GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson: Acknowledging Taiwan Is ‘Its Own Country’ Is Part of Winning Competition with China

During an interview with the “Fox News Rundown” podcast on Tuesday, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) stated that the competition with the Chinese Communist Party will not be won “unless we are clear-headed and focused on the threat. And part of that is just acknowledging that Taiwan is, indeed, its own country and that bullies like the Chinese Communist Party don’t get to take what they want through military force.”

Johnson said, [relevant remarks begin around 3:30] “I think you have seen a lot of evolution” in the One China Policy “in the last few years, just as it has become clearer that we’ve been engaged in a cold war with the Chinese Communist Party. It’s been one-sided. They’ve been involved in it for ten or twenty or thirty years. We’ve largely been sleepwalking through it. And I think, for a long time, people on both sides of the aisle thought if we just whispered sweet nothings to China, like that we believed in a One China Policy, that things would work out okay. And, in the end, we have just given the little dragon the resources and the time that [it] needed to grow into a large dragon. It’s been a strategic blunder. Luckily, I think we’ve come to our senses, we understand that this strategic competition is not going to resolve itself to the benefit of the good guys unless we are clear-headed and focused on the threat. And part of that is just acknowledging that Taiwan is, indeed, its own country and that bullies like the Chinese Communist Party don’t get to take what they want through military force.”

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