humanity) to supplant America as the world's superpower. According to key indicators, the mobilization of reservists, adjustments to the wartime penal code, increased military recruitment and the construction of air raid shelters, the CCP is preparation the Chinese people to go to war to destroy the world that America and its allies have built. All that remains is for Xi to light the match.

This reality portends a dangerous future for Americans. It calls into question decades of Washington's approach to China, during which Democratic and Republican policymakers bet that America could change China politically by engaging with it economically and diplomatic. Asset And Biden have rightly started to move away from engagement during their respective presidencies. But no American president has made the case to voters that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to recreate the glory days of Chinese imperialism at the expense of American interests. No presidential candidate has prepared Americans for the dangers we are hurtling toward. No American leader has urged Americans to win a new Cold War in order to avoid a hot war.

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Without such leadership, America is unlikely to dissuade the CCP from testing our resolve.

As former Congressman Mike Gallagher said put it on earlier this year, the only thing that can get us there in peacetime is, in reality, transcendent presidential leadership. Let us hope that such leadership emerges, whatever the outcome in November.

Michael Sobolik is a senior fellow on Indo-Pacific security at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. He is also the author of Countering the great Chinese game: a strategy for American domination. Follow him on @michaelsobolik.