Opinion | Even After a Trade Deal, Be Wary of China

First, to the extent possible, we should try to curb Chinese high-technology firms’ access to Western markets. These businesses are a security threat, and the Trump administration is right to be concerned. If a company like Huawei is asked to cooperate with Chinese State Security spies, its executives simply can’t say no.

This doesn’t mean that China is evil. American companies sold telecommunications equipment to China beginning in the 1980s that let us intercept officials’ conversations there, and we have inserted cyber “back doors” into goods and software sold to China so that we can cause damage in the event of a conflict. China purchased a Boeing 767 in 2000 to be its presidential jet and it arrived riddled with listening devices. China inevitably will try to do to us what we already did to it.

Second, we should continue to highlight human rights, especially China’s internment of perhaps one million Muslims in re-education camps. This is a staggering affront to religious liberty, with Chinese officials reportedly forcing Muslims to violate their faith by eating pork and drinking alcohol.

Bravo to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for forthrightly denouncing China’s “awful abuses” in detaining “hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of Uighurs,” as well as its persecution of Christians. The Chinese authorities have even installed monitoring cameras inside Muslims’ homes, and they have sent many Muslim parents to re-education camps, leaving the children left behind to be brainwashed in boarding schools.

Third, we need continued pressure on China over its exports of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is killing Americans in huge numbers through overdoses. Two-thirds or more of the fentanyl in the U.S. originates in China, where the authorities have been promising since 2016 to crack down on it.

A few days ago, China announced that it would soon ban all variants of fentanyl, a welcome step that may make a difference. But China often promises cooperation that does not materialize, and everything will depend on enforcement over the country’s 160,000 chemical companies. Too many lives hang in the balance to take China at its word.

About 20,000 Americans appear to be dying each year from Chinese fentanyl (some of it entering via Mexico). That’s a toll of devastation far greater than that caused by terrorists in the U.S. over multiple decades, and it should arouse far more outrage than Chinese companies pirating videos.