Nikki Haley: 'It is time to move on from China'

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Politics.]

By Philip Wegmann
Real Clear Politics

Nikki Haley is not watching the Winter Olympics.

That means no ice hockey; no figure skating – singles or doubles; no skiing, either – alpine, cross country, or otherwise. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says she definitely did not watch the opening ceremony in Beijing – that dazzling display of advanced artificial intelligence, limitless human capital, and propaganda meant to project Chinese power.

Haley won't watch any of it. No, not even the curling.

“I can't get the images out of my head of people on their knees blindfolded, knowing what's about to happen to them,” she explains, citing the now infamous image of imprisoned Uyghurs, heads freshly shaven and hands tied behind their backs, awaiting forced transfer at a train station in Xinjiang. “I can't imagine in any way supporting that or propping up China.”

And yet, despite her personal boycott, the former diplomat and potential presidential candidate is watching the Olympic fallout with intense interest. “It is time for America to wake up,” Haley tells RealClearPolitics, “and change the way we look at China.” She has already made up her mind.

One of the most prominent China hawks in the Republican Party, Haley was blasting Beijing for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims even before official Washington – somewhat begrudgingly in some circumstances – came around to condemning the communist regime for its religious persecution. Four years ago, she called China’s systematic internment of the Uyghurs “something straight out of George Orwell.” Citing that treatment early last year, Haley was also one of the first to call for an Olympic boycott before a single athlete booked their ticket to Beijing.

American athletes went anyway. But, like Haley, most Americans aren’t watching.

Absent unforeseen developments, the games will set a dubious record: the worst TV viewership in Olympic history. An average of just 12.7 million Americans tuned in to NBC for the first week of the games, the Washington Post reports, a staggering drop of nearly 50% from four years ago. Those abysmal ratings reflect changes in viewing habits, not to mention an awkward time difference – but also an argument Haley has been making since the beginning of the Biden administration: Most people can’t simply ignore genocide for fun and games.

While the White House was lit up in red-white-and-blue to celebrate the U.S. Olympic team, the administration has been careful to note their condemnation of China’s “crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.” The participation of American athletes, they insist, should not be misconstrued as tacit endorsement of that regime.

But in Haley’s mind, that is a distinction without a meaningful difference. “You can't go halfway, and I think that's what they're trying to do,” she said of the attempt to divorce the games from geopolitics. “They are trying to split this and you can't.” Then, putting it in personal terms, she added, “Jen Psaki can't be Olympic-obsessed, and turn her back on the Uyghurs that are suffering. You are either for human rights or you're not.”

From the White House podium, the press secretary has had to walk a fine line, attempting to both condemn Chinese crimes against humanity and cheer for American athletes. Psaki hinted one moment that she might show up to brief the press in “an Olympics outfit.” The next, she reiterated that the president’s diplomatic boycott of the games was meant as a rebuke of China for its “ongoing genocide.”

That official admonishment likely had little effect, according to administration critics. As Haley put it: “China never cared whether Biden showed up. It was the athletes they wanted.” In the end, they got them. But the value of that athletic participation is hardly guaranteed. Beijing saw the games as a public relations possibility post-pandemic. Many Americans responded by turning off their televisions. And rather than highlighting an emerging global power, the enduring images of the Olympics may be the poor quarantine conditions forced on athletes who test positive for COVID-19, the Dutch reporter dragged off air, and the Chinese athletes who are “disappeared” after failing to perform up to expectations.

In the United States, public opinion had already hardened against the Chinese before the opening ceremony. According to polling by Gallup, 79% of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion of the communist country, a historic and negative high that gives Haley’s hawkism particular salience in American politics.

“For too long, Americans thought that if we were nice to China, they'd want to be like us,” she said, summing up the previously bipartisan view that normalizing trade with Beijing would incentivize better behavior. “But they don't want to be like us,” she added. “They want to be communist.”

It is not time to strengthen business ties with China, or ensure “robust commercial engagement,” as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo proposed last September. According to Haley, ties should be increasingly slashed. When she sees the American carnage her old boss described, the rusted-out factories where industry once hummed and former President Trump made a theme of his inaugural address, Haley sees “a national security threat.” She points back to the worst days of the pandemic, when the United States couldn’t immediately manufacture what it needed to combat the coronavirus, and “when two American companies, 3M and Honeywell, tried to sell PPE and China stopped them, telling them they could only give aid to countries that did business with Huawei.”

