Editor’s note for Monday, July 25, 2022

My thoughts today:

“Being tough on China” has been the default position of American presidential candidates since 1992, when Bill Clinton accused his incumbent rival, George H.W. Bush, of “coddling the butchers of Beijing.” Bush’s son George W. Bush, in turn, promised to take off the kid gloves in dealing with Beijing when campaigning for his 2000 election. And it’s been that way in U.S. politics ever since then: Candidates from both parties in presidential and other elections love to talk up their macho Beijing-bashing credentials, no matter what they actually intend to do.

It’s now the same in the U.K. The two people left in the running to become prime minister after Boris Johnson’s ignominious resignation are Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.

Truss has been loudly hawkish on China for some time already, but Sunak previously said, per Beijing to Britain, that he wanted a “‘mature and balanced relationship’ with Beijing, and has previously complained that the debate around China ‘lacks nuance.’” But Sunak has changed his tone. This morning, he tweeted, “China and the Chinese Communist Party represent the largest threat to Britain and the world’s security and prosperity this century,” together with a thread on how he “will face down China.”

I am often in favor of tough words, and actions, for China, as regular readers know, and sometimes complain. But the kind of performative chest beating that Sunak is engaged in has failed America’s presidents since Bill Clinton, and it looks even worse coming from London.

Instead, it only serves to reinforce Chinese Communist Party propaganda that suggests that the West, faced with its inexorable decline and looking for excuses, is lashing out at a China that it can no longer boss around.

I don’t actually think the end of the West is nigh, but this kind of bleating from Sunak and Truss (and Trump and Biden) can sure make it seem that way.

Our word of the day is the Wentian (问天 wèntiān, “quest for the heavens”), the 23-ton laboratory module that docked with and became part of China’s Tiangong (天宫 tiāngōng, “heavenly palace”) space station earlier today.