When President Biden took office, there was some hope he would, like Trump, be tough on China. But now, it’s not so clear. At his first town hall as president, Biden said this about his phone conversation with President Xi:

And so, the idea — I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan, trying to end the one China policy by making it forceful — I said — and by the — he said — he gets it. Culturally, there are different norms that each country and they their leaders are expected to follow.

I’m not quite sure what he said, but in the coherent bits he seemed ready to go soft on China, excusing their flagrant human rights abuses as “different norms.” Welcome back to relativist globalism. It’s simply wrong to say there is moral parity between China, the world’s foremost violator of human rights, and the United States, the world’s foremost defender of freedom.

On Washington Watch, Congressman Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) said that Biden’s newfound reluctance to stand up to China amounted to “Obama’s third term.” The globalist philosophy of Washington’s elites believes three things about world affairs, he said. First, “America is as much the problem as it is the solution.” Second, “we’re not exceptional.” Third, “if we’re only nice to them, they’ll be nice back to us and be nice to their own people.” These ideas characterized Obama’s foreign policy, and now they increasingly define Biden’s goal, which seems to be “managing the American decline, rather than asserting, forcefully when needed, our leadership.”

The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t share this rose-colored approach to international relations. Waltz continued, “President Xi repeatedly in speech after speech talks about replacing the American dream with the China dream, and their form of government, around the world.” A quarter century of America trying to bring democracy to China by friendship has failed. Instead, China has stolen our intellectual property and addicted our corporations to their resources and markets. In fact, a leading Australian think tank recently reported that over 80 international corporations are complicit in China’s slave labor of the Uyghurs.

Despite China’s notorious and unapologetic abuse of human rights, they are scheduled to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Demands to relocate the Olympics met with “resounding silence.” Because someone has to stand up to China, Rep. Waltz has introduced a resolution in Congress stating that the U.S. should boycott the Winter Games to demonstrate our disapproval of China’s evil regime.

“I cannot stand for rewarding Beijing and Xi after they’ve unleashed the coronavirus on the world,” he said, “not to mention Hong Kong, Tibet… the ongoing persecution of Christians,” and the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs. China is systematically destroying a culture through concentration camps, mass sterilization, mass rape, and forced slave labor.

Waltz feels his resolution is necessary because of President Biden’s lack of clear leadership on China. “He’s talking a bit of a tough game out of one side of his mouth. But then there’s this moral equivalency out of the other side,” said Waltz.

It’s true — the Biden administration hesitated before affirming Secretary Pompeo’s declaration of genocide in Xinjiang. And after sounding strong on China, President Biden will turn around and say things like “I’m not going to speak out.” President Biden’s wavering on human rights is unhelpful. America must strongly and unequivocally oppose China’s human rights abuses. That’s clear. What’s not clear is whether President Biden will do so.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.