The administration and a few liberals are taking a harder stance against China as of late (or have been for a while). The argument is that China is a rising strategic competitor, it has a growing economy, it's military is getting larger, and that this somehow all poses a threat to the United States. Hence, the United States should be nervous about the attempted Unocal purchase and other Chinese activities.
Poppycock.
Full disclosure: I'm a Chinese-American. I was actually born in California, so if not for the color of my skin and the sound of my last name, I'd actually just be considered an "American." But I'm not. I give two dollars to the homeless guy down the street, and I get cussed out for taking his job. Go figure.
Likewise, much of the current anti-China sentiment seems to be due to difficulties within our own economy and problems dealing with globalization, rather than anything China has done specifically. I normally don't quote Cato, but whatever their views on Social Security, one of their folks has it right:
In fact, since 2000, U.S. exports of goods to China have more than doubled to $35 billion while U.S. exports to the rest of the world have grown a paltry 2 percent. Last year, China was the fifth-largest market in the world for U.S. exports.
China's fixed currency cannot be blamed for recent troubles in U.S. manufacturing. U.S. manufacturing output is actually 45 percent higher than it was when China first fixed its currency to the dollar in 1994. Manufacturing employment has fallen in the United States in recent years, not because we are manufacturing less, but because our workers are so much more productive. The textile and apparel industries, which compete most directly with Chinese imports, have been shedding jobs for decades, long before China emerged as a global competitor.
And of course there's the input from
Alan Greenspan and Co.:
Greenspan and Treasury Secretary John Snow, who testified to the Senate Finance Committee, faced persistent questioning from some legislators who said China's trade policies, especially its currency regime, are unfair and illegal. Greenspan also cast doubt that a revaluation of China's currency would be beneficial to U.S. companies and the economy.
"Some observers mistakenly believe that a marked increase in the exchange value of the Chinese renminbi relative to the U.S. dollar would significantly increase manufacturing activity and jobs in the United States,'' Greenspan said. ``I am aware of no credible evidence that supports such a conclusion."
Likewise, this whole idea of China has a military competitor is also nonsense. We're currently engaged in a war with al Qaida and fighting a counter-insurgency in Iraq, and we're worried about China? The typical scenario focuses on an invasion of Taiwan (jokingly referred to as the "million man swim"), but if China wanted to demolish Taipei with cruise missiles, there is nothing the U.S. could do to stop this. Yet it hasn't, rather, it's chosen the path of economic integration, surpassing the US and Japan as Taiwan's top trading partner.
Perhaps, anxiety over a war with China is more reflective of the Pentagon and old politicians trying to refight the Cold War. How else can you explain Duncan Hunter's attempt to save a submarine base that's not in his district? Hmmm ... the Russian submarine fleet is being decommissioned, the Europeans are on our side, and bin Ladin doesn't seem to be into the whole underwater thing. I wonder who he's thinking of.
The other explanation is that anxiety over China has less to do with actual national security and more with attempts to maintain American "exceptionalism". That's what the rest of the world calls an "empire". It's the fear that China's rise as a world power threatens the ability of America to act as global policeman. And that's certainly an idea that should be questioned more than rising China.
If there is any competition between China and the United States, it should not be in some pre-WW1 sense of a "great game" with a scramble for economic resources and a risky arms race. Rather, it's a competition for influence. Joshua Kurlantzick explains why China is becoming popular than the United States in TNR:
As in Asia, China's education system and culture-- components of its soft power--have become attractive to African and Latin American elites. Beijing has developed a proposal to bring over 10,000 African professionals to China for human resources development. And, as in Asia, key African and Latin leaders, awed by China's economic success, praise Beijing's foreign policy doctrine and development model. "China is doing a wonderful job," Muyingo Steuem, a Ugandan government adviser dazzled by China's big cities, told The Financial Times during last year's World Bank conference on poverty alleviation, held in bustling Shanghai. "In developing countries, China is regarded with a mixture of envy, admiration, and awe," U.N. Development Program chief Mark Malloch Brown told the FT during the same conference.
And that is a legitimate danger. China advances a vision of globalization that respects state sovereignty and rejects "imperialist" influence. It is a vision of states, regardless of their domestic politics, as equals. For nations resentful of the United States, it's an attractive approach.
American foreign policy has always focused on ideals such as freedom and democracy -- the power of the individual rather than the power of the state. Yet our military posturing, our bungling of Iraq, and now our little fit with China only threaten those ideals. Like the so-called War on Terrorism, any "war" with China will rely not on military might or economic growth but on the battle for hearts and minds.
