Crucial stretches of the Korean War, which never officially ended, took place during The Coldest Winter (David Halberstam’s term) and American forces fought it out with the troops of Kim Il Sung and Mao Zedong’s Communist China. In 1962, that nation saw a record low temperature of negative 62.1 Fahrenheit, or minus 52.3 Celsius, and in recent years temperatures in China have dropped to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius, the point at which the two scales converge.
Given the frosty record, Canadians were surprised to learn that the government Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had invited troops from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for “winter survival training exercises” at the Canadian Armed Forces base at Petawawa, Ontario.
Chief of Defense Staff Jonathan Vance canceled the training when China kidnapped Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in December 2018. The capture of the “two Michaels,” as they have become known, came after Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, sought in the United States for fraud. Secret government documents obtained by Rebel News name Meng Wenzhou, but not Kovrig and Spavor, who show up only as “consular cases,” with no reference to their status as hostages.
Days after the November election, Prime Minister Trudeau spoke with Joe Biden about the Canadian hostage, now held for more than two years. Trudeau said China’s “approach of coercive diplomacy is ineffective.” What Joe Biden said did not emerge and Canadians might wonder about Biden’s record on China.
On a visit to Beijing in 2013, then-Vice President Biden called on those Chinese seeking residency in the United States to “challenge the government, challenge your teachers, challenge religious leaders.” That was “Biden’s Important Message for Human Rights in China,” as The Atlantic headlined the story.
In May of 2011, Reuters ran a report headlined “Biden, Clinton bluntly press China on rights.” Biden said “President Obama and I believe strongly, as does the secretary, that protecting fundamental rights and freedoms such as those enshrined in China’s international commitments as well as in China’s own constitution is the best way to promote long term stability and prosperity—of any society.”
Biden did not specify the “fundamental rights and freedoms” in China’s constitution, and his “blunt” statement included no criticism of the Communist regime. Cases where Biden actually criticized or denounced the regime are hard to find. In 2001, then-Sen. Biden supported China’s admission to the World Trade Organization. In 1998, Biden voted against seizing the assets of commercial fronts that operate on behalf of the Chinese Army.
In 1989, the Chinese massacred democratic protesters in Tiananmen Square. Sen. Joe Biden voted against strong sanctions on Communist China as a response to the massacre. So no surprise that during the 2020 campaign, Biden said the Chinese are “not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.” Prime Minister Trudeau feels the same way.
In 2013, Justin Trudeau expressed his “level of admiration for China,” because “their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime.” Justin’s father Pierre Trudeau was also an admirer of Communist dictatorships and the tyrants who run them.
In the early 1950s Pierre Trudeau traveled to Josef Stalin’s USSR and participated in propaganda operations. In 1960, Trudeau visited Communist China in the midst of Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” that claimed millions of lives, many through a state-imposed famine. In 1970, during the murderous Cultural Revolution, Prime Minister Trudeau officially recognized the People’s Republic.
Joe Biden doesn’t have a Stalinist father like Pierre Trudeau. On the other hand, Joe’s son Hunter has leveraged his father’s influence to cut deals with China. Hunter Biden even had keys made for his father and uncle at an office shared with an “emissary” of a Chinese energy company.
In 2017, Hunter Biden extended “best wishes from the entire Biden family” as he sought $10 million to “properly fund and operate” a Biden joint venture with the company. Attorney General William Barr knew about two federal investigations into Hunter Biden for months but kept them from public knowledge in advance of the election. Joe Biden has clout with the Justice Department, but he is not known for support of Chinese dissidents. That marks a departure from other American officials.
Back in the 1980s, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov told UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick
“Your name is known in every cell in the Gulag.” In 2020, Joe Biden’s name is known to every Communist Party official in China. Joe Biden may not perform in blackface, but he’s shaping up as America’s Justin Trudeau. Both men ignore the victims of the Chinese Communist regime and appease their oppressors. This will not end well.