Biden is strangely aiding China in three major ways
More than a year after their spy balloon nearly launched an international incident, China has hit a rough patch. Slowing growth, an aging workforce and the aftershocks of their "zero-COVID" policies have fueled their economic woes, with foreign businesses’ direct investment falling to a 30-year low.
Yet certain inexplicable decisions from the White House represent a lifeline to a country that has made no secret of its desire to supplant the United States as the world economic superpower by 2035. Here are three of them.
First, President Joe Biden used Super Bowl Sunday to debut his campaign on TikTok. In doing so, Biden implicitly defied the orders of 34 governors, including many Democrats, who have explicitly banned the app on government devices. Biden’s decision "worried" Democratic Senator Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who urged the United States to follow India’s lead and prohibit TikTok.
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At issue are two competing interests: political vs. security. On the former, Biden is desperate to win over young voters, normally a reliable Democratic voting bloc, but where recent polls show him behind former President Donald Trump by a considerable margin. More than four in 10 voters between the ages of 18-34 use TikTok at least once a day.
President Joe Biden is provoking shocking support for Chinese President Xi Jinping. FILE: Xi waves at an event to introduce new members of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
Yet there are major concerns about the privacy and data security on TikTok. Not even a year has passed since TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced withering bipartisan criticism from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. His answers failed to persuade lawmakers or the general public, but were apparently enough for the Biden campaign. Already, a group of 18 Republican lawmakers has urged Biden to deactivate his campaign's TikTok account.
Second, Temu, the Chinese e-commerce conglomerate and growing threat to American retailers, was front and center during the Super Bowl, spending big on three ads during the game and two after. Its growth has been explosive, reportedly gaining 51 million monthly active users in January, an increase of nearly 300% from 13 million a year prior.
But while TikTok’s security issues have caught the public’s attention, Temu’s threat has been overlooked. Security experts stated it can bypass users’ cell phone security to, "monitor activities on other apps, check notifications, read private messages and change settings."
According to a plaintiffs’ attorney for a recent class action suit against the app, Temu requests at least "24 permissions for all kinds of information that would not be needed for an online shopping app."
As Beijing touts its approval of more than 40 AI models for public use in the last six months, the Biden administration wages war on American tech firms. Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, rose to prominence on the political left as an avowed critic of free enterprise.
As expected, she has aggressively targeted America’s leading tech companies, including a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Amazon and a recent inquiry involving "compulsory orders" to five U.S. tech companies regarding their investments in AI. But she has also broadened her ideological attacks on private businesses to include grocery stores and even sandwich shops.
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Despite mounting legal losses, Khan has declared herself "quite pleased overall." Others are far less charitable, including the "center-left" Chamber of Progress, which said her, "court losses are making their threats look more like a paper tiger." When American companies are getting sandbagged by their own government as their Chinese counterparts gobble up market share, it’s a sign of upside down priorities.
First, President Joe Biden used Super Bowl Sunday to debut his campaign on TikTok. In doing so, Biden implicitly defied the orders of 34 governors, including many Democrats, who have explicitly banned the app on government devices. Biden’s decision "worried" Democratic Senator Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who urged the United States to follow India’s lead and prohibit TikTok.
Finally, as Biden continues to dither on taking executive action on immigration, a jarring report from "60 Minutes" found that Chinese migrants are the fastest growing group crossing the southern border. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 37,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing illegally into our country last year, a 50% increase from two years earlier.
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At the same time, FBI Director Christopher Wray is sounding the alarm about China’s efforts planting offensive malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure networks. Describing the issue as occurring at "a scale greater than we’d seen before," Wray labeled the actions a, "defining national security threat," and laying the groundwork to, "attack whenever Beijing decides the time is right."
During his successful campaign to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill in 2021, Biden used to warn that China was "going to eat our lunch." It made for a snappy sound bite then, but would be better served guiding his administration’s policy decisions now.
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