China's leaders must be trading high-fives as they watch the American left push policies that will cripple American competitiveness.
While China is cracking down on students wasting time on video games, America's racial equity warriors are trying to ban advanced placement math, competitive entrance exams and school honor rolls. Americans don't want their government to wield power over how kids spend out-of-school time, but they also don't want their children discouraged from pursuing excellence. It's a recipe for personal failure and national decline.
On the economic front, congressional Democrats are trying to ram through President Joe Biden's tax plan, which would make America's combined state and federal corporate tax burden the highest in the developed world, according to the Tax Foundation. This would motivate companies to relocate elsewhere. That's good news for China, which is vowing to outproduce the U.S. by 2035.
And China couldn't be happier about the American left's Green New Deal. It will deliver plenty of green -- money, that is -- to China. Electric-powered cars will depend on batteries made in, you guessed it, China. China controls access to more than 80% of the minerals used to make those batteries.
Polysilicon -- the key ingredient in solar panels -- is also sourced from China, reported Fox Business News' Larry Kudlow.
China is the world's largest polluter of carbon emissions. Biden's climate envoy, John Kerry, spent two days in China last week spinning his wheels, begging China to stop building coal-fired energy plants. Coal plants are key to China's plan to overtake the U.S. economy.
When Biden delivered his first address to the joint session of Congress in April, he announced, "We're in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century," and he warned that China "is closing in fast."
What is stunning is how many Democrats in Washington, D.C. seem oblivious to the damaging impact of their tax hikes, education agenda and domestic energy policies on the U.S.-China rivalry.
The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill in June that purports to address the China threat by beefing up funding for research and development and incentivizing domestic manufacture of semiconductors. The bill is stalled in the House. And even if it reaches the president's desk, its benefit would be minuscule compared with the Democratic Party's frontal assaults on educational merit, fossil fuels and economic growth. That bill is like a sip of water for someone who's being beaten to a pulp. The Democrats are beating down America's future economic potential.
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Most Americans don't want their country to decline. They're especially outraged at the dumbing down of their children's education. Oregon is scrapping requirements that high school students pass tests in reading, writing and math to graduate. The rationale is that minority students don't test well.
In California, the educational establishment is trying to eliminate accelerated math until eleventh grade, forcing talented kids to go slow for the sake of other students. As one California father protested, "You don't lift people by bringing other people down."
And you don't win the global competition by reducing your pool of talented, highly educated people -- a lesson China knows well. China tried to artificially impose equality during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. College entrance exams were abolished, and educational institutions were converted into brainwashing factories for revolutionaries. The economy collapsed because an entire generation had been taught nothing and didn't know how to do anything. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping reversed course, restoring meritocracy in the educational system.
Fortunately, American parents are showing up at school board meetings outraged by government-imposed mediocrity, among other issues.
New York Times opinion writer Michelle Cottle tells us "it is not a pretty sight" to see parents storming the meetings. Wrong. It's a beautiful sight. It's time for parents to take back control.
As for the growing threat from China, on Aug. 31, Biden pointed to it as justification for pulling out of Afghanistan.
He pledged to "shore up American competitiveness."
Step one, Mr. President, is to get tough with the tax-hiking, radical environmentalists in your own party, and speak out for high standards in schools.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of "The Next Pandemic," available at Amazon.com. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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