Scott Walker isn’t interested in improving U.S.-China relations:

Given China’s massive cyberattacks against America, its militarization of the South China Sea, continued state interference with its economy, and persistent persecution of Christians and human rights activists, President Obama needs to cancel the state visit. There’s serious work to be done rather than pomp and circumstance.

Walker’s suggestion is a bad one. I understand that he’s engaging in standard China-bashing rhetoric that is common to most presidential candidates, but unsurprisingly he fails to grasp that his preferred course of action is the empty, purely symbolic one that will do nothing to address any of the problems he mentions. If there is “serious work to be done,” it isn’t going to get done by publicly embarrassing China. Snubbing China in such a dramatic fashion as Walker wants wouldn’t make Beijing the least bit more interested in cooperating with the U.S. or in making concessions on contentious issues, and it would likely make relations noticeably worse in the near term. It would also demonstrate to everyone that our government puts empty gestures ahead of the practical work of sustaining one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world.

No one in the administration is going to take Walker’s idea seriously, but it does tell us something important about the complete contempt for diplomacy that so many hawks like Walker have. Canceling a state visit by the Chinese president would not advance any U.S. interests, nor would it help anyone in China or the region, but it would add a new irritant to a relationship that already has its fair share of strong disagreements and disputes. Walker’s recommendation for our China policy is a wholly harmful one, and one entirely in keeping with his view that the U.S. should engage with hostile and rival regimes with nothing but intimidation, insults, and threats.