While Biden Slept, China Leapt
On a trip to Florida, President Trump told reporters the truth about China: "The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing."
For over three years, Biden and Western leaders focused almost exclusively on Ukraine and its defense against Russian aggression. They collectively committed over $250 billion in arms, training, and logistical support to protect the rules-based international order that no country should invade another. Laudable as the goal was, Biden should have accepted the peace deal the warring parties reached in Istanbul—just two months after hostilities began. By forcing Ukraine to continue fighting to weaken Russia and pushing Europe to sever its economic ties with Moscow, Washington attempted to reorder Europe’s decades-old security architecture.
In its compulsive obsession with scoring a victory over Russia, the West lost focus. Today, Russia is in a far superior position should peace talks ensue. The West lost even more as China, unburdened by the conflict, continued to invest resources to recover from COVID-19, reorganize its supply chain, and strengthen its focus on dominating critical industries of the future at the expense of the United States.
As someone who rose to become Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was expected to bring his policy expertise to the White House. Instead, nearly every Biden action to counter and contain China has turned out to be a failure.
A TIPP Poll conducted this month reveals that only 23% of Americans rated former President Biden's handling of China favorably, with a majority assessing his performance as poor or unacceptable. This widespread dissatisfaction across party lines underscores concerns about the previous administration's approach to U.S.-China relations.
That China is an aggressive competitor and able challenger to the United States has been known for decades. While China continues to trample human rights in Hong Kong and terrorize the eleven million Uyghurs—a predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group—the West's response was to make human rights a make-or-break issue when dealing with Beijing. Worse, Biden refused to hold China responsible for the "China virus" that Trump so eloquently dubbed, which brought death and destruction to over 7 million people - a far more serious abrogation of global responsibility by Beijing. [Thanks to President Trump's new CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, we now know the CIA concluded COVID-19 most likely originated in a laboratory.]
Biden railed against Trump's tariffs (totaling approximately $300 billion annually) during the 2020 campaign but maintained them and even raised some tariffs further. He persuaded Congress to pass the CHIPS and Science Act to borrow federal funds to boost domestic semiconductor production, which indirectly aims to reduce reliance on Chinese manufacturing. In 2023, Biden signed an executive order restricting U.S. investments in sensitive technologies in China, explicitly targeting sectors like semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence, citing national security concerns.
Despite Biden’s efforts to contain China, last week DeepSeek, a small AI research firm, released a clever, all-Chinese open-source model using relatively inexpensive chips from U.S. super-producer Nvidia—meeting or exceeding the performance of AI tools from OpenAI, Google, and Meta. Investors who had poured money into American companies caused tech-heavy stocks to tank on Monday, wiping out $1 trillion in market value.
Biden addressed concerns about China's overcapacity in industries like solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles by increasing tariffs and promoting domestic manufacturing to counter the effects of China's market practices. These actions have also barely moved the needle as China's domination in various industries continues and expands.
Over 60 percent of the world's solar panels are produced in China, most of them used domestically for energy generation. With a substantial installed capacity and continuous investments in solar technology, China leads the world in solar energy production, including rooftop installations. So dominant is China's positioning in the green sector that the country holds more than 80 percent of the world's polysilicon, wafer, cell, and module manufacturing capacity. China invested $130 billion into the solar industry in 2023 alone.
In EVs, China's auto exports, particularly new energy vehicles (NEVs), including all-electric and plug-in hybrids, rocketed 57.9 percent to a record of 4.9 million units in 2023. China made up more than 60 percent of global NEV sales last year. In battery production, China's lithium-ion battery sector output surged 25 percent in 2023. The country accounted for approximately 57 percent of global demand for lithium-ion batteries in 2022.
Deep internal divisions in Washington have hampered America's abilities to counter China. Xi Jinping became China's leader on March 14, 2013, when President Obama was beginning his second term. Donald Trump had not even descended the golden elevators at Trump Tower when President Xi launched his ten-year industrial plan to transform China, MIC2025, short for Made in China 2025, set to conclude this May.
During this period, America went through a divisive 2016 election that put Trump in office, but Democrat and Liberal resistance tore Americans apart. The 2020 election was nastier, and its aftermath led Biden and his cohorts to engage in lawfare to oust Trump from the political scene permanently. Along the way, America had to contend with fighting COVID-19, runaway inflation, unprecedented illegal immigration, and supporting Ukraine and Israel when the Middle East exploded.
Meanwhile, all President Xi had to do was bring MIC2025 to a successful completion. Today, China dominates many industries, including iron, steel, aluminum, textiles, cement, cell phones, personal computers, shoes, chemicals, toys, electronics, rail cars, and ships. There is not a single advanced sector in the world in which China is not a key player.
Beijing also threatens American hegemony by offering low-interest loans to its companies—support unavailable to businesses in other countries. China absorbs domestic manufacturing output, forcing companies dependent upon state enterprises to consume products, thereby increasing economies of scale and lowering costs. It requires foreign countries that receive Chinese aid to source products from China, thereby helping open new markets for Chinese companies. Beijing is ruthless in requiring foreign companies to share intellectual property with Chinese companies as a price to enter China's huge market.
China's approach to attaining global dominance is unparalleled. No other country works so closely with its industries solely to win, sell, and consolidate market power. Beijing is using every power it has, including geopolitical, economic, and military, to further the dominance of its existing industries and those of future ones.
Every international and needless internal conflict the United States engages in takes time and effort away from the "laser-focus" that President Trump correctly says Americans should have to counter China. We heard you, President Trump.