Trump has the right strategy on Beijing. As a Chinese dissident, I’d know.

The Washington Post ^ | August 30, 2019 | Chen Guangcheng

[george76]

as someone who has spent years with the knife edge of the Chinese Communist Party bearing down on my throat for my human rights work, I know that the president is on to something. Tariffs and economic threats may be blunt tools, but they are the kind of aggressive tactics necessary to get the attention of the CCP regime, which respects only power and money. ... It’s about justice, and doing what’s right for ordinary Chinese and American people.

Presidents before Trump naively believed that China would abide by international standards of behavior if it were granted access to institutions like the World Trade Organization and generally treated as a “normal” country. But that path proved mistaken, and Beijing ignored Western pressure on matters from human rights to the widespread theft of intellectual property. Trump, whatever his flaws, grasps this reality.

Unlike many of his predecessors in the White House, Trump appears to understand innately the hooliganism and brutality at the heart of the CCP. He comprehends that — whether in the realm of trade, diplomacy or international order — dictatorships do not commonly play by the rules of democratic nations. .

...

Bill Clinton, after talking tough, declining to make “most favored nation” status for China conditional on human rights reviews, effectively eliminating any leverage the United States had over China with respect to fair trade, not to mention rights.

...

Trump is the first American president to take a call from a Taiwanese president since the United States cut off formal diplomatic ties with the island in 1979.

...

Trump, with an admittedly unorthodox style, is trying to break down the systems, and the concessions, that have allowed the CCP to operate unchecked for too long. He deserves credit, not criticism, for saying: Enough.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Search works:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3775980/posts

[The Westerner]

Excellent job excerpting this!

[NorseViking]

A ‘dissident’ appealing to foreign power generally goes by another term.

[Chainmail]

"A ‘dissident’ appealing to foreign power generally goes by another term."

Yeah: Freedom Fighter.

What's the matter - someone against your favorite brutal, murderous Communist government?

[NorseViking]

Very funny:)

[Chainmail]

Hard to imagine that this could be printed in the Washington Post!

China is also very vulnerable to economic pressure now because they are overextended. They have massively expanded their military spending, established naval bases all over the world, and are giving huge loans to African and South American countries and other areas to establish lodgements for more bases and to secure strategic minerals for their war machine.

Make no mistake - all of this is aimed at us. I know that there's a large "draft-dodger wing" of our conservative movement but war is inevitable if we don't follow President Trump's lead and stop China's aggressive expansion.

[poconopundit]

Thanks for posting this, george76 and 2ndDivisionVet. Seems like this Washington Post story has been distributed to many outlets. The full text of it can be read here. Well worth reading in full! Chen Guangcheng is people's hero in China, and cultural enemy number one to the China Communist Party (CCP). This story ties President Trump to the human liberation of the Chinese people and the patriots defending their freedom in Hong Kong. Chen Guangcheng is an amazing man. From Wikipedia: Born in 1971, Chen Guangcheng is a Chinese civil rights activist who has worked on human rights issues in rural areas of the People's Republic of China. Blind from an early age and self-taught in the law, Chen is frequently described as a "barefoot lawyer" who advocates for women's rights, land rights, and the welfare of the poor. He is best known for accusing people of abuses in official family-planning practices, often involving claims of violence and forced abortions.

[sauropod]

bkmk

[Albion Wilde]

This appeared in the Washington Post? Am I dreaming?