Trump needs Reagan's human rights playbook for China

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping recently met in Washington, D.C. Besides snarling traffic, the two leaders engaged in elaborate pageantry. And according to the official readout, they discussed trade, artificial intelligence, Taiwan, and Iran.

No indication suggested that human rights and China’s egregious human rights record were a part of the discussion.

America should realize by now that trade is not the answer. It has not produced the political liberalization in China that Americans were told it would do. Over the last 30 years, instead of bringing China into the free world, we have imported its cheap goods, trading them for American manufacturing jobs.

Likewise, technology isn’t the answer. China isn’t simply competing with America technologically. The Chinese Communist Party has engaged in what U.S. officials described as systematic intellectual property theft and economic espionage, a strategy summarized by the Justice Department as “rob, replicate, replace, acquire American technology, reproduce it in China, and compete against the American companies that developed it.”

What if the answer is not trade, technology, or military might — but human rights and the recognition that while a regime can deny the God who gave those rights and repress the worship of Him, it cannot forever suppress the heart of man that yearns for liberty. What if the Trump administration took a page from the Reagan playbook on confronting an authoritarian adversary?

See, Reagan understood that the Cold War with Russia was not a contest between two weapon systems, but between two views of man, one in which rights belong to the state, and one in which rights preceded the state because they came from God.

This reality is highlighted in the movie “The Brink of War,” based upon the historical record surrounding the October 1986 Reykjavik summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. While movies often take liberties with the facts, the historical record supports the depiction of Reagan making human rights central to his engagement with the Soviet Union. Prior to departing for the summit, Reagan met with human rights advocates at the White House, and he said this: “True peace requires respect for human rights and freedom as well as arms control.”

Peace is not simply an absence of war — it’s the presence of justice. Human rights and human freedom are its indispensable elements. These fundamental values and beliefs are matters on which we as Americans cannot and will not compromise.

Therein lies a lesson for America today. Human rights are not the product of America. They are what produced America. They are not diminished by sharing them. They are like faith — they are multiplied. As Americans, our liberty and freedom become more robust and secure when we defend the God given rights of others. America must be strong militarily, economically, and technologically. But our greatest strength is the truth that exposes the weakness of every totalitarian regime.

Our rights come from God, not government. Reagan understood that this was communism’s deepest vulnerability. The Chinese Communist Party has the same vulnerability today. China can repress religious freedom, censor speech, imprison dissenters, and deny God. But it cannot forever suppress what God has placed within the heart of every human: the yearning to breathe free.