It’s been days since Carrie Lam cancelled Hong Kong’s September Legislative Council elections. We have heard from the White House, the State Department, and multiple members of Congress from both parties. We have nothing from Joe Biden.

We may get something in the next day or so. But it’s too late. Make no mistake about it, with his silence Joe Biden is sending a message to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that Xi Jinping and his cohorts understand. With no statement on the canceling of elections, most notably a huge omission by Biden’s top foreign policy advisor Tony Blinken in an extensive Bloomberg interview on August 1st, what else would the CCP believe other than Hong Kong is past news in the eyes of Team Biden.

Without a doubt the US Presidential election influenced the cancellation of the Legislative elections in Hong Kong. Do the math. Hong Kong’s September elections were a headache with the US that Xi didn’t want. Kick the elections to 2021 with Biden in power and count on a return to old Obama policies that are being touted by Biden foreign policy advisors like Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Samm Sacks, and Ryan L. Hass.

Where Trump made life hell for the Chinese with Hong Kong, the South China Sea, Taiwan, trade, and the Uyhugrs, the Biden China team will focus on climate change, financial reform, and their religion of multilateralism. Elevating Hong Kong as any more of an issue than an annual State Department report doesn’t serve the Biden team’s engagement goals. Xi knows this and knows he has a far greater free hand in Hong Kong with Biden than with Trump.

The CCP tracks everything and meaning is attached to everything. Despite at least three significant attempts on senior levels, by serious people, seeking to help the Hong Kong movement, Blinken, Ely Ratner, and Sullivan, Biden’s top people on foreign policy, all rejected any and all meetings with any group of Hong Kong activists. The excuse given has been they are not meeting with any foreign groups.

Since when did a Webex with Cardinal Zen or Martin Lee, a meeting with Nathan Law or Denise Ho, or even a call with Hong Kong democrats equate to hot tubbing with Putin? This rejection by the Biden team is a crude language the CCP fully understands.

Economist columnist Gady Epstein recently wrote that with Biden we no longer see the blatant and crude signaling of Donald Trump or Mike Pompeo. I wonder if Mr. Epstein really understands the value of a supportive voice or a small gesture to those under oppression. Does Epstein consider that a slammed door on democracy advocates is also a crude language of its own?

Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recalled that while in Stalin’s Gulag, during the worst of a very dark time, Solzhenitzen felt he was all alone, forsaken by God and other men to a miserable end. As he sat on the ground, exhausted, expecting to be beaten to death by the guards, an old prisoner walked up, bent over and made the sign of the cross. Solzhenitzyn was not alone.

For now Hong Kong is also not alone. The Biden China Team, The Economist, and the LA Times, may chafe at what they see as President Trump or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s unsophisticated attacks on China. These critics don’t get it. Be it Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Uighurs, or any person anywhere facing oppression, whether it’s Reagan at the Berlin Wall eloquently saying “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, or just a shout-out from Team Biden that they care, those oppressed will take any support they can get.

No one expects Joe Biden to send the 7th Fleet to rescue Hong Kong. All Hong Kong, all any oppressed by the Chinese Communist Party want from Joe Biden is to know we are not alone. A Cross in the dirt.