Without the Americans negating China's problematic regional geography and so empowering it on the global stage, China simply lacks the military heft to impose its will on Australia, much less India or Saudi Arabia or Brazil or Germany or the United States–all countries China needs access to if it is to maintain its position. Which leads us to the most galling, inconvenient truth for the Chinese nation. Everything about its modern history – the defeat of the Japanese, national unification and consolidation under Mao, the turning of the tide against the Soviet Union, its bursting onto the global scene as a major economic player–none of it would have happened without American strategic sponsorship. None of it is sustainable without ongoing American involvement. And the Americans are simply done. With China. With the world. With all of it. And so, China begins its rage against the dying of the light. Which brings us back to Branstad. Managing relations between an administration as egocentric as Trump's and a country as egocentric as China would have been a tough job regardless, but doing so during a period when America is disengaging and China is grappling with the consequences of that disengagement was probably always going to be a thankless task. Yet if anyone was going to eke out any crumbs of success, it was going to be Branstad. Branstad was no neophyte. First elected governor of Iowa at the tender age of 36, he went on to serve six terms, making him the longest-serving governor in American history. Unlike senators and real estate marketing magnates, governors actually have to deal with people, manage things and establish compromises. In a word, governors…govern. Branstad, is particularly well-known among the non-Twitter side of American politics for his educational reforms which have consistently put Iowan students at or near the top of most measures. (Full disclosure: I'm from Iowa, was a student there during Branstad's first, second and third terms, and worked for the Iowa legislature during his fourth.) Branstad was no hawk. He has known Chairman Xi in a personal capacity since their first meeting back in 1985 when Xi visited Iowa as part of an agricultural delegation. Branstad and Xi have both often commented on their friendship, a friendship grounded in their respective polities' interactions: Iowa is America's largest pork producing state, and China is the world's most enthusiastic pork consumer. Branstad was no dove. He was one of Trump's first appointees (and, incidentally, one widely supported on both sides of the American political aisle). His connection to Xi gave Team Trump excellent access within Beijing when pushing on hard-knuckle issues related to trade or intellectual property or navigation rights or Hong Kong. Branstad was not simply the very best ambassador America had to offer as envoy to Beijing, he may well have been the only person who could have salvaged the American-Chinese relationship these past few years, no matter who sat in the White House. The question, of course, is what is next? On the American side things will get harsher, no matter what occurs with national elections in November. It is impossible to think someone as pragmatic and proper as Branstad would have released the op-ed without President Trump's personal knowledge and green lighting. After all, the letter has already been endorsed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and posted on the State Department's website for all to read. At its core, Branstad's op-ed lays bare something that wasn't exactly a well-hidden secret: that Chairman Xi has been–personally, directly, intentionally and repeatedly–lying to the Trump administration for years on issues both economic and strategic. It stretches the imagination to think that with the cat not so much out of the bag as prancing on the countertop that Trump will treat Xi as anything less than something who has tried to make him look the fool. Cue your imagination for possible retaliations. Nor would a Biden-Harris administration treat China much better. For the past two years, Biden has been far more critical of China on issues economic, cultural, trade, military, and strategic than anything that's ever come out of Trump's Twitter account, going so far as to personally and explicitly label Xi a "thug". As a former attorney general (aka friend-of-cops), Kamala Harris' diction regarding Xi has been somewhat less…polite. Branstad's op-ed is not a condemnation of a recent Chinese policy shift, but instead an admission that relations are simply impossible unless and until there is a Chinese policy shift. Realizing that their future likely holds strategic, economic and national oblivion, the Chinese Communist Party–led and personified by Chairman Xi Jinping–has degenerated China into a sort of nationalist fascism that brooks no internal challenge whether racial or political or cultural. One that denies any external influence aside from foreign money that helps employ Chinese citizenry (which in turn bolsters the CCP's political legitimacy). It has already become so intense as to border on the comical. China has already closed up to the point that domestic media coverage of Disney's new theatrical release of Mulan–meant to be a celebration of Chinese culture–is now banned in China because outsiders are lambasting Disney for kowtowing to Beijing. It isn't that things that have been in the news ranging from Huawei to Hong Kong to Xinjiang don't matter–they do–but instead that all of them are symptoms of much deeper problems that the CCP simply lacks capacity to address. Summed up, the CCP and Chairman Xi are desperate. And if we really are approaching China's witching hour, then all the normal niceties of diplomacy and global trade simply aren't as important as they once were. Xi sees it as high time to lock down everything and hunker down for the long haul. Foreigners be damned. And forewarned.
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