I wanted to share one tiny snippet from the New York Times editorial on Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan:
Treating China as a hostile power is a counterproductive simplification. The two nations occupy large chunks of the same planet. They do not agree on the meaning of democracy or human rights, but they do share some values, most important the pursuit of prosperity.
The uncomfortable reality is that the United States and China need each other. There is no better illustration than the cargo ships that continued moving between Guangzhou and Long Beach, Calif., during Ms. Pelosi’s visit — and will continue long after her return.
I question these premises on multiple grounds.
For one thing I don’t believe that the Chinese authorities hold the same view of prosperity that we do any more than we share the same view of democracy or human rights. I think they have made it abundantly clear that they see trade as a zero-sum game—one side wins and the other loses. Furthermore, I think they see prosperity as prosperity for themselves and their own families. Prosperity for the Chinese people as a whole is a means to an end and the end is power.
U. S. trade with China is about 3% of China’s GDP and IMO China is authoritarian enough that could be ended overnight.
Also couldn’t the same have been said of Nazi Germany? That is that we needed each other, shared the same planet, and had different views of democracy and human rights.
Is the same true of our need for China? I think we have forged that dependency link by link, yard by yard and girded it on of our free will over the last 35 years. If we have not realized that was a mistake, we should now. Reversing it will be a lot less fun than forging it was but it will result in U. S. prosperity that is considerably more widespread among our population and certainly a lot more secure.
The old USSR didn’t need us. Russia doesn’t need us. And China doesn’t need us.
However, we need Russia and China, both for raw materials and finished products. And Europe is desperately dependent on Russia.
The current war in Ukraine has shown just how isolated the West is from the rest of the world. A great many countries in the Global South actually hate the West, because of its sordid colonial past and its current domineering approach to international relations.
Dave Schuler: U. S. trade with China is about 3% of China’s GDP
About 17%. If you consider the West as a whole, China is very dependent on exports to maintain their economy.
https://www.worldstopexports.com/chinas-top-import-partners/
We can’t gauge what we do based on what other G7 countries are willing to do. We are presently conducting a live demonstration of just how limited that is.