Most American-Chinese disputes reflect China’s unwillingness to endanger domestic goals for international ends. It won’t commit to binding greenhouse gas cuts because these could reduce economic growth and (again) jobs. On Iran, it values its oil investments more than it fears Iranian nukes. Likewise, it worries that unrest in North Korea could send refugees spilling across the border. Because Taiwan is regarded as part of China, U.S. arms sales there become domestic interference. And censorship is needed to maintain one-party control.
China’s worldview threatens America’s geopolitical and economic interests. Just recently, 19 U.S. trade associations wrote the Obama administration warning that new Chinese rules for “indigenous innovation” could “exclude a wide array of U.S. firms” from the Chinese market — or force them to turn over advanced technology. (British firms are so incensed by “overwhelming protectionism” that some may quit China, reports the Telegraph newspaper.)
It would be a tragedy if these two superpowers began regarding each other as adversaries. But that’s the drift. Heirs to a 2,000-year cultural tradition — and citizens of the world’s largest country — the Chinese have an innate sense of superiority, Jacques writes. Americans, too, have a sense of superiority, thinking that our values — the belief in freedom, individualism and democracy — reflect universal aspirations.
Greater conflicts and a collision of national egos seem inevitable. No longer should we sit passively while China’s trade and currency policies jeopardize jobs here and elsewhere. Political differences between the countries are increasingly hard to ignore. But given China’s growing power — and the world economy’s fragile state — a showdown may do no one any good. Miscalculation is leading us down dark alleys.
[i]Unlike the isolationist America First movement of the 1930s, China First does not mean global disengagement. It does mean engagement on China’s terms. China accepts and supports the existing order when that serves its needs, as when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Otherwise, it plays by its own rules and norms.[/i]
Rather like Wilhelmine Germany in the 1910s. Now there’s a cheerful thought!
We may be in hock to the Chinese Government for the billions in US government bonds they hold, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Chinese are not our friends!
Furthermore, the current Chinese Government is not the inheritor of 2000 years of unbroken civilization. They jettisoned that for a radical reading of a 150 year old Marxist/Communist tradition. Of course, now even that ideology has been stripped away leaving basically the world’s largest dictatorship.
Meanwhile, the Chinese military threat is growing, and the Southeast Asia nations have taken notice and are acting accordingly. China views the western Pacific…..especially the South China Sea…..as their sphere of influence, and their plans clearly show it. They’re not standing still, and we have to be ready to meet any potential threat.