Biden doesn’t want to change China. He wants to beat it.

Step by step, the Biden team had by fall put in place a tough China policy of its own design, more nuanced than Trump’s. Biden officials had rained sanctions on China, reinforced the alliance diplomatically and to some degree militarily, and yet made clear that it wanted to keep channels to Beijing open. This stiff but mostly consistent behavior was something Beijing could at least understand…

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As Biden’s second year in office began, U.S. tariffs on China were still in effect. U.S. and allied ships traversed the South China Sea more often. Sanctions for China’s human rights violations and restrictions on its technology and investments continued to pile up. Meanwhile, Beijing’s use of masks and other supplies since the pandemic began as tools of political coercion awakened other countries to the reality that China was a sometimes unreliable partner in a crisis.

At home, an unexpected consensus had emerged: Americans in both parties want the U.S. government to pursue a tougher approach to China, polls show. Ordinary Americans seem to understand that meeting the China challenge means abandoning the wishful thinking of the past — even if some influential voices do not. In November, CNN anchor and Post columnist Fareed Zakaria characterized the Biden administration’s approach to China as a failure because Beijing had not gotten on board. “What has been achieved by this tough talk? What new trade detail have you got? What concessions has China made? What climate agreement has been reached? What has been the net effect of all of that?” he asked Sullivan on CNN. “I think it’s the wrong way to think about it,” Sullivan responded. “The right way to think about it is, have we set the terms to an effective competition where the United States is in a position to defend its values and advance its interests not just in the Indo-Pacific but around the world?”

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