Korea in the invasion of South Korea, pitting their combined communist forces against the United States. That ended in a stalemate, with the war against the non-communist South defeated but with the aggressors in Beijing and Pyongyang still in power to fight another day. A decade later, China was again in the business of killing Americans, this time in Vietnam. It succeeded in helping communist North Vietnam invade and conquer the anti-communist government and people of South Vietnam after their American allies abandoned them, despite 15 years of sacrifice.

While Mao was busy engaging in foreign adventurism, his Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward at home caused the deaths of up to 50 million Chinese and the physical and mental enslavement of the rest. By 1972, President Nixon wasthe world.

Trump and Biden surely can agree on that threat and the urgent need to confront and defeat it.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.

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The Taiwan Studies Programme is a research centre based at the University of Nottingham focusing on all aspects of contemporary Taiwan. The Taiwan Studies Programme does not privilege political positions and the views published on Taiwan