In the latter half of the 20th century, the United States made two major mistakes with communist China.  The first was obvious from the start.  The second took decades to sink in, if it even has.

During and after World War II, the nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek was an ally of the U.S.  Yet Chiang's army was weak, corrupt, and lacking in even basic armaments like tanks and guns, which the U.S. could have easily provided along with the military advisers it failed to send.  Mao Zedong's communist army soon routed the nationalists, forcing them into exile on Taiwan, where they remain to this day.

Within a few years, the Chinese communists fought the U.S. to a stalemate on the Korean Peninsula, giving the world communist North Korea in the process.  After this, they turned inward, destroying their economy and agriculture before killing millions of their own people in the little-known Chinese communist genocide of the 1960s.  China languished in poverty and isolation for over two decades as an irrelevant backwater, rarely straying beyond its borders.

Enter Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.  The legendary peacemaking duo came up with the idea of opening ties with communist China.  Nixon essentially introduced the world to China, and China to the world, by giving its communist government the legitimacy it neither earned nor deserved.

The naïve assumption among successive Democrat and Republican administrations alike was that the more China moved to an open market economy, the more it would democratize and become a negligible threat.  Yet communist China was never going to morph into some beacon of peace and freedom, despite the illusions of U.S. presidents from Nixon to Obama.

Jimmy Carter went on to normalize relations with the communist government.  With the help of George H.W. Bush as the first U.S. envoy to communist China and later as president, trade with Beijing was initiated and put on the fast track.

Tens of thousands of Chinese students flooded into the U.S. under Clinton.  Through George W. Bush, U.S. trade with China soon eclipsed trade with Japan as the communists spread a wide net to buy into, then buy out, U.S. companies by luring them to their nation of cheap labor and unlimited credit.

Obama cemented the offshore sellout of America to China by a huge trade deficit coupled with China's students now granted work visas to fill in the gaps of their nation's high-tech theft of America, on top of what their government stole from those U.S. companies ensconced in China.

The communist regime was always intent on undermining and overtaking the U.S. in every economic and military sphere.

Enter Donald Trump.

The Brawler from Queens had the Chinese communists on his hit list long before he even took office.  Tired of watching China toy with prior presidents while conniving to steal anything Made in America, The Donald was determined to stop the Chinese cold.  And he did.

China was finally on the ropes, reeling from a concerted effort by the Trump administration to shut down its premeditated takeover of the U.S. — and world — economy.  And it was working. Until...

It's almost too coincidental that the coronavirus erupted and spread throughout the world when it did — everywhere, in fact, except for much of the Chinese mainland.  When the communist government learned early on that the virus was contagious and lethal, it quickly quarantined anyone from Wuhan traveling overland or by air to other parts of China.  This is why Bejing and Shanghai escaped the virus and the ensuing economic shutdown.  Yet the Wuhan Airport was open and running at full capacity to destinations outside China.  This created the pandemic in much of the world, while in China, it was isolated to one small part of the country.

The threat of the virus compounded by mass hysteria precipitated an economic shutdown in much of the world in an attempt to mitigate the initial projections of millions of deaths, with the end result that in a matter of weeks, U.S. unemployment catapulted to a level not seen since the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, communist China, barely touched by the pandemic of its own making, is still thriving while plotting to buy up much of the world's depressed economy, caused by China.  And with the West teetering on economic collapse, the Chinese military is flexing its newfound muscles outside China's territorial waters.

What's President Trump to do?

Break diplomatic relations with communist China and cancel all U.S. debt to that country.  It's time.  In fact, it's long overdue.

Call it pay back; call it teaching them a lesson; call it a calculated decision to right the wrongs of their deceitful, criminal behavior.  Call it what you will.  Communist China needs to pay a steep price for what it did to us.  To our nation.  The communists' Chinese flu pandemic inflicted on the U.S. was the last straw.  Even if their pandemic wasn't intentional, their cynical ploy to allow it to spread around the world warrants the harshest response short of war that the United States can render.

Shut down their Chinese communist embassy and consulates throughout the U.S. Expel every one of their diplomats.  Suspend all their work visas.  Cancel their student visas, and send those still here packing.  Curtail immigration and visas of any kind from mainland China.

This is our answer to the Machiavellian Chinese communist leadership.  Too much of our economy is in ruins because of them.  Too much of our nation has suffered because of them.  Too many of our fellow citizens are sick, dying, or dead because of them.  Nearly 100 innocent victims in my Boston suburb alone have died because of communist China.

It's time for the Chinese communists to suffer the consequences.

The U.S. should revert to its much earlier policy of isolating communist China and push for regime change.  It's time also to revisit the prospect of recognizing the Chinese nationalist government in exile on Taiwan as a potential future government of mainland China.

A generation ago, Ronald Reagan declared the communist Soviet Union an Evil Empire and strangled it into submission.  And the Soviet communists never caused such death and damage in the U.S. as the Chinese communists have.

Donald Trump should likewise declare communist China the Evil Empire that it is.  Then close our U.S. embassy in Beijing.  For good.  Or at least until a democratic government is elected in the former communist China.

It would be a bold move.  President Trump is a bold leader.

It's now or never.

Tom Mountain is a Massachusetts Republican state committeeman and a Republican delegate to RNC Charlotte.