TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) announced a new “China Policy Initiative” and the appointment of former deputy national security adviser to the Vice President Steve Yates as its chair on Thursday (Feb. 3).
“The Initiative will advance policies that reverse decades of Washington’s accommodation of Communist China that nurtured an existential rival and advocates strategies to protect our Nation and livelihood without war,” the AFPI wrote in a press release. It aims to identify new threats from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by understanding and responding to “hard truths” about China and then taking a “whole of society” approach to overcome challenges.
While the Chinese are to be respected for their history and “contributions to the human experience,” the CCP has posed real threats everywhere in the U.S., according to Yates, who served former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. He accused China of stealing American jobs and intellectual property, polluting the world’s air and oceans, infiltrating Wall Street, Hollywood, and major cultural and educational institutions, as well as “killing 1 million Americans” with COVID-19.
“For decades, D.C. insiders and Wall Street elites perpetuated the lie that American engagement with Communist China would cause that nation to open, to liberalize, and to reform. They were wrong,” said Linda McMahon, AFPI Chair, who called China under the CCP “the single largest and systemic threat to Americans’ security and prosperity.”
The China Policy Initiative introduced a project entitled “China 2022: An Olympic-Sized Threat,” which will publish daily information on threats from the CCP beginning on Friday (Feb. 4), the day the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opens. AFPI President and CEO Brooke Rollins said it was in an effort to combat the “16-day propaganda spectacle” which should not “fool the world.”
The AFPI describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan research institute that advances policies that “put the American people first.” The organization is affiliated with the former Trump administration, with most of its members, including McMahon, Vice Chair Larry Kudlow, and Rollins serving as officials under former U.S. President Donald Trump.
