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On Not "Antagonizing" China. Or How Many Enemies Does The US Need?

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

Every once in a while, I get an email accusing me of costing Americans their jobs and going on and on about how China is terrible and anyone who has anything to do with China is terrible, presumably including me. I usually respond by talking about how China is a reality and how countries should be judged not only on where they are now, but also on where they came from and where they are going, and on how under those criteria, there are plenty of countries far far worse with whom the United States deals every day. I will then usually link over to the most recent story of US ally Saudi Arabia executing a juvenile or someone who has been raped or converted from Islam or to an article of how US ally Egypt turns a blind eye to the slaughtering of Coptic Christians and then ask the person what they purpose "we" should do about those sorts of things. And what about US allies that do not allow women to vote or drive cars and in which homosexuality is a capital offence? Why is virtually nothing ever said about those sorts of things? I then talk about how as an unabashedly patriotic American I believe it to be in my country's best interest to seek to make common cause with those countries whose values do not include wanting to kill all Americans. George Gilder says something roughly similar in the Wall Street Journal, in an opinion piece entitled, "Why Antagonize China?:"

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.

* * * * 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. Gilder goes on to explain why the United States should seek to ally itself with a capitalistic Islamist-fighting China:

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.

Gilder concludes by asking "How many enemies do we need?" Great question. What do you think?

Full post as published by China Law Blog on February 06, 2010 (boomark / email).