> politicians making a contest of who is really 'tough on China' I know you're deliberately wording this to avoid a partisan angle, but I genuinely think that

> politicians making a contest of who is really 'tough on China' I know you're deliberately wording this to avoid a partisan angle, but I genuinely think that it's hurting your point here. There is no "contest" at play here. There are no "both sides". All this rhetoric is coming from one side of the aisle. And I agree it's bad, and hurtful, and quite frankly probably doing more to help the Chinese position on the world stage than hurt it. But it's also not something that's going to be fixed by stopping a "contest". Either the republicans decide to be grownups or they don't. The democrats can't fix that. Edit, because two responses have misunderstood this. This isn't about "being" tough on China, or about reasonably considering China as a threat to be countered. That is bipartisan, and despite the rhetoric something close to a default position among US elites. It's the partisan nonsense that ignores this clear consensus and tries to claim the Biden response is "soft" or whatever that's harmful. Again, if I were Xi and wanted to throw a bomb into US politics for my own benefit, I might very well provoke something like this.