Robert Delaney

On Balance | Republicans would join China and Russia in celebrating a US debt default

Making China the focus of every US policy debate plays into the hands of Communist Party propaganda that loves to show how much China scares US policymakers

The modern Republican Party, with its admiration and emulation of authoritarians, is more likely to celebrate a US default than work to avoid it

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US Senator Rick Scott of Florida speaks during a press conference demanding that US President Joe Biden negotiate with Republicans to make a deal on raising the debt ceiling, on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 3. Photo: Reuters

Robert Delaney

Published: 1:00am, 10 May 2023Updated: 1:28am, 10 May 2023

Why do Biden administration officials think Republicans would be moved by the argument that China and Russia would seek to exploit a US government debt default?

Senior White House economics official Shalanda Young said last Thursday that the debt ceiling was “no less than a test of what works in this world. Does democracy still work, or does the Chinese way work?”

At around the same time over on Capitol Hill, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it is “almost a certainty” that both China and Russia would use the default for propaganda purposes through “information operations”.

That the Chinese government would exploit a US debt default to further efforts to widen the use of the yuan in bilateral trade settlements – and cast the political antics that caused it into a larger narrative of the fundamental weakness of Western democracy – is as obvious as black hair dye at Beijing’s National People’s Congress.

For Haines to issue the warning makes sense. It’s her job to sound the alarm. But for Biden officials to do so from the White House podium, as Young did, continues the administration’s unfortunate tendency to trot out the Beijing bogeyman to advance its objectives.

We saw this tactic throughout 2021 when officials berated lawmakers against legislation that eventually became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The argument should have been strictly about American needs and not what China was up to, especially considering that infrastructure projects in the country are not always about what makes sense from market or environmental perspectives.