Dr. William H. Overholt, a Senior Research Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, spoke at a Harvard seminar on Nov. 19, and in a Q&A period afterward led by Harvard’s Larry Summers, the former United States Treasury Secretary. Overholt took on many aspects of the ant-China narrative and deconstructed many of its arguments. Overall, he gave the Biden administration a “D+” on its China policy.
Specifically on Biden, he said this administration “has completely reneged on the 1979 agreement that’s been the basis for peace in Taiwan. … That we will not have official relations, we will not have an alliance. … China has honored the agreement. We have broken the agreement.” He added “we Americans are the problem. And Biden has, more explicitly than anybody else, repudiated the deal on which Taiwan’s success is built.”
Overholt went on to ridicule the statement that China is planning to invade Taiwan, and chastised the U.S. for “creating the problem that we think we’re trying to deter.” This would be worse than Ukraine, he said. “The risk is nuclear war.”
