Editor's note: Dr. John Gong is a professor at the University of International Business and Economics and a research fellow at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at UIBE. The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

If President Trump ever approves the travel ban on the more than 90 million Communist Party of China (CPC) members and their families in China as reported by The New York Times, it would go down in history as the official beginning of the second Cold War -- one that hopefully remains cold! This would be the beginning of the end to world peace and prosperity, a good period of decades of the bilateral relationship between China and the U.S.

The China-U.S. relations have withstood a trade war, a global pandemic, riots in Hong Kong, and the ridiculous accusations made about Xinjiang ever since Trump came to power in 2017. In spite of hurled insults, traded barbs, occasional scoffing, and sometimes belligerent tweets, officials from the two sides, by and large, can still sit down and talk over things. Presidents of the two countries could still pick up the phone to talk to each other from time to time. "Decoupling" is happening as it may be in certain areas, it hasn't festered into everything. Beneath public showings of competition, rivalry, or even hostility if you may, there still lies a sea of diplomacy at work behind the scene. 

But this proposed ban on 90 million people plus three-to-four times more of their family members, which amounts to almost one-fourth of China's entire population, to travel freely would be tantamount to severing all ties between the two countries.

Gone will be the three million annual Chinese tourists and visitors to the U.S. that inject at least 10 billion dollars to the U.S. economy. Gone will be the more than 360,000 Chinese students in the U.S. that bring about billions of dollars to the U.S. higher education and the general economy. Gone will be the business interests of hundreds of billions of dollars raked in by Corporate America's operations in China. Gone will be the bilateral trade in goods and serves in the amount of at least 700 billion dollars between the two countries.

What does the United States get in return from this proposed ban? Nothing! Practically nothing! It will only deepen China's determination to be more open, more global, and more competitive.

For the Trump administration to go this route, it would be beyond any ordinary administration or responsible leaders' actions.

Very sadly, the China-U.S. relationship is being hijacked for a perceived election issue by the Trump campaign team in the 2020 presidential election. His political advisers have found no other fronts or battlegrounds for him to pick up a decent fight with Joe Biden. The Trump administration has despicably failed on the economy, the COVID-19 response, racial relations, relations with American allies, and on Trump's personal character that spells out loud and clear of "unprecedented historic corruption," as Utah Senator Mitt Romney put it when commenting on Trump's commutation of Roger Stone.

These are the election issues American people really care about, and they will speak out on November 3. But for the five months left of this worst presidential administration in U.S. history, Trump and his advisers will indeed cough up any crazy things imaginable to savage his bankrupt campaign. He may leave in disgrace, but also leave with the country in disgrace. The sad part of this is that some damages he leaves behind in the U.S. and around the world will be irreversible and irreparable. For the moment, the world in general and China, in particular, will have to sit tight and put up with his depravities.

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