如果你觉得前总统特朗普的“火与怒”外交政策糟糕，那么假如共和党人2024年拿下白宫，情况会更糟。角逐提名的主要共和党参选人在外交政策上大做文章。如果他们竞选时向选民兜售的东西能够预见未来的情况，那么下周的第一场共和党初选辩论将展示他们对中美关系现状以及应对计划的可怕观点。

在民调停留于个位数的不利情况下，妮基·黑利在竞选活动中警告选民，中国是准备发动战争的“敌人”。在她关于中国的“全面”计划中，黑利呼吁加大美国军事投入，并通过禁止中国公民购买美国土地等行动消除中国对美国的影响。

事实上，美国2024年的国防开支预计将达到8680亿美元，超过其后10个国家的总和。在土地方面，黑利煽动有关中国试图控制美国农业这一毫无根据的担忧。美国农业部的数据显示，实际上只有3%的美国农业用地为外国实体所有。加拿大拥有其中最大的份额，占31%，而中国只占不到1%。黑利对中国的“全面”计划与现实脱节。

维韦克·拉马斯瓦米也不甘落后。他在竞选活动中说，现在美国“担惊受怕”，如果当选，他将签署一份脱离中国的“独立宣言”。

罗恩·德桑蒂斯禁止在州政府和教育机构的服务器和设备上使用TikTok，并限制中国公民购买房产。

然后是特朗普。与其他参选人不同，我们知道特朗普之前对中国做了什么。时至今日，特朗普政府中的鹰派人物仍在影响共和党对华政策的强硬思维。

最近很多文章谈到共和党在外交政策上的意识形态分歧，但在对华政策上，他们都主张以军事实力为后盾，唱着各自版本的排外和经济民粹主义之歌。但是，依靠“硬实力”恐吓中国迫使其退让，是可怕的外交赌博。但这也是大多数参选人所做的一场赌博，他们为摆脱低迷的民调数据，试图利用恐惧、偏见和虚张声势赢得选民的支持。

无论下周辩论结果如何，我们都有可能看到更多气势汹汹和荒谬的对华计划。但是，如果这些计划变成实际政策，那后果就太可怕了。无论是谁，他们竞选时所讲的外交政策都是黑暗而危险的，都不应该接近白宫。

BY YINT HMU

If you thought former President Trump’s 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 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.