{"id":1588177,"date":"2022-08-04T08:02:17","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T12:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1588177"},"modified":"2022-08-04T08:03:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T12:03:01","slug":"if-nancy-pelosi-cared-about-confronting-china-shed-do-more-than-stage-political-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/if-nancy-pelosi-cared-about-confronting-china-shed-do-more-than-stage-political-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"If Nancy Pelosi Cared About Confronting China She\u2019d Do More Than Stage Political Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fif-nancy-pelosi-cared-about-confronting-china-shed-do-more-than-stage-political-theater%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1588177&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The ebb and flow of the corporate news cycle almost always distorts and distracts rather than informs or enlightens. So it was this week with the coverage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s trip to Taiwan, which produced the intended effect of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/carl-hulse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">eliciting lazy puff pieces<\/a>\u00a0lauding her \u201cthree-decade career of challenging the Chinese government on human rights and other issues,\u201d as the New York Times\u2019 Carl Hulse dutifully put it.<\/p>\n<p>But make no mistake: Pelosi did not go to Taiwan to stand up to China. She went for her own purposes, to shore up a narrative about her legacy as a tough American political leader who has always stood up to autocracies like communist China in defense of democracy. Remember that time she unfurled the banner in Tiananmen Square and the police yelled at her? Of course you do. Hulse and his colleagues have made sure of it.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, the Taiwan trip was pure political propaganda, lapped up and regurgitated by a sycophantic press unwilling to admit the obvious fact that Pelosi, like every other establishment figure in Washington, has never been serious about standing up to China.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Pelosi\u2019s long political career, much like President Joe Biden\u2019s and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer\u2019s, maps almost perfectly onto China\u2019s steady economic and military rise, especially over the past two decades. Apart from occasionally staging a little political theater, Pelosi and her fellow Democrat leaders have done nothing to slow or even impede that rise \u2014 quite the opposite, in fact.<\/p>\n<p>Consider just some recent examples. During the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, in the fall of 2020, Pelosi\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/elections\/pelosi-stonewalls-china-bill-senate-dems-unanimously-supported\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">blocked a bipartisan House bill<\/a>\u00a0that would have curtailed the influence of Chinese-government-funded Confucius Institutes at universities across the country. Around the same time, her House Democrats denounced a bill that would have called out Beijing for spreading the conspiracy theory that Covid originated in a U.S. military lab, absurdly calling the bill racist and xenophobic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Earlier that year, Pelosi\u2019s House Democrats\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2020\/05\/07\/gop-launch-china-task-force-that-democrats-bailed\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dropped out<\/a>\u00a0of what was supposed to be a bipartisan \u201cChina Task Force\u201d overseeing congressional strategy on China. When Democrats bailed on the task force without an explanation the day before it was set to launch, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy moved on without them.<\/p>\n<p>Just this week, Pelosi and Schumer got near-unanimous Democrat support\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2022\/08\/02\/biden-signs-china-competition-bill-to-boost-us-chip-production.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">to pass the CHIPS bill<\/a>, a massive tax-and-spending spree meant to bolster U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and scientific research. The idea behind the bill is to increase our competitiveness with China, so the legislation bars any U.S. entity that does business with the Chinese Communist Party from receiving funds.<\/p>\n<p>But it also provides broad carve-outs that allow companies to continue funding CCP semiconductor manufacturing, and it authorizes the National Science Foundation to act as a gatekeeper between Chinese intelligence and the U.S. semiconductor industry, allowing the NSF to award grants to colleges and universities that partner with the aforementioned CCP-controlled Confucius Institutes. As the Daily Caller\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/07\/29\/china-biggest-winner-senate-passed-chips-bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reported last week<\/a>, China might be the biggest winner in the CHIPS bill.<\/p>\n<p>Setting all that aside, though, if Pelosi and the Democrat establishment in Washington had at any point over the last 30 years really cared about countering China, if Pelosi really ever believed in an \u201cironclad\u201d U.S. defense of Taiwan\u2019s democracy, as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/pelosi-vows-ironclad-defense-of-taiwans-democracy-as-china-plans-live-fire-drills-11659511188?mod=hp_lead_pos1&#038;utm_source=substack&#038;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">she said this week<\/a>, then they would not have spent decades selling out their country to the CCP. They would have opposed the entry of China to the World Trade Organization. They would have done more than wring their hands at the brazen theft of U.S. technology and intellectual property by the Chinese government.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, if Taiwan were really something Pelosi and the Democrats cared about, they would have taken concrete action, at some point over the long years, to reconstitute the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_Taiwan_Defense_Command\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">United States Taiwan Defense Command<\/a>. That command, at one point some 19,000 strong, was stationed in Taiwan from 1954 to 1979 and was gradually drawn down beginning in the early 1970s as part of our\u00a0<em>d\u00e9tente<\/em>\u00a0and the opening to China orchestrated by President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Today, practically speaking, we have almost no way to stop China from invading Taiwan. Our Navy is in a dire\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/davidaxe\/2021\/01\/05\/the-us-navy-wasted-a-whole-decade-building-bad-ships\/?sh=3968258054e9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">state of disrepair and unreadiness<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 in sharp contrast to China\u2019s, which since 2014 has been the world\u2019s largest by ship count and might be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-china-59600475\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">winning the arms race<\/a>. As Wallace Gregson argues in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nationalinterest.org\/feature\/time-running-out-prepare-war-pacific-203982?utm_source=substack&#038;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a recent essay in The National Interest<\/a>, time is running out to prepare for war with China: \u201cOur warning time in the western Pacific has expired.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even now, on the heels of Pelosi\u2019s departure from Taipei, China\u2019s navy has maneuvered into position for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/china-rattles-a-much-bigger-saber-as-it-prepares-live-fire-drills-around-taiwan-11659517757?mod=article_inline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">massive live-fire drills that will encircle the island<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So let\u2019s dispense with the polite fiction that Pelosi, or Biden, or Schumer \u2014 or, for that matter, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been around just as long as they have \u2014 has any interest in confronting Beijing or defending Taipei.<\/p>\n<p>President Biden can bluster about defending Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, as he did in May, and Pelosi can pose for photos with Taiwanese lawmakers while talking tough about the world facing \u201ca choice between democracy and autocracy,\u201d but by now we all know the truth: They won\u2019t do anything to stop China\u2019s rise \u2014 or its aggression.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ebb and flow of the corporate news cycle almost always distorts and distracts rather than informs or enlightens. So it was this week with the coverage of House Speaker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}