Don’t worry folks, Beijing Biden has got this covered.
President-elect Joe Biden has tapped former aide and longtime Asia expert Ely Ratner to be the incoming Pentagon chief’s principal adviser on China matters, according to two people with knowledge of the move. The move may help reassure China watchers who are concerned that Biden’s defense secretary nominee, retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, does not have sufficient experience in Indo-Pacific affairs.
I don’t know about you, but I find it reassuring that Biden picked one of his former staffers who worked his way up through the ranks and then joined Biden Inc’s foreign policy consulting firm which has its own piece of the China pie.
Guess what the fawning Politico piece about Ratner leaves off until the very last paragraph.
Ratner is also an adviser with WestExec Advisors, the consulting firm co-founded by Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee to be secretary of State, and Michèle Flournoy, former President Barack Obama’s Pentagon policy chief.
An afterthought. Nothing to see here guys. Just the consulting firm that helped staff Biden’s foreign policy establishment. No need to ask what it does.
As recently as late July, WestExec Advisors touted its work helping major American universities court donations in China without jeopardizing Pentagon-funded research grants. An archived version of the WestExec site states that “U.S. research universities” were among the company’s clients and that the consultancy worked with schools to “remain a trusted partner for DoD-sponsored research grants while expanding foreign research collaboration, accepting foreign donations, and welcoming foreign students in key STEM programs.” The company deleted references to such work from its website between July 26 and August 2, weeks before Biden accepted his nomination at the Democratic National Convention in late August.
Nothing to hide. Nothing to see here. Move along now.
At the same time, WestExec advertises on its website that it will “develop a strategy for expanding market access in China” for clients.
Anyone questioning this will get dings on their corporate social credit score, be deplatformed by Apple, Google, and Amazon, banned by Uber and Lyft, and cut off by every company you do business with.
You can be confident that America’s China policy will be in good hands.
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