Why Trump’s Blame-China Strategy Is Dangerous and Schizophrenic - Vanity Fair

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It also wasn’t China that caused us to use up most of the federal stockpile of N95 masks in 2009 without ever replenishing it, either under the previous White House or this one. It wasn’t China that led cable news, with the exception of Tucker Carlson, to all but ignore the coronavirus until late February. It wasn’t China that caused so many pundits to lecture people about why the familiar seasonal flu was a greater threat than a lethal new virus or why our fear was indicative of human irrationality. It wasn’t China that told health experts to attack Trump’s travel bans as pointless and xenophobic. It wasn’t China that made Bill de Blasio tell New Yorkers in early March that they should “get out on the town despite Coronavirus.” It wasn’t China that told people, “Stop wearing face masks.” It wasn’t China that insisted on being the producer of so many of our crucial medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. This epidemic is our debacle now.

But fine: Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that Beijing really is to blame for all of these things, and more. Would that be a greenlight to start bashing away at it? We might want to remember that—good or evil, friend or foe—China has become powerful. It has allies and trade arrangements all over the world, and the United States cannot count on the world to be on its side if there’s acrimony between Washington and Beijing. China has considerable military capabilities, especially on the cyber front. Most important, it has economic power. As much as it relies on the United States as a customer, the United States relies on China as a producer. We’re not going to replace our supply chains overnight, and in the meantime we’ll still want lifesaving drugs and equipment.

That we extricate ourselves from such a fix is an aim that many would support. But if you want to break out of jail, you do it quietly. You don’t yell that you’re going to kick the jailer’s ass. Playing a long game on the world stage requires patience and cunning. Just ask China. You don’t make a scene, and, unless you want war, you don’t force players to defend their honor. Losing face on the world stage can weaken a leader irreparably, and people everywhere—but especially in China—will do crazy things to avoid it. To his credit, Trump up until now, has kept up a friendly front toward China’s leader, Xi Jinping, but behind the scenes there are hints of a new and confrontational course of action in the making. God help us if Trump signs onto it.

Most galling about all the China-bashing is how unserious it is. A genuine decoupling from China’s economy requires hard decisions, and only the fewest of our elected officials seem prepared to make them. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has devoted lots of resources to lobbying for unhindered trade with China. Republican billionaires Charles Koch and David Koch have been spending fortunes on pushing the GOP away from non-free-trade heresies. And Democrats, at this point, seem to dislike tariffs even more than establishment Republicans, at least according to polling by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. So the entanglement isn’t about to go away soon. Earlier in this article, I suggested that the worst approach we could take to our rivalry with China would be to divorce it amid incendiary scapegoating. But an even worse approach would be to stay married amid incendiary scapegoating. This White House, and this GOP, are about to take us all to that future, and Democrats, afraid of looking soft, are unlikely to stand in the way. So, as always, trotting out the old “I know the bad guy is bad, but don’t get us all killed” formula feels futile. But it’s too important not to try.

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Why Trump’s Blame-China Strategy Is Dangerous and Schizophrenic - Vanity Fair

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