The 2016 GOP platform expresses the disillusionment of discredited ideology. To explain why it is abandoning its policy of engagement, the GOP includes a list of charges against China. But these charges explain nothing. It’s the GOP that has changed, not China.

Jared McKinney is a Non-Resident Junior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a double degree Msc. candidate at Peking University (School of International Studies) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (Department of International History).

Image: Richard and Pat Nixon's arrival in China. Wikimedia Commons/National Archives.