London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

Former US Diplomat Urges ‘Serious Repairs’ at Home Before Biden Tries to ‘Trip Up China’

Former US Diplomat Urges ‘Serious Repairs’ at Home Before Biden Tries to ‘Trip Up China’

A retired diplomat and academic has urged that the US cannot outcompete China militarily, it can only spark an arms race that will give Beijing a powerful military-industrial complex that will ultimately make both nations poorer in the end.

During an online address at a prominent American think-tank earlier this month, Chas Freeman, a veteran US diplomat and writer on international diplomacy, urged a serious rethinking of Washington’s approach toward China.

“If this were a game of chess, we’d be easy to spot. We’re the player with no plan beyond an aggressive opening move. That is not just not a winning strategy. It’s no strategy at all,” Freeman told the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs.


Freeman’s career includes postings as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war and, immediately relevant to his February 11 talk, the principal interpreter for US President Richard Nixon on his 1972 trip to China that paved the way for normalization of relations between Beijing and Washington. He is also the lifetime director of the Atlantic Council, one of the preeminent Washington foreign policy think-tanks.

“The US focus has been on tripping up China rather than improving our own international competitiveness,” he continued. “Without serious repairs to restore a sound American political economy, our future is in jeopardy, and we will be in no condition to compete with the world’s rising and resurgent great powers, especially China.”

In this July 15, 2020, file photo, visitors wearing masks to curb the spread of the coronavirus look at the latest products at a Huawei store in Beijing. China accused Washington of damaging global trade with sanctions that threaten to cripple tech giant Huawei and said Tuesday it will protect Chinese companies but gave no indication of possible retaliation


Under former-US President Donald Trump, the US opened an ideological and economic broadside against China, accusing it of everything from manipulating the value of its currency to stealing Western trade secrets, putting secret “backdoors” in its tech products, illegally expanding its hold on islands in the South China Sea, and abusing human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Under US President Biden, those efforts are likely to continue and worsen, with Biden’s would-be trade representative promising a “tough on China” approach that includes tariffs and his picks to head the CIA and State Department promising to ready the US for a long-haul struggle.

Calling the four years of Trump’s leadership “the most bizarre presidency in our history,” Freeman noted that the US and China began 2021 in very different ways. China, having defeated the COVID-19 pandemic early-on and standing amid titanic changes such as lifting 850 million people out of extreme poverty in just a few decades, is enjoying high morale and confidence in its market-socialist system. “China is focused on the future,” he said.

“By contrast, the United States entered this year in an unprecedented state of domestic disarray and demoralization,” Freeman noted.


Just six days into 2021, the sitting president attempted to usurp the power of Congress and void an election he had lost, while lawmakers struggle through perpetual deadlock to address even the most basic issues. Meanwhile, more than 100 times the number of Americans have died of COVID-19 than have Chinese people, and the contradictory “K-shaped recovery” of a booming stock market and dramatically expanding poverty make a mockery of the term “recovery.”

Police release tear gas into a crowd of pro-Trump protesters during clashes at a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress, at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, U.S, January 6, 2021.


“Without serious repairs to restore a sound American political economy, our future is in jeopardy, and we will be in no condition to compete with the world’s rising and resurgent great powers, especially China,” Freeman said. Paraphrasing Napoleon, he urged: “let China take its own path while we take our own. We need to fix our own problems before we try to fix China’s.”


On Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared “complete victory” in eradicating extreme poverty in the country, calling the lifting of 850 million people out of destitution an “unprecedented accomplishment” among nations.

“Shaking off poverty is not the finish line but the starting point of a new life and new endeavor,” Xi said, urging Communist Party of China cadres leading the campaigns to double down on programs to keep people from falling back into poverty.


The announcement comes ahead of an anticipated announcement of another achievement: the building of China into a “moderately prosperous society,” which Xi set as a goal by 2021. The achievement is just a marker in a much larger effort to bring China up to speed with the developed world by 2049, the centennial of its socialist revolution.

While the US remains in social lockdown well into February, China’s near-total eradication of COVID-19 by the middle of 2020 has allowed its economy to jump-start by answering the needs of the US and other countries still struggling to contain it. Some economists have predicted economic growth as high as 8% for China in 2021, and that China could pass the US economy as the world’s largest by 2028.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Massive Strikes in France Pressure Macron and New PM on Austerity Proposals
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Hillary Clinton’s Reckless Rhetoric Fuels Division After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
NASDAQ Rises to Record as Intel Soars More Than 20%, Nvidia Gains 3%
Nvidia’s $5 Billion Bet on Intel Reshapes AI Hardware Landscape
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Trump’s Quip on Biden and Google Lawsuit Revives Debate Over Antitrust Legacy
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
×