Senator Robert Taft, nicknamed “Mr. Republican” because of his stature in the party, opposed America’s entrance into NATO and declared in 1948 that “the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace and safety than is Europe.” The following year, Senator H. Alexander Smith, a Republican on the Foreign Policy and Armed Services Committee, warned that while the Truman administration was “preoccupied with Europe, the real threat of World War III may be approaching us from the Asiatic side.” William Knowland, the Senate Republican leader from 1953 to 1958, was so devoted to supporting the Nationalist exiles who left the mainland after losing China’s civil war that he was called the “senator from Formosa,” as Taiwan was known at the time.
Understanding why Republicans prioritized China then helps explain why they’re prioritizing it now. In her book “Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism,” the historian Joyce Mao argues that Cold War era Republicans’ focus on China stemmed in part from a “spiritual paternalism that arguably carried over from the previous century.” In the late 19th century, when the United States was carving out a sphere of influence in the Pacific, China, with its vast population, held special allure for Americans interested in winning souls for Christ. The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, who were Christians themselves, used this religious connection to drum up American support — first for their war against Communist rivals on the Chinese mainland and then, after they fled to the island of Taiwan, for their regime there.
Many of America’s most influential Asia Firsters — like the Time magazine publisher Henry Luce — were either the children of American missionaries in China or had served as missionaries there themselves. The John Birch Society, whose fervent and conspiratorial brand of anti-Communism foreshadowed the right-wing populism of today, took its name from an Army captain and former missionary killed by Chinese communists at the end of World War II.
Today, of course, Americans don’t need religious reasons to put Asia first. It boasts much of the world’s economic, political and military power, which is why the Biden administration focuses on the region, too. In Washington, getting tough on China is now a bipartisan affair. Still, the conservative tradition that Ms. Mao describes — which views China as a civilizational pupil turned civilizational threat — is critical to grasping why rank-and-file Republicans, far more than Democrats, fixate on the danger from Beijing.
In March, a Gallup poll found that while Democrats were 23 points more likely to consider Russia a greater enemy than China, Republicans were a whopping 64 points more likely to say the reverse. There is evidence that this discrepancy stems in part from the fact that while President Vladimir Putin of Russia casts himself as a defender of conservative Christian values, President Xi Jinping leads a nonwhite superpower whose regime has spurned the Christian destiny many Americans once envisioned for it.