Dems’ Gifts to China
PRESIDENT Joe Biden claims that his horribly botched Afghan exit will allow the United States to focus on rival China and “shore up American competitiveness.”
Don’t believe it. Truth is, Democrats are pushing policies that would cripple US competitiveness. China’s leaders must be high-fiving each other as they watch Team Biden sabotage America’s future economic growth.
For starters, Beijing couldn’t be happier about the American left’s Green New Deal. It would deliver plenty of green — money, that is — to China, while saddling the US economy with higher energy costs.
Electric-powered cars will depend on batteries made in — you guessed it — China. The People’s Republic already controls access to 80 percent of the rare minerals used to produce those batteries, and that is likely to increase, because China is already making overtures to the Taliban for rights to Afghanistan’s vast rare-mineral deposits.
Democrats want to mandate shifting from fossil fuels to renewables like solar. That’s good news for China, which is the largest supplier of polysilicon solar panels.
China is also the world’s largest polluter. Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, was in China last week begging the Communist regime to stop building coal-fired energy plants. Kerry was spinning his wheels. China’s top minister for environmental issues wouldn’t even bother to meet in person with him; Kerry had to settle for a Zoom call.
On the economic front, congressional Democrats are trying to ram through corporate tax hikes that would make America’s combined state and federal corporate-tax burden the highest in the developed world, according to the Tax Foundation. Tax hikes will motivate companies to relocate elsewhere. That’s more good news for China, which aims to outpace US growth by 2035
And out-educate America, too. While China is cracking down on students who waste time on video games, America’s racial-equity warriors are banning advancedplacement math, competitive entrance exams and school honor rolls. Not that all Americans would want their government to wield power over how kids spend out-ofschool time. But they also don’t want their children discouraged from pursuing excellence. That’s a recipe for personal failure and national decline.
Yet Oregon is scrapping requirements that high-school students pass tests in reading, writing and math to graduate. The rationale is that minority students don’t test well. In Virginia and California, the educational establishment is trying to eliminate accelerated math until 11th grade. As one California father protested, “You don’t lift people by bringing other people down.”
And you don’t win a global competition by shrinking your pool of talented, highly educated people.
A lesson China knows well. The Communists tried to artificially impose equality during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. College-entrance exams were abolished, and educational institutions were converted into brainwashing factories. The economy collapsed, because an entire generation had been taught nothing and could do nothing. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping reversed course, restoring meritocracy in the educational system. Now the American left is attempting its own cultural revolution.
Biden told a joint session of Congress in April that “we’re in a competition with China,” and China “is closing in fast.” Yet most Democratic pols act oblivious to the damaging impact of their tax hikes, education agenda and green-energy policies on the US-China rivalry.
The US Senate passed a bipartisan bill in June that purports to address the China threat by funding more research and incentivizing domestic manufacture of semiconductors. The bill is stalled in the House, however. But even if it reaches the president’s desk, the benefits would be miniscule compared to the overall economic injury caused by the Democratic Party’s frontal assaults on educational merit, fossil fuels and tax competitiveness. Like offering a sip of water to someone you’re beating to a pulp.
Americans shouldn’t be fooled by Biden’s tough talk about increasing competitiveness with China. It’s not going to happen so long as he kowtows to the tax-hiking, anti-merit, radical environmentalists in his party. The left’s agenda is a gift to China on a silver platter.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.