In a rather ridiculous monologue, a top Chinese Communist Party official this week called on President-elect Joe Biden to construct a “cage” to “restrict” Americans from offering skeptical attitudes towards Beijing.

Writing in Caixing Global, He Yafei spoke to Beijing’s central aspiration for the incoming Biden administration. Namely, its desire to manipulate that administration into a return to the good old days of the Obama administration. Days when U.S.-China disagreements were dealt with by vacuous dialogue which accomplished nothing. Days when the U.S. dealt with Beijing’s industrial-scale intellectual property theft by asking Xi to sign pieces of paper saying he’d stop the theft. Days, put another way, of American delusion and Communist laughter.

His words matter.

A former senior diplomat who served the Communist agenda in the U.S. and held policy positions in Beijing, while He is no longer an active diplomat, the official retains influence. His rank at resignation means that his latest article must be seen as reflective of Beijing’s intentions towards Washington. And his arguments are something to behold. He says that for Biden, “the present imperative is to build a ‘cage’ – a framework with bottom lines and rules – to prevent vicious competition from getting out of control. This is a positive way to turn around bilateral relations.” Biden, He adds, “should restrict and guide officials-in-waiting, and major think tanks, so that they can evaluate and make comments on the present and future of China-U.S. relations from a positive and objective perspective to create a balanced, objective public opinion environment for resetting the relationship.”

Translation of the Communist spiel: Biden should ensure that all those in a position to shape U.S. public attitudes towards Beijing be forced to offer pro-Beijing perspectives. He doesn’t say this explicitly, of course. But when He talks of “positive and objective” analysis to help in “resetting the relationship,” the former top diplomat is echoing pitch-perfect Communist narratives. We see this narrative play out every day in western focus operations on Beijing’s part. There are the legions of Communist diplomats who take to Twitter to praise those who favor Beijing and attack those who challenge it. There are the celebratory messages for major American businesses that are willing to close their eyes to the human rights situations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, just as long as Beijing throws them an economic bone. And there are the punishments for those U.S. entities which allow their players or employees to speak truthfully about China. There are Xi’s frequent and always tedious speeches on how his regime seeks only “win-win cooperation.”

But the truth, as now so eloquently offered by He, is that the Communists ultimately care nothing about true compromise and “win-win” cooperation. Were that the case, we would never see editorials such as that in the Global Times, this week, which celebrated Britain’s suffering of a new coronavirus strain. The actual truth is that the Communists only care about ensuring they win and everyone else shuts up and allows them to win. That’s what Beijing really means by “win-win” engagement.

Yet there’s a special arrogance to the gall with which He and his colleagues sometimes slip up, as here, and offer their more honest ideological impulses. Calling for the construction of “cages” which shield China from dialogue and debate, He underlines the deep insecurity at the heart of the Communist regime. This is not a political entity that believes it can tolerate freedom of speech. But nor, as we see with His calls for actions to “restrict” speech outside the cage, is this a regime that has moral qualms about enforcing its will. Put another way, the Communists are evil and believe they need to be evil.

But there is hope. As the courageous people of Hong Kong continue to prove on the streets, in elections, and in publications such as this one, there is virtue in standing firm in defense of basic freedom. Ensuring that the world is made aware of the difference between Xi’s “win-win” delusion and the caged dystopia of his regime, his arguments will fall on increasingly deaf ears.

If nothing else, He has scored a self-inflicted wound for his masters. When Americans learn that he has called for their attitudes to be imprisoned by their elected leaders, they will react with revulsion and anger.

(Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner foreign policy writer)

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