A Chinese fellow at the China Reform Forum wrote an interesting PRC perspective on why the US should stop their dual-track policy of containment and engagement of China. His argument is that China poses no obvious threat to the US, and does not have the wherewithal to pose such a threat in the forseeable future. Because I have heard his point of view repeated by others, I'd like to discuss it in this forum.

I find his arguments fail to take seriously the fact that many Americans do regard China as a threat, despite evidence that it is far from the biggest contributor to the ballooning American trade deficit. Why the irrational fear? It is not just fear of an abstract growing trade gap - it is for their jobs, for their security in the Pacific, and most of all, for their way of life. How can they not when the author concludes thusly:

Sooner or later, the decline of US primacy is inevitable; history has taught us so. My advice is: Uncle Sam, watch the rapid development of globalization and multi-polarization. They will gradually bring to the world a new democratic international system which would welcome no primacy at all. Hence the United States might be the last primacy in human history and it really need not worry about the emergence of any potential challenger.

In any case, Americans are far less likely than Europeans to agree with such statements. The American concept of self-reliance has always extended to its foreign policy, and the prospect of a happy multipolar world sits about as well with Americans as losing their sovereignty altogether. Naturally, China I am sure feels the same way when America lectures it on how to run itself. Certainly the North Koreans resented it on China's behalf, calling them 'relevations of fascist hysteria.'

For how long, I wonder, can China and America talk at cross purposes past one another? And for how long can people like us not be forced to take sides?