Anti-China Rhetoric Distracts Washington—and Boosts Beijing

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned from China as the senior-most official to visit the country in five years. In response, Republicans—whose foreign-policy platform has been defined almost entirely by anti-China rhetoric and policy—have been predictably unconstructive, hypocritical, and even dangerous, asserting that any engagement with China undermines U.S. national security.

But whether Republicans like it or not, China isn’t going anywhere. It is a global superpower and an economic behemoth, and there is bipartisan consensus that China is the United States’ central geostrategic challenge. There is no doubt that Washington must respond to China’s malicious actions, and so far, the Biden administration has pulled no punches when it comes to criticizing Beijing for its gross human rights abuses, economic coercion, and military aggression in the region.

But because the China challenge is so immense, we must ensure that panic and fear do not drive U.S. foreign policy as it had during the Cold War or the war on terror. Instead, Republican and Democratic members alike must be fact-based and sober-minded about the challenges facing our country and not see diplomacy as a weakness—as Republicans want to frame it—but as one of our greatest strengths. We cannot confuse hawkishness for strategy, or bluster for strength, and we must be cautious and clear about the consequences that a war or a full economic decoupling with China would unleash on the U.S. economy and American families.

As the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I’ve seen how quickly reckless rhetoric can undermine thoughtful policymaking. Republicans want to center U.S. foreign policy solely on China and seem to be engaged in a new competition about who can be the biggest fearmonger about the threats China poses. It’s a shortsighted and dangerous gambit that can lead to reactive and counterproductive policymaking with severe consequences for the American economy and global peace and security.

Indeed, at a moment when dialogue between the United States and China is at an all-time low, all it takes is one lapse of communication, one collision, or one accident to escalate into something catastrophic. And if our wars in the Middle East have taught us anything, for Washington, it’s that wars are dangerously easy to start and notoriously difficult to end. Rather than disparaging Blinken’s visit, leaders on both sides of the political aisle should embrace opportunities for diplomacy that could help avoid catastrophe.

A renewed focus on development and diplomacy is Washington’s best bet for countering Beijing in the short and long term. Beijing has made transformative investments at home in research, innovation, and technology, as well as over a trillion dollars in foreign infrastructure financing and investments abroad through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China has gleefully taken advantage of a divided United States that shrunk from global leadership under the Trump administration, spreading its influence through the BRI as well as a growing diplomatic footprint.

Meanwhile, the United States has undercut its own global leadership by undervaluing diplomacy and development in favor of military spending and costly forever wars. While the United States spent billions on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, China spent those years building its diplomatic capacity. China has now surpassed the United States in the number of diplomatic posts worldwide—280 compared to our 275—and doubled its diplomacy budget from 2013 to 2018. After a pandemic dip, China increased its diplomatic expenditures by 12.2 percent in 2023 alone.

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Meanwhile, in Washington this month, within a week of House Republicans holding a hearing on countering the BRI, they also unveiled a budget proposal that, rather than turning up the pressure on China, would effectively roll out the red carpet for the BRI around the world. The measure proposed a steep cut—30 percent—to our State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs budget, which authorizes U.S. diplomatic and development alternatives to the BRI. Countries that received funding from the BRI have found out the hard way that Chinese investments come with many strings attached. These countries are looking for a better option, but these proposed cuts undermine the United States’ argument that it can be a reliable partner. As Republicans criticize our chief diplomat for engaging in diplomacy with China, they are simultaneously tying our hands behind our back in the strategic competition with China. They cannot have it both ways.

The United States can out-compete China both diplomatically and economically if we leverage and expand our alliances and partnerships overseas. But to do so, Congress needs to put its money where its mouth is. Our State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the primary venues through which the United States wields its soft power, are routinely treated as afterthoughts when it comes to the congressional budget.

For example, the passage of my State Department Authorization Act in 2021 was the first time State had been reauthorized in nearly two decades, and even then, the elements that did eventually make it into law were only able to do so through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the legislation that authorizes the Department of Defense. That means that, for decades, lawmakers had failed to significantly modernize State and USAID, assess their programmatic needs and funding, or give our diplomats and development professionals the tools they need to conduct their missions. This neglect does no favors for the United States’ broader foreign-policy strategy. As former U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has said, “If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition.” If Congress is serious about being a global leader, passing a State Authorization bill should be as routine and imperative as authorizing the NDAA, not an afterthought.

It’s been said time and again that the U.S.-China relationship is becoming the new Cold War. If anything, I fear this characterization is an understatement of how perilously close we are to the cliff’s edge. War with China is not inevitable, but it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Blinken’s trip to China did not change the complexities of this relationship, but it was a step in the right direction for maintaining high-level communication with Beijing. That communication—along with robust funding and support for the United States’ most crucial levers of soft power—is essential if we are to prevent an avoidable and devastating great-power war, which is a goal we should all share and work to promote.