OPINION:
Expectations were high when President Trump visited Beijing to meet with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping.
Summits are invariably full of pageantry and what diplomats like to call “deliverables,” the painstakingly negotiated, concrete agreements where the interests of both sides intersect in a sort of multidimensional Venn diagram.
Finding common ground is hard enough with allies, but it is extraordinarily difficult with communist China, an adversary closely allied with Russia, Iran and North Korea.
That is why these high-level meetings are also an opportunity to express concerns, which form the basis for follow-on, expert-level negotiation, deterrence and, if necessary, future countermeasures.
In 1988, preparing for his first summit with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, in Geneva, President Reagan said he wanted to develop a “working relationship that would be based on realities, not merely on a seeming relaxation of tensions between our two countries that could quickly disappear.”
The best leaders resist the temptation to avoid hard conversations with their counterparts. In fact, summits are where those hard conversations should take place so there are no misunderstandings down the road. It is an opportunity to build the mutual respect so necessary for negotiating deals that best serve U.S. national security interests.
Mr. Xi made this summit all about doing nothing to upset his outwardly productive personal relationship with Mr. Trump because he wants to induce our side to back off from holding China accountable for its nefarious actions around the globe.
Mr. Trump’s summit with Mr. Xi focused to a great extent on bilateral trade, but lurking in the background are China’s aggressive efforts to militarize the South China Sea, threaten Taiwan, steal U.S. intellectual property, hack into U.S. critical infrastructure and massively expand its nuclear arsenal.
In return for a plentiful supply of oil, which the U.S. blockade has halted, China has also supplied its ally Iran with tactical intelligence as well as dual-use equipment for drones and missiles.
China has used subtler but no less nefarious methods to gain strategic leverage over the U.S. In Oman, it opened United Solar Manufacturing, a $1.6 billion facility that produces polysilicon, a key precursor material in the semiconductor supply chain. United Solar is poised to generate 100,000 metric tons of polysilicon each year.
China wants to control the global polysilicon market by eliminating U.S. producers. That would enable it to gain superiority in critical high technology necessary for weapons systems, cyberdefense and communications, all of which depend on semiconductors.
The Oman-manufactured polysilicon is intended for solar cells and is not quite pure enough for semiconductor applications. Yet this lower-grade polysilicon nonetheless represents a grave threat to U.S. national security. That is because U.S.-based and allied producers of semiconductor-grade polysilicon rely on revenue from low-purity solar-grade polysilicon to sustain their overall business.
China’s strategic objective is to gain a stranglehold on the high-purity polysilicon supply chain by forcing U.S. and allied companies out of business.
The Trump administration is keenly aware of the importance of high technology to this century’s revolution in military affairs. The U.S. military disabled China’s mobile anti-stealth radars with intensive electronic jamming, thereby clearing secure airspace for U.S. Special Forces to achieve extraordinary mission success in Venezuela.
The Golden Dome will likewise demand the most advanced semiconductors.
The Chinese Communist Party knows that directly exporting polysilicon from Beijing is a nonstarter. That is why Mr. Xi is trying to use Oman as a Trojan Horse to gain control of the vitally important semiconductor industry. It is another in a long line of China’s underhanded and unfair trade practices.
While we await details of the private meetings between Messrs. Trump and Xi, the U.S. would ultimately gain more leverage by calling out Mr. Xi for China’s ubiquitous efforts to trample on U.S. national security interests.
It is not that Mr. Trump should expect Mr. Xi to take any action now to address our concerns, but we do not want Mr. Xi to be surprised if we address them ourselves through legislation, counterintelligence, deterrence and, where appropriate, military action.
Reagan, who noted, “We have demonstrated time and again that plain talk, a strong defense and tough diplomacy bring peace,” set the gold standard for managing summits with formidable communist dictators. After all, what good is a personal relationship if leaders cannot speak frankly with one another behind the scenes about where their nations’ interests do not intersect?
When it comes to China, our national security depends on it.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com. All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or endorsement of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.