How bad is Biden on China?

Even in an administration where the State Department feigned outrage over China’s spy balloon while secretly dismissing any actions and moving forward with rapprochement, where the Department of Defense has been chasing down its Chinese opposite numbers while begging for a meeting, and in which Secretary of State Blinken is moving forward with his big China trip despite multiple hacking attacks and dangerous encounters, Biden was the most pro-appeasement guy in his pro-appeasement administration.

President Joe Biden wanted to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the days after the U.S. military shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina — even saying publicly that he expected to do so — but his top national security advisers talked him out of it, according to two senior administration officials and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

You can see why his advisers and people have to backtrack and take back the things he says.

Biden believed his relationship with Xi could help tamp down the newly escalated tensions with Beijing if he had the opportunity to speak directly and smooth things over, the officials said.

Another 10% for the big guy?

China was far too angry over Biden’s decision to have the balloon shot down, after it had flown across the U.S. for a week, for a phone call with Xi to be productive, the officials said the president’s advisers told him.

Biden was delusional enough to think that he could sweet-talk Xi. But the rest of the administration was too busy reacting to China’s anger that we shot down their spy balloon, rather than being angry that they had a spy balloon over our country.

But the real issue was not looking weak, not to China, but to Americans.

The official said part of the strategy behind dissuading the president from calling Xi is “so it doesn’t look like Biden is pleading for talks,” though another official disputed that as a concern.

Instead, Biden had his entire administration, including the military, pleading for talks.

Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield