What to make of President Biden’s kid-glove treatment of Communist China? Secretary Yellen is off to Beijing to implore the mandarins to trade more fairly. This follows Mr. Biden’s phone call pleading with President Xi to stop aiding Russia’s Ukraine war and for help on the fentanyl scourge. Mr. Biden’s attempt to collaborate with Beijing reflects the naiveté that was decried by that legendary anti-communist, and head of Free China, Chiang Kai-shek.

Chiang, the protégé of the pioneer of Chinese democracy and New York Sun contributor Sun Yat-sen, warned the free world against “foolish and doomed hopes,” as the New York Times put it, “that there can be peaceful coexistence with communism.” After succeeding Sun as the head of Free China and fighting with the allies during World War II, he was dismayed as America withheld postwar support as he fought, and lost to, Mao’s communists.