This is no time to make nice with China

AS THE SUN RISES on a new Trump-era geopolitical chapter, Washington confronts a defining choice: Will America view the People’s Republic of China and its regnant Communist Party through the rose-colored lens of transaction and diplomacy, or will it soberly recognize Beijing as America’s foremost geopolitical adversary in a multi-generational cold war?

- JOSH HAMMER

PRESIDENT TRUMP and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping meet in October. Trump is allowing sale of sensitive technology to China.

The stakes could not be higher, and the answer ought to be simple. We should stop treating China with kid gloves — as a spirited economic or diplomatic competitor — and start treating it as the existential challenge to the American republic and the American way of life that it demonstrably is.

In June, federal prosecutors in Michigan charged two Chinese nationals with conspiring to smuggle dangerous biological pathogens into the United States, ostensibly for use in American university research laboratories. The case centered on a fungus widely classified as a “potential agroterrorism weapon” because of its ability to ravage crops and cause serious harm to humans and livestock. Prosecutors alleged that the defendants received funding from the Chinese government and brought the pathogen into the U.S. claiming it was for “lab work” at the University of Michigan. As if the University of Michigan needed to use smugglers to acquire research materials.

This case should have triggered alarm bells for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear: Chinese researchers allegedly attempted to slip biological threats past U.S. borders under the guise of legitimate scholarship. The implications are chilling. In a world still scarred by the devastating COVID-19 pandemic — which, lest we forget, originated in Wuhan, China — we cannot afford to dismiss biohazard incidents such as this as anomalous. What's more, in November additional charges were brought in Michigan against a third Chinese national in connection with similar smuggling allegations.