In the recent Project Syndicate article, WEAI Professor Andrew Nathan writes:
“For over four decades, US policymakers viewed human rights in China not as a question of core interests, but rather as a matter of values to be promoted when doing so did not interfere with higher-priority security or economic concerns. As recently as 2016, when Trump campaigned against China, his objection was to “unfair” trade relations, not human rights. Upon taking office, he refrained from public – and private, as far as we know – criticism of China’s human-rights record in the apparent hope of reaching a trade deal.
But within the last year or so, Trump administration officials who view China as an existential threat to the United States have pushed the Sino-American clash of values to the center of the two countries’ strategic rivalry.”
Read the full article here.
