Time for social, economic distancing from China
Americans are practicing social distancing to stop the spread of the coronavirus that the Chinese regime’s lies and mismanagement unleashed onto the world. It may also be time to start practicing social — and economic — distancing from China, too.
China’s dictatorship bears ultimate responsibility for the pandemic lockdown crushing our economy. Axios reports that if China had acted three weeks earlier to contain the virus rather than suppress information about it, “the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.”
But the ensuing crisis has also exposed just how dependent we have become on China in key sectors of our economy. Case in point: In recent days, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua warned that if the Trump administration is not careful, China could ban pharmaceutical exports and plunge the United States “into the hell of a new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic.” The threat is real. China supplies more than 90% of antibiotics used here. It also produces many other drugs Americans depend on.
We also depend on
China for respirators, surgical masks and other protective gear doctors and nurses need to deal with the coronavirus. Since the pandemic began, China has ramped up production, but the government has taken over factories that make masks for U.S. companies such as 3M, hoarding the supply and leaving Americans at risk.
Our dependence on China is not just for medicine and devices to deal with this pandemic but also for technology that is critical to our long-term economic and security interests. Take the development of 5G networks, super-fast cellular technology that the Wall Street Journal reports will soon enable “a world of robotrun factories, remote surgery and driverless vehicles to power a ‘fourth industrial revolution.’” The market for 5G technology is dominated by Huawei, a company linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
It’s one thing to depend on China for cheap T-shirts. It’s another to depend on a brutal communist dictatorship for life-saving drugs and critical communications infrastructure.
So what is the solution? When it comes to pharmaceuticals, Sen. Tom Cotton,
R-Ark., said, “It’s time to pull America’s supply chains for life-saving medicine out of China,” and he has introduced legislation with Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., to do just that. When it comes to
5G, Attorney General William Barr has suggested the United States buy controlling stakes in Huawei’s only serious competitors — Nokia, based in Finland, and Ericsson, based in Sweden — and create an alternative to Chinese dominance of 5G.
More broadly, my American Enterprise Institute colleagues Derek Scissors and Dan Blumenthal have recommended the “United States should change course and begin cutting some of its economic ties with China.” This economic decoupling, they say, “should be limited to areas that are genuinely vital to national security, prosperity and democratic values.” Such actions may raise costs in the short term but are vital to our health and safety in the long term.
The Chinese government’s complicity in the coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity for the United States to reevaluate its economic ties to Beijing and develop alternative supply chains for medicines and technology. China’s lies about a virus have us hurtling toward a recession. It is time to immunize our economy and national security from dependence on a deceitful regime.