Kerby Anderson

How will the new administration deal with the China challenge? We can get some perspective from Senator Marco Rubio’s book, Decades of Decadence. He will soon be confirmed as Secretary of State. He exposes China’s attacks on four key elements of American strength: good local jobs, stable families, geographical communities, and a sovereign nation that serves as a beacon of freedom and prosperity.

He explained in his book that the U.S. and other Western countries made the false assumption that nation states would be more focused on economic interests and therefore would not go to war with each other. Politicians started making decisions that benefited this system and stopped making decisions about what was good for America. This empowered China, and now we are heavily dependent upon them for all sorts of essential goods.

We assumed countries would be doing what was good for the global economy and international order. Senator Rubio explained in my radio interview that “China didn’t get that memo, and Russia didn’t get that memo, and Iran didn’t get that memo, and North Korea didn’t get that memo.” Many countries have been operating in their national interest. Bringing China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) didn’t change China. It changed America.

We also need to address the myth that Chinese aggression is due to tensions between China and America that were created by U.S. foreign policy. It was convenient to blame Donald Trump for Chinese aggression. That argument no longer works. For the last four years we have seen the feckless Biden foreign policy. China has become more aggressive, not less. Trump wasn’t the problem. Chinese global intentions are the reason for its actions.

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio seem ready to face the daunting challenge of an overly aggressive China. They need your prayers.