One question I get is why I am as a China hawk forgiving of deals like allowing China entry into the WTO and similar type of deals? A few specific reasons. First, based upon known information at the time, I think the deals were made in good faith on both sides. 1/n
Rephrased: US had good reason to believe China would under take broad reforms to make itself a more responsible and mainline international partner country. China enacted significant broad reforms in many areas. To use a simple dividing line, through 2008, there was progress 2/n
Second, and building upon point #1, you cannot predict the future in anything so you have to use best available evidence. In 2000, they could not have predicted Xi in 2012. It's very easy with 20 years hindsight to tell people what they should have done. That's not fair 3/n
Where I diverge and diverge sharply from many people who urge that and other deals are the blueprint that should be returned to, is that the mountain of Chinese behavior that began a year or two before Xi assumed power but really took hold and accelerated under Xi. 4/n
There is now an overwhelming mountain of evidence about how the state of China plans to behave and where the CCP with Xi as the current leader wants to take China and express their influence in the world that it is a profound mistake to think otherwise. When those deals 5/n
were made, there was evidence to support the reform process in China. Now there is a mountain of evidence about the misbehavior of Chinese state power, authority, and policy. The first time can be considered an unknowable future. Now it is just fantasy to pretend about China 6/n
Rephrased: fool me the first time shame on you. Fool me over and over and over and over and over over, shame on DC think tanks.
