The Week /Gilder: Why Antagonize China?
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GEORGE GILDER, The Wall Street Journal (02/04/10): While attempting to
appease a long list of utterly unappeasable foes—Iran, North Korea, Hamas,
Hezbollah, and even Hugo Chávez—today the U.S. treats China, perhaps our
most crucial economic partner, as an adversary because it defies us on
global warming, dollar devaluation, and Internet policy.
It started last June in Beijing when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner lectured Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who recoiled like a man
cornered by a crank at a cocktail party. Mr. Geithner was haranguing the
Chinese on two highly questionable themes, neither arguably in the
interests of either country: the need to suppress energy output in the
name of global warming—a subject on which Mr. Geithner has no
expertise—and the need for a Chinese dollar devaluation, on which one can
scarcely imagine that he can persuade Chinese holders of a trillion
dollars of reserves. This week in a meeting with Senate Democrats,
President Obama continued to fret about the dollar being too strong
against the yuan at a time when most of the world's investors fear that
the Chinese will act on his words and crash the dollar.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president's friends
at Google are hectoring China on Internet policy. Although commanding
twice as many Internet users as we do, China originates fewer viruses and
scams than does the U.S. and with Taiwan produces comparable amounts of
Internet gear. As an authoritarian regime, it obviously will not be
amenable to an open and anonymous net regime. Protecting information on
the Internet is a responsibility of U.S. corporations and their security
tools, not the State Department.
Yes, the Chinese are needlessly aggressive in missile deployments against
Taiwan, but there is absolutely no prospect of a successful U.S. defense
of that country. Sending them $6 billion of new weapons is a needless
provocation against China that does nothing valuable for the defense of
the U.S. or Taiwan. Yes, the Chinese have also spurned America's quixotic
effort to herd the gangs of anti-Semitic, anti-American oil-dependent
felines at the United Nations to undertake an effective program of
economic sanctions against Iran.
A foreign policy of serious people at a time of crisis will recognize that
the current Chinese regime is the best we can expect from that country.
The Chinese revitalization of Asian capitalism remains the most important
positive event in the world in the last 30 years. Not only did it release
a billion people from penury and oppression but it transformed China from
a communist enemy of the U.S. into a now indispensable capitalist partner.
It is ironic that liberals who once welcomed appeasement of the monstrous
regime of Mao Zedong now become openly bellicose at various murky
incidents of Internet hacking.
Nonetheless, with millions of Islamists on its borders and within them,
China is nearly as threatened by radical Islam as we are. China has a huge
stake in the global capitalist economy that Islamic terrorists aim to
overthrow. And China, like the U.S., is so heavily dependent on Taiwanese
manufacturing skills and so intertwined with Taiwan's industry that
China's military threat to the island is mostly theater.
Although some Taiwanese politicians still dream of permanent independence,
Taiwan's world-beating entrepreneurs have long since laid their bets on
links to the mainland. Two thirds of Taiwanese companies, some 10,000,
have made significant investments in China over the last five years,
totaling some $200 billion. Three quarters of a million Taiwanese reside
in China for more than 180 days a year.
With Taiwan, greater China is the world's leading actual manufacturer and
assembler of microchips, computers and network equipment on which the
Internet subsists. Virtually all U.S. advanced electronics, as eminent
chemist Arthur Robinson reported last month in his newsletter Access to
Energy, are dependent on rare earth elements used to enhance the
performance of microchips and held in a near global monopoly by the
Chinese firm Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company in Mongolia.
The U.S. is as dependent on China for its economic and military health and
economic growth as China is dependent on the U.S. for its key markets,
reserve finance, and global capitalist trading regime.
It is self-destructive folly to sacrifice this core synergy at the heart
of global capitalism in order to gain concessions on global warming,
dollar weakening, or Internet politics.
How many enemies do we need?
RELATED READING: Towards a Russia -China -Iran Military Alliance?
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