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The New China Scare, by Fareed Zakaria
The New China Scare
Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger
By Fareed Zakaria December 6, 2019 Foreign Affairs
...Something similar is happening today in the American debate about China. A new consensus, encompassing both parties, the military establishment, and key elements of the media, holds that China is now a vital threat to the United States both economically and strategically, that U.S. policy toward China has failed, and that Washington needs a new, much tougher strategy to contain it. This consensus has shifted the public’s stance toward an almost instinctive hostility: according to polling, 60 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the People’s Republic, a record high since the Pew Research Center began asking the question in 2005. But Washington elites have made their case “clearer than truth.” The nature of the challenge from China is different from and far more complex than what the new alarmism portrays. On the single most important foreign policy issue of the next several decades, the United States is setting itself up for an expensive failure.
Much more: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-12-06/new-china-scare
This is a fairly long essay by Zakaria on US-Chinese relations and what future policy should be. I don't often agree with him, but I have to say that this is a superior effort, and is balanced, reasonable, and characterized by sound judgments. By comparison media discussions of China are typically one dimensional, biased, and rarely show any historical insight.
I'm so tired of one liners, zingers, and emotional responses to these foreign policy challenges. I will just post one such observation by Fareed in the essay characterizing the response of foreign leaders to current US policies toward China because I think it's well supported: "When asked how they would respond to decoupling, senior leaders around the world almost all offer some version of the answer that one head of government gave me: 'Please do not ask us to choose between the United States and China. You will not like the answer you get.' ” Of course the statement is qualified by Zakaria as it should be because no one liner can stand entirely on its own in such a complex world.
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