One of the few things that unite republicans and democrates

One Issue That’s Uniting Republicans – and Democrats

The United States might sometimes feel more divided than ever. But there is at least one issue that is increasingly uniting members of both parties, writes Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal: China.

“Within the Republican Party, China is what unites the Steve Bannon wing with the H.R. McMasters and the Rex Tillersons. Where the populists see a threat to American jobs and wages from unfair Chinese competition, the national-security types worry about protecting important sea lanes and American allies in the region from an aggressive, rapidly arming power. As many traditional pro-China voices in corporate America fall silent in the face of Beijing’s mercantilism, the Richard Nixon-George H.W. Bush legacy of Republican friendship with China is on the wane,” Mead writes.

“Democrats also are increasingly focused on perceived threats from Beijing. Organized labor has long argued that Chinese competition undermines American wages and jobs. But now China, not content with suppressing human rights in its own territory, is seeking to advance the cause of nondemocratic governance in places like Venezuela and Zimbabwe. That brings it into conflict with the powerful human-rights constituency in Democratic politics.

“Beyond that, the often left-leaning tech lords of Silicon Valley have been hit by some of China’s most aggressively mercantilist abuses.”

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