Dear Secretary Blinken:

In the wake of the tragic, racist, and misogynistic murders of six Asian women in Atlanta, GA, instead of reflecting on how the US government’s anti-China rhetoric provoked this and other instances of anti-Asian violence in the US, you and the Biden administration are ramping up more aggression toward China.

Taking a "hard stance on China" — creating a vile, unnecessary, reckless confrontation — will not get us to positive solutions; instead it will hinder both of our countries and the world, while endangering innocent people.

We are calling on you, Secretary Blinken, to stop unnecessarily stoking a global conflict with China that feeds both the Cold War abroad and anti-Asian attacks at home.

Last Thursday, when top US and Chinese officials met for the first time under the Biden administration, you said that China “threatens the rules-based order that maintains global stability.” While you condemn China for alleged human rights abuses, we want to remind you that if you truly care about human rights, human rights are the first and largest casualty of war. This meeting came just one day after the US sanctioned 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials, and one day after you traveled to Japan and South Korea alongside Secretary of Defense Austin to shore up US alliances in preparation to encircle and contain China. This is in addition to your administration’s plan to establish a network of precision-strike missiles along the islands surrounding Beijing over the next six years as part of $27.4 billion in spending to be considered under the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

The US spends three times more on its military than China does. Instead of increasing our military presence in the Pacific and creating a less safe world for all, our taxpayer dollars could be much better spent providing life-affirming services to Americans in the midst of a global pandemic and an ongoing recession.

Unlike the US, China maintains a no-first-use policy on the use of nuclear weapons, and has even publicly called on nuclear weapon states to create and join a multilateral Treaty on Mutual No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons. Unlike the US, China’s foreign policy stresses the importance of multilateral cooperation in order to ensure the development and well-being of all nations. The US, on the other hand, has nearly 20 times the number of nuclear warheads as China, has twice the tonnage of warships at sea, has over 130,000 troops stationed in the Indo-Pacific, and has over 800 overseas bases compared with China’s three. Rather than a new Cold War, we need to be cooperating with China on such things as climate change mitigation and worldwide vaccine distribution.

Secretary Blinken, we need respectful and harmonious relations with China, not more military aggression, which endangers lives, especially those of Asians at home and abroad, and continues our grotesque levels of Pentagon spending. China is not our enemy.

Sincerely,