Opinion | Biden wants a ‘thaw’ with China. What would that take?

Emily de La Bruyère is co-founder of Horizon Advisory and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies with a focus on China policy.

The Chinese Communist Party follows a deliberate, consistent strategy toward the United States that has not changed — and will not anytime soon. That strategy’s overarching goal is to overtake the United States and project power internationally. The current confrontation between America and China is because of this fundamental reality, not any of Washington’s policies.

What, then, would a thaw look like? It would mean that the United States, having concluded that confrontation is not worth it, would decide to back down from the defense of its interests.

In more concrete terms, this would entail a reversion to the situation that prevailed in the first 15 years of this century. In 2001, Beijing joined the World Trade Organization, allowing it to reap the benefits of a place in the free, liberal global market. For the decade and a half that followed, the Chinese Communist Party weaponized that place and broke the system’s rules with few, if any, repercussions. Beijing subsidized its state champions, dumped their goods, stole intellectual property, used economic ties to force geopolitical questions, and conducted a genocide at home. In the process, Beijing developed a chokehold over the U.S. economic and political systems — such that even today, with bipartisan recognition of China’s threat and a newly aggressive Beijing, competitive action struggles to keep pace with rhetoric and calls for a thaw risk prevailing.

All of this took place in an environment of (relatively) cordial U.S.-China relations because Washington simply wasn’t paying attention — or didn’t care.

Beijing’s strategy won’t change. Nor will the fundamental contradiction between U.S. and Chinese interests. The question is whether Washington is willing to face down that contradiction. Today, a thaw in name would be appeasement in practice.