By Jacinta Chen

With the recent escalation of the United States-China trade war, China’s human rights abuses of the Uighur minority, and President Trump’s accusations of Chinese meddling in the midterm elections, the U.S. public has turned its attention toward the U.S.’s economic relationship with China. Though the general public seems to have lackluster concern for security policy toward China, lobbyists working for the Taiwanese government have pressured the Trump administration into expanding diplomatic dialogue and increasing arms sales. There is also a community of conservative foreign policy strategists from think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation (HF), who are pushing the U.S. to take a harder line in response to China’s economic expansion through the Belt and Road Initiative and its military development in the South China Sea.