Years from now, 2022 may be remembered as the time America finally listened to the warning signs and began seriously considering confronting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The president and Congress are acting with rare vigor, implementing new policies to hold the Chinese government accountable for its genocide of the Uyghur people, cracking down on rampant CCP-backed espionage in the semiconductor sector, and taking a step toward providing the military support necessary to ensure that the democratic country of Taiwan can continue to govern itself. Each shift represents a culmination of significant effort and a growing willingness in the halls of power in Washington to see the CCP as the threat to democracy, security, and human rights that it is.
This moment is a turning point. Not long ago, members of Congress openly professed to believe that closer economic ties to China might drive its regime to liberalize and eventually democratize. In doing so, they bought into the same fatally flawed thinking that led IBM’s then-CEO, Thomas Watson Sr., to travel to Nazi Germany in 1937 and proclaim the cause of “world peace through world trade.” It seems alien now, but until not long ago that view dominated our policymakers’ approach to China, so much so that after President Clinton signed an agreement paving the way for China to join the World Trade Organization, he said confidently that it would create a China that “contributes to the stability of Asia, that is open to the world, [and] that upholds the rule of law at home and abroad.”
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