The More Anger at China, the Worse for BidenReal Clear Politics, Apr 17, 2020, Charles Lipson
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Cozy, profitable, and possibly corrupt connections with the Chinese government are the last thing Americans want to hear about their politicians right now. Those voters are closeted at home, worried about their future, thanks to a virus that originated in Wuhan. They are mad as hell at Beijing for hiding what it knew, early on, about the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party knew something terrible was happening, and it refused to share honest information about it. It denied the virus could be spread by human contact, weeks after it knew patients were infecting health care workers, and it hid vital information about the origins and genetic structure of the virus. The World Health Organization spread that misinformation. Beijing’s deception cost lives and livelihoods. Americans are reminded of it every day they are home from work or school under quarantine.
This anger at China’s rulers is bad news for Joe Biden. Voters see China as a rising threat and its economic gains as coming out of American pockets. The Trump campaign was already pushing these issues. It won’t have any trouble tying them to Joe Biden and making his family the face of American elites who profit from their insider positions.
Beyond corruption, China poses important policy dilemmas for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. He has long been associated with cooperative, friendly policies toward China, seeing it mainly as a trade partner. Like many in Washington, he saw its economic growth as a net benefit—we can all get rich together—that outweighed national security concerns or job losses. Until recently, Biden was still saying China was hardly worth considering as an economic rival. As he put it during a 2019 campaign stop in Iowa:
"China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They can't even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the West. They can't figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. They’re not bad folks, folks. … They’re not competition for us."
Biden was quickly forced to backtrack. But his words are on tape and he’ll surely hear them replayed in ads this fall. He’ll also hear his attack on Trump as “xenophobic†for banning travel from China to limit the COVID-19 pandemic. Two months later, Biden took it all back. Too late.
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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/17/the_more_anger_at_china_the_worse_for_biden_142953.html