Unlike some of her former Trump-era colleagues, Haley is not reflexively protectionist. “It is okay to have manufacturing and trade relationships with our allies,” she explained before adding, “It is absolutely ludicrous to have a trade policy with an adversary because you can't turn around and have them hold you hostage, whether it's for medication, whether it's for testing, whether it's for chips, whether it's for anything that Americans need.”

Such shortages have prompted calls by some Republicans for a “national industrial policy” in which the federal government would set priorities and choose winners and losers. Haley, who encouraged global trade when serving as governor of South Carolina, finds this “totally un-American” – the phrase she used in a speech at the Heritage Foundation last November. “There’s also irony here,” she said. “Those who accuse capitalism of strengthening China are the same people who want to do business with China.”

She favors a more targeted approach, telling RCP that the U.S. ought to do “what India is doing, what Japan is doing. They have both given themselves massive stimulus packages to become less dependent on China. America needs to do the same.” Haley pointed to the silicon chips that make up circuit boards and processors in the cellphones and computers that drive the modern economy.

“We don't need to wait until China goes and takes over Taiwan to see the chip shortage happen,” she said. “We should be looking at things, how we can manufacture chips here.”

Changes in trade policy from Washington won’t be enough, though. Haley insists that “this has to be a patriotic move.” Given that corporate interests are so intertwined with Beijing, love of country may not be enough to change business behavior. The Olympics themselves are bankrolled by American corporations such as Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Intel, Procter & Gamble and Visa. But exposing hypocrisy? Haley thinks that might do the trick.

“You’ve got Coke criticizing a Georgia voting law,” she said of the soft-drink giant’s censure of that state over its voting law overhaul last year, “but then you see them falling over themselves to help a communist country.” Airbnb makes a public commitment to non-discrimination and human rights, “and yet they are not saying anything about the Uyghurs.”

“They are making money on the backs of abuses that are happening and that are unthinkable,” Haley said of those corporate sponsors turning a blind eye to Chinese human rights abuses. “If it was happening to their families, they’d be screaming at the rooftops saying this is a total injustice.”

“It's hypocritical on every level to see what these sponsors are doing,” Haley said. It isn’t happening in a vacuum either. Poor ratings could be the least of these corporation’s problems, the ambassador added, noting that “when Americans start doing to these sponsors, what they are currently doing to these Olympics by saying ‘No more. We're not going to support a company that can't choose a side on something this important,’ then Americans are going to start to choose the side for them.”

The time for choosing that Haley describes could happen behind the closed doors of boardrooms and C-suites. Sometimes it is more personal. For instance, Eileen Gu, an American-born freestyle skier, courted controversy when she decided to compete on behalf of China, overlooking that country’s genocide against the Uyghurs. She won a gold medal and national accolades in that country, an advertising boon for her corporate sponsors, including Apple and Victoria’s Secret. Because China does not allow dual citizenship, it isn’t clear whether the 18-year-old athlete surrendered her U.S. passport to Beijing authorities.

Gu repeatedly dodged questions about her citizenship after winning gold in the women's freestyle skiing. Haley did not. The former ambassador was just as blunt about athletes cozying up to China as she was about corporations overlooking human rights abuses in pursuit of profits.

“In terms of the citizenship, look, China or the U.S.? You have got to pick a side. Period. You’ve got to pick a side because you're either American or you're Chinese, and they are two very different countries,” she said, adding, “Every athlete needs to know when they put their flag on, you're standing for freedom or you're standing for human rights abuses. There is no in-between.”

The Olympics will end this Sunday. Haley won’t have watched any of it. She hopes that the unofficial Beijing blackout marks the beginning of the end of business as usual with that regime, and that the Americans who didn’t watch the games begin watching an emerging China more closely.

“My hope and prayer is that Americans realize that China is the one that gave us COVID. China is the one stealing intellectual property. China is the one committing human rights abuses. And China is the one that has become a surveillance state that is now going to start dictating to our American companies, which is why they've started to leave,” she said.

“At some point, we need to understand it is time to move on from China,” the ambassador concluded.

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Politics.]

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