Too little, too late?

In PJ Media, Victor Davis Hanson writes in part,

For a year, the Chinese government has battled massive street demonstrations for democracy in Hong Kong. Beijing cynically assumes that Western nations don't care. They are expected to drop their characteristic human rights advocacy because of how profitable their investments inside China have proven.

Beijing was right. Few Western companies complain that Chinese society is surveilled, regulated and controlled in a nightmarish fashion that George Orwell once predicted in his dystopian novel "1984."

If the Chinese communist Borg is willing to put millions of its own citizens at risk of infection and death, why would it care about foreigners' complaints that China is getting rich and powerful by breaking international trade rules?

The truth about President Trump's decision to call China to account over its systematic abuse of international trade norms is not that Trump's policy is reckless or ill-considered. It's that at this late date, the reckoning might prove too little, too late.

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