Just over a week into his 2020 run, Joe Biden is already putting his foot in his mouth by telling Americans not to worry about China.
At an Iowa rally last week, the former veep went after a straw man: “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” he said, noting weaknesses like endemic corruption and uneven economic development.
Then he summed up with a couple of whoppers: “They’re not bad folks,” and “they’re not competition for us.”
Huh? With the world’s second-largest economy, Beijing is aggressively looking to dominate global markets — stealing intellectual property wherever it can and bribing and bullying other nations with its Belt and Road program to lock up markets across the globe, among other cheats.
As for “not bad folks”: Uncle Joe should tell that to the 1 million Uighurs that China’s government has sent to re-education camps. Or to the countless other citizens arrested and tortured for dissent.
Beijing is also busy making Big Brother a 21st century reality. Biden should know that, since his son Hunter is an investor in a firm, Bohai Harvest RST, that’s deeply involved in Face++ — a mobile-phone app that Beijing built to spy on its own public.
Indeed, the younger Biden has long been in deep with China’s “not bad” elite, as Peter Schweizer revealed in his book “Secret Empires.” Notably, Hunter’s private-equity firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, swung a $1.5 billion investment deal with the state-owned Bank of China even as his then-vice-president dad was engaged in high-end diplomacy with Beijing.
Hmm. Maybe Joe Biden just doesn’t dare think about just what “bad folks” China’s rulers really are.
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