Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had nothing to say about China during the first press interview of their 2024 campaign.
The top foreign policy issue facing the United States was also largely ignored during Harris’ acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Harris made only a single reference to China during the speech, a vague pledge to ensure that “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st Century.”
CNN’s failure to bring up China during the interview – at least during the roughly 18 minutes of footage the public has been allowed to see – is troubling given how much China has been in the news lately.
On the day of Harris’ interview, Reuters published a report based on patent office data requested by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party that showed China-based entities have filed hundreds of patents using American taxpayer-funded research, including research from American agencies expressly forbidden to share such information with China.
The patent issue is urgently relevant because the United States and China are currently negotiating the extension of a science and technology-sharing agreement that was first ratified in the 1970s. Critics are concerned China is benefiting far more from this agreement than the United States.
Last week, the U.S. Justice Department filed the latest in a series of charges against Chinese dissidents living in the United States who were secretly recruited as spies by the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
China’s economy is in turmoil, which makes the authoritarian government even more dangerous and opportunistic than usual. Youth unemployment is soaring in China, which could be a prelude to civil unrest. Communist regimes do not deal gently with restless civilians.
China is playing games with the rare-earth minerals market – and those minerals are vital to both American consumer and military technology.
The Biden-Harris administration’s green energy policies have given China more leverage than ever over America’s economy, and the delusional Green New Deal supported by Harris would make that problem worse by an order of magnitude. Responsible media organizations should be asking Harris about policies that will make America even more helplessly dependent on mining and refining industries that are utterly dominated by Beijing.
China continues to be a world leader in repressive censorship – and, unfortunately, a good deal of the Western world appears to be following their example. The West’s understanding of “free speech,” including its highly politicized crusade against “disinformation,” is much closer to China’s definition of speech than it was ten years ago. It is arguably safer to express dissident views online in China than in the United Kingdom today. This is a topic American presidential candidates should be expected to address cogently.
China continues to menace Taiwan, but the new regional flashpoint is mounting Chinese aggression against another vital U.S. ally, the Philippines. The United States government appears to be running on autopilot, but whoever is making foreign policy at the moment has offered to escort Philippine resupply missions to the disputed Spratly Islands to protect them against Chinese attacks.
China is also escalating its strongarm tactics against Japan and it has exploited the leadership vacuum in the Biden White House by pushing harder for the U.S. to accept Beijing’s agenda. It is possible that the United States could be drawn into a military confrontation in the South China Sea before the November election.
CNN’s failure to press Harris on China policy is all the more puzzling because she insisted on conducting her first interview alongside her running mate Tim Walz, who has spent a disturbing amount of time in Communist China over the years.
Walz has openly praised the Chinese Communist system to American students, presented himself as an expert on China policy, and argued China is not a true adversary of the United States. At the very least, his judgment on China is highly questionable, but CNN had no questions about it.
