GOP presidential candidates are fanning the flames of China’s war rhetoric

If you thought the Donald Trump years of “fire and fury” foreign policy were bad — buckle up, it’s going to get a lot worse if the Republicans win the White House in 2024. 

Major candidates vying for the GOP presidential nomination are campaigning hard on foreign policy. And if what they’re selling to voters on the stump is any indication of what’s to come, next week’s first Republican primary debate could showcase on a primetime stage their scary perspectives on the state of U.S.-China relations and their plans for it. 

Nikki Haley is one of the candidates running on foreign policy. With poll numbers stuck in the low single digits, she’s out on the trail warning voters in Iowa that China is an “enemy” preparing for war and that the Chinese government is developing “neuro-strike weapons” that can “disrupt the brain activity of military or government leader or population of people.”

In her “comprehensive” plan on China — which is three bullet points long and includes nonsensical claims that the Biden administration has “done little to stop the expansion of China’s footprint on our homeland” — Haley has called for investing more in the U.S. military, severing economic ties and purging Chinese influence in the U.S. through actions like banning Chinese citizens from purchasing American farmland. 

But the truth is, at $886 billion in expected defense spending for 2024, the U.S. military budget is larger than that of the next 10 countries combined, including China and Russia. And on the farmland front, Haley plays on the baseless fear that China is trying to control U.S. agriculture. But Department of Agriculture data show that only 3 percent of American farmland is actually owned by foreign entities. Canada owns the largest share of that at 12.8 million acres or 31 percent, compared to China’s measly 380,000 acres (less than 1 percent). As things stand, Haley’s “comprehensive” plan for China barely tethers to reality. 

Not to be left out, Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s rising in the polls and cheekily calls himself a “non-white nationalist” also is out on the stump saying that right now America is “scared” and that if elected, he will sign a “declaration of independence” from China. To prevent China from invading Taiwan, Ramaswamy is campaigning on his plan to “open a branch of the NRA in Taiwan, put an AR-15 in the hands of every family, and train them how to use it,” and to give “Xi Jinping a taste of American exceptionalism.” 

Domestic politics drive how people think about foreign policy; electoral politics even more so. Being “tough on China” to win voters is a strategy Trump used in 2020 that is being repeated this cycle. And Republicans have a voter base that is turning increasingly hostile toward China. According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 60 percent of Republicans see China as an “enemy” and an overwhelming majority of Republicans see China as a technological, economic and military threat. 

One of the few Republican candidates in the field who is in a position to turn talking points into policy is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He has banned TikTok on government and educational servers and devices and restricted Chinese citizens from purchasing property, the latter of which the Justice Department has argued is discriminatory and in violation of federal law. His economic plan calls for revoking China’s normal trade relations status and banning the import of Chinese goods made with stolen intellectual property.

Like Haley, DeSantis warns that war with China over Taiwan is coming. His plan to prevent that from happening is to focus on “hard power” and trade. 

And then there’s Donald Trump, the twice impeached and four times indicted former president. Despite his legal woes, Trump is leading the polls by a wide margin and could easily capture the Republican nomination come spring. 

Unlike the other candidates, though, we actually have a record of what Trump has done on China — a record that he’s now running on building upon.

In case anyone needed reminding, Trump's first term was filled with made-for-Twitter tit-for-tat responses and heavy-handed tactics (including projections of military power), and a trade war that rapidly escalated tensions between our two countries. And to this day, the hawks of the Trump administration, such as former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, continue to influence hardline GOP thinking on China policy. 

A lot has recently been written about how the Republican Party is ideologically split on foreign policy between traditional interventionists like Haley and isolationists like Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswamy. But on China policy, they’re all singing their own versions of the same song of xenophobia and economic populism, backed up by military power. These candidates also share the long-held Republican orthodoxy that “hard power” is the only way to deter an adversary. 

But relying on “hard power” — that is, positioning overwhelming military force and taking aggressive economic and diplomatic actions to intimidate China into backing down — is one hell of a foreign policy gamble. Especially when what’s at stake is the risk of war between two nuclear-armed nations. 

But this is a gamble most of these candidates have made, seeking to break out of polling purgatory by preying upon fears and prejudices and projecting bravado to win primary voters. 

Whatever happens on next week’s debate stage, chances are we’re going to see even more bluster and absurd plans for China. But to contemplate the consequences of those plans being turned into actual policy is a terrifying prospect. 

Whether it is Trump, Haley, Ramaswamy or DeSantis, the foreign policy they are all campaigning on is dark and dangerous. And none of them should be allowed anywhere near the White House.

Yint Hmu is campaigns manager at Win Without War. The views expressed are not necessarily those of Win Without War.