NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — Other than a few glib remarks, surprisingly little was said about China at this month's United States presidential debate. Former president Donald Trump asserted that his proposed import tariffs would punish "China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years." Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, disparaged China's coronavirus pandemic response, saying President Xi Jinping "was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of Covid."
The failure to focus on China was, in one sense, predictable. US voters have been largely fixated on other anxieties during this election cycle: abortion and women's reproductive rights, immigration and border security, and inflation and pocketbook issues. The moderators and their preselected line of questioning did little to probe what could well be America's most consequential foreign policy issue of the 21st century, even though the Commission on the National Defense Strategy and the White House's National Security Strategy have elevated China risks to near existential status. A failure to address this issue made no sense.
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