In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.The Communist leaders of China took a side in the elections of 2018 and 2020: They wanted Democrats to win.A recently published intelligence assessment reported that during President Donald Trump’s first term, “The Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. President [Trump] in an effort to reduce the U.S. President’s votes and make him resign or prevent his re-election.”
Specifically, in the 2020 election, China considered “interference efforts” and “influence efforts” to help Joe Biden win, but ultimately decided this was not worth the rest “China did take some steps to try to undermine former President Trump’s reelection.”The assessment from the National Intelligence Council suggests some reasons why, including that Biden “would be more predictable and eager to initially deescalate bilateral tensions.” Also, China may have thought Biden would dial back Trump’s tariffs.But the intelligence sources were guessing just as much as anyone. A brief study of Biden’s career and his party’s record on China would provide the Communist Party with plenty of reasons to back Biden.As a senator Biden advanced policies advantageous to China based on naïve assumptions about the Communist regime. As vice president, he got very chummy with Xi Jinping, now the president of China, and excused some of the regime’s worst human rights abuses. As a candidate in 2020, he denied that China was a competitor. And of course, China was paying millions of dollars to Hunter Biden, and Joe Biden was fine with that.In short, the Chinese Communist Party had more than enough reasons to think Biden and the Democrats would be good for the cause.Biden’s record
