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Opinion | How the US can craft a bold and positive China agenda that benefits all Americans
- Revoke tariffs, revisit curbs on Chinese people, companies and media, engage constructively on human rights and international norms, fine-tune Taiwan policy – and ditch confrontation
- The US should not understate the benefits that constructive engagement brought to the American people
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Why you can trust SCMP
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As we await the Biden administration’s China policy review, I want to address where US China policy stands and propose actions the administration should take to craft a policy that benefits all Americans.
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I will not spend time rehashing the litany of bad, sometimes reprehensible, Chinese government decisions, policies and behaviours relating to its treatment of dissidents and people in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, its Taiwan policies or its unfair economic policies. I am on the record forcefully criticising those policies and attributing blame to the Chinese government for the state of the relationship from far before the Trump era.
Over the past four years, America’s China policy has been a disaster for average Americans and US-China relations. It has often been based on fallacies rather than facts.
The Biden administration needs to forcefully refute some of these foundational fictions, such as China interfered in the 2020 elections – it didn’t; Chinese pay the tariffs on imported goods – they don’t; or the bilateral trade deficit reflects the unfair trading relationship between China and the United States – it doesn’t.
It’s easy to criticise from the sidelines, so here is my positive agenda for a US policy towards China that will strengthen ties and benefit American families.
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