Stalin killed millions as well. The point I'm trying to make is that China is not quite yet our enemy, but they certainly aren't our friend. Not only that, but they have a diplomatic arm that is far superior to our own. As such, you can see why I worry.
We need to recognize that their current gov't has fundamentally different values than ours, but they have made enormous strides towards our way of life, just without our Judeo-Christian ethical framework. As a result, you see a lot of corporate espionage, human rights violations, etc, coming out of China without any real effort by the gov't to curtail it. They have take market dynamics to a whole new level...that of a Darwinistic, no-holds barred economic competition. Our own market is heavily regulated to at least try to reign that impulse and keep things as ethical as possible. Of course, we don't always succeed at that, but at least our country tries.
Given those difference, we need to have an active diplomatic engagement with China to try to pull them in our direction over the long term. Instead, Bush is treating China as an enemy, instead of recognizing our opportunity to get China to go down the right path through sustained diplomatic engagement and economic cooperation.
Let me give you a concrete example to sink your teeth into. If it were me, I wouldn't have just said too hell with Kyoto like Bush did. Instead, I would have joined with India and China to spend Billions of dollars together on a joint initiative to work on alternative fuels for all of our joint economies. The outcomes would be freely shared among our nations and the goal would be to reduce oil dependency in each country to just what is produced within their own borders.
With those pooled resources, we would accomplish that goal, while building a common ground between us that can help us to grow together and cut short the fierce competition for resources that is occurring as we speak. That fierce competition can lead directly to war, as we have seen in the Middle East. And believe me, we don't want war with China. |
