Biden Needs a Reaganesque Approach to China
The US has good reason to be cautious about supporting protesters, but that strategy won’t work forever.
A new catalyst for public anger.
Photographer: Michael Zhang/AFP/Getty Images
Around the world, autocracies that recently looked fearsome now seem feeble. Iran is experiencing its most sustained protests since the revolution of 1979. Russia is staring down the barrel of a military defeat in Ukraine. And just weeks after China’s Xi Jinping ruthlessly consolidated his personal authority, his government is confronting the most widespread political unrest since the massive pro-democracy movement of 1989. China’s upheaval could be America’s strategic advantage, if President Joe Biden can navigate the dilemmas of dealing with a powerful but repressive regime.
That regime is facing protests in at least 10 major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, and at dozens of universities. The immediate spark was a fire in Urumqi in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, whose death toll some suspected was worsened by Covid policies that impeded rescue efforts or trapped families in their apartments. Single incidents create nationwide movements when they tap into a deeper vein of popular anger, in this case frustration over China’s no-exit Covid strategy and the rigid, personalized authoritarianism Xi has pursued in power.