via strategypage:
President Joe Biden’s incoming secretary of state, Antony Blinken, agrees former President Donald Trump’s administration got communist China right.
During his Jan. 19 Senate confirmation hearing, Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China. I disagree very much with the way that he went about it in a number of areas, but the basic principle was the right one. And I think that that’s actually helpful to our foreign policy.”
But Hunter Biden’s China investment scandal lurks in the diplomatic and criminal background.
The mainstream media and social media magnates who stifled preelection public examination of the Biden family’s involvement in what looks like and smells like a multimillion-dollar political payoff racket may have gotten Joe Biden elected.
However, until the Biden-China scandal is fully vetted, we won’t know if Beijing has inside information (blackmail leverage) that might soften Trump’s tougher approach.
Knowing matters. Given China’s documented record of pervasive spying, global intellectual property theft, a huge military expansion program, imperialist seizure of territory, bullying of neighbors, violations of treaty commitments, police-state terror and genocide of Muslim Uighurs, a softer approach at this moment in history ultimately puts American security at risk.
Read the whole thing. (bumped)
h/t AB