Few countries are spared from Beijing’s newly beefed-up military, which is enjoying a major buildup, even as other spending is being cut. According to the Times: “In April, China’s Coast Guard rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat. The same month, a Chinese government research ship stalked an oil vessel in waters Malaysia claims as its own, prompting the United States and Australia to send four warships to monitor the situation. The Philippines lodged a formal diplomatic complaint after a Chinese warship pointed its targeting radar at a Philippine naval vessel.”

It’s time we treated China as the rogue dictatorship it is. When a totalitarian nation is enacting genocide, has a dictator for life, is showing itself to be a health menace to humankind, has crushed an island of democracy it pledged to protect, and is militarily acting out against its neighbors, we cannot continue as normal. The type of response we take is up for debate, but that things have changed for the worse is unmistakable. Granting asylum to all Hong Kongers in the U.S., as the U.K. has now promised, would be a start. This is a classic asylum case — like Cuba’s. But the delusions and weaknesses of the Trump years need to end. Biden needs to tell us what our future policy should be, and what actions we can take to rein in this genocidal obscenity.