Micah Meadowcraft makes the case that the best way to take on China is by starting right here at home—rebuilding industry and helping working-class Americans first.
The Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to eradicate the Uighur Muslim population in favor of the Han majority are horrifying. Programmatic abortions and sterilizations, slave labor, and “re-education” camps recall atrocities of the past. At the same time, the CCP’s ambitions for Hong Kong outrage westerners committed to liberty and the rule of law. And its record for the treatment of prisoners and religious dissidents is miserable.
As it becomes ever more obvious that the People’s Republic of China is our chief international rival, the temptation grows for America to respond armored in the moral language of human rights. It almost appears a relief to have an enemy to call evil, as we struggle internally once again over the gap between our country’s stated aspirations and the realities of life in our cities. There can be no equivalence between us and them, we think, because we try, at least, to be on the “right side of history.”
