(Originally published here in the South China Morning Post on October 2, 2023.)

“What are things we could do to kick [China] while they’re down?” The question was posed by Randall Schriver, a member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), during one of the body’s hearings in August, and reflected one that’s probably on the minds of many Washington policymakers.

No one on the USCC is a panda hugger, and Schriver is one of the more hawkish members, but the question still seemed a step beyond its usual lines of inquiry. Their hearings are more valuable than the many congressional hearings about China because even the most hardline positions aired in this forum are usually grounded in research and reflection, whereas the latter often feature performances of spectacular rhetorical overreach.

With multiple hearings about China’s malign influence now convening – there were several last week, with the House Foreign Affairs Committee running two concurrently on Thursday – public-service broadcaster C-SPAN offers almost as much fearmongering about China as Republican-friendly Fox News does about Biden.

The US does indeed need to do more to address the challenge that China poses, but Washington should be more realistic about the nature of the relationship.

Biden administration officials will insist that the US and China are “strategic competitors”. But Schriver’s question should be seen as one of many indications that this is a full-scale bilateral rivalry. Others will insist we can’t call it a “cold war” because the two countries are so economically interdependent, but that term is still more accurate than those President Joe Biden’s diplomats try to apply.

In light of Schriver’s question, let’s acknowledge that America’s recent efforts to kick China have failed. The trade war started by former president Donald Trump in 2018 has had no discernible effect on the massive deficits that Trump’s action was meant to address.

And, as demonstrated by its newest mobile phone model, Huawei Technologies has made a mockery of the restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductor chips implemented by the Biden administration.

USCC witness Logan Wright of risk consultancy Rhodium Group told Schriver that such an approach would make it “far more difficult” for Biden to maintain alignment with the European Union on China policy, which he has worked hard to forge.

“It’s very difficult for me to come up with anything externally that would do more than what has already taken place in China over the last five to 10 years,” he said.

It’s difficult to know whether Schriver asked the question so that we might all get a reasonable answer for the multitudes of China hawks or whether he was trying to drag the USCC into the rhetorical territory that Congress occupies.

Either way, we got the answer we needed.

China is in a bind, caused by President Xi Jinping’s insistence on bringing the country’s economy fully under government control. This has meant cheap liquidity for state-owned enterprises and the property sector over many years and a crackdown on the most innovative sectors, namely tech. The extent and likely duration of the damage is unknown, but there appears to be no quick fix.

And while we’re on the subject of kicking countries that are “down”, let’s take stock of America’s situation before we get out our steel-tipped boots.

After all, former president Donald Trump suggested that retiring Army general Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had colluded with China, something that would have warranted death in the past.

The remark by Trump – the front-running Republican Party candidate in the US presidential election – resonated against the backdrop of a then looming federal government shutdown, engineered by Trump’s most loyal supporters, who are looking to create as much chaos in America as the man they adore.

A shutdown was averted – temporarily – in a deal that has emboldened the party’s right flank to try to oust their House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

China may be in turbulent and uncharted waters economically, but the US is apparently in the midst of a slow-moving political crisis.

If Washington really wants to kick China while it’s down, Republicans need to rein in their nihilistic right flank, pull support from any candidates who wish death for their country’s top military brass, and show the world that democracy can work.