I normally don't disagree much with Todd Hill, but his latest post, Who's Your Daddy?, has me a bit riled up, enough for me to make a new post instead of just a comment in fact. The topic is the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation's bid for purchase of Unocal and how this is a threat to American interests. I've posted on Daily Kos about how this is just silly, but I wanted to make three points in response to Todd's post here, namely that China's actions are not overtly hostile once you place them in context, that Americans are really creating a Chinese bogeyman to hide their own problems, and that anti-China sentiment misdiagnoses any threat China may pose.

The thrust of Todd's post, and most of these dire warnings of rising China, is that we can't let China become a superpower. Why? Because China is a threat. Why is it a threat? Because China is trying to become a superpower. Buried beneath that circular reasoning is the assumption that any rising power must automatically be a threat to American interests.

Take this bit from Todd's post:

In the next 8-10 years it is expected another 80 million vehicles will be in use just in China alone. Oil is quickly becoming the natural resource China craves most, and the last thing we need are two giants clashing over black gold.

So the way to stop two giants clashing over black gold is to start clashing over black gold?

I don't think CNOOC's bid will go through simply because Chevron has the deal about wrapped up, but it's hardly an unexpected attempt to take over American oil and hold us hostage. China has a growing economy. Of course, it's going to need more oil! And UNOCAL has most of its assets in Asia. Given the rate at which India is growing, I wouldn't be surprised if they, or any other developing nations, start making bids for oil assets as well. The way we prevent "two giants clashing over black gold," it seems to me, is not to shoot down a deal that's probably going to fail on its own, but to invest more resources in alternative energy and fuel efficiency.

Likewise, there's the concern about China's growing military spending. Yet that's to be expected from any growing power. There aren't too many powers that grow in wealth and population without a corresponding increase in military power. That aside however, China's military spending is still tiny in comparison to the United States.

And there's Taiwan. First, let's put this in context. Imagine that after the Civil War, the Confederate government fled to Cuba, took it over, and declared itself to be the legitimate government of the Southern governments. That's basically the situation Taiwan is in. Be glad that the Chinese aren't Americans, because you can be sure that we would have carpet-bombed Cuba into oblivion by now. China already possesses the capacity to turn Taiwan into a sea of glass and no American military presence is capable of preventing that. The fact that is hasn't is good news, and the fact that Taiwan's biggest trading partner is the mainland is even better. Certainly matters more than the purchase of Russian landing craft.

There's also the concern about how "[f]oreign nations holding the future of liberty in their hands puts Americans in grave danger fiscally." Let's get one thing straight. The Chinese saved our butts. Had foreign nations not been buying up our debt, interest rates would be higher, the dollar would be lower, there would be no recovery, and Americans wouldn't be able to buy a new house. Nor do they have any reason to stop helping us in the near future. Selling their dollars reserves or reevaluating their currency would shock Chinese banks not yet equipped to handle such a shift. Any economic grievances we may have with the Chinese have less to do with Chinese policies and America's own economic problems:

In fact, since 2000, U.S. exports of goods to China have more than doubled to $35 billion while U.S. exports to the rest of the world have grown a paltry 2 percent. Last year, China was the fifth-largest market in the world for U.S. exports.

China's fixed currency cannot be blamed for recent troubles in U.S. manufacturing. U.S. manufacturing output is actually 45 percent higher than it was when China first fixed its currency to the dollar in 1994. Manufacturing employment has fallen in the United States in recent years, not because we are manufacturing less, but because our workers are so much more productive. The textile and apparel industries, which compete most directly with Chinese imports, have been shedding jobs for decades, long before China emerged as a global competitor.

So am I saying that we should just ignore China? Of course not, but a lot of folks misunderstand the challenge we face. For a good primer on this, check out Joshua Kurlantzick's article in TNR (subscription only):

Beijing is pursuing these interests through a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, China appears to be building a string of alliances across the globe with nations shunned by the United States--nations like Venezuela, Iran, Sudan, Burma, and Zimbabwe. At the same time, China appears to be wooing non-rogue developing nations--both democracies like Brazil and stable pseudo-authoritarian states like Malaysia. Beijing does so by championing a vision of international relations centered on national sovereignty--one that contrasts sharply with recent U.S. doctrine, by leveraging China's economic successes to win over foreign leaders and by using Chinese soft power to win hearts and minds even in places like Australia, once considered firm American allies.

Scary stuff, and all the more so, considering that China is now more popular than we are. But it's a policy focused on "soft power", not military and economic might. It is championing a vision of an international order based on sovereignty in contrast to an interventionist American vision based on individual rights. It seeks to counter American influence not through force of arms but by isolating us, and to some extent, that's our own fault:

At the same time that China's influence has grown, the U.S. means of leverage--aid allocations, trade deals, academic ties, popular culture--are weakening, undermined by everything from new restrictions on student visas to the prisoner abuse scandals at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Worse, when dealing with longtime allies like Thailand, Washington too often talks about little other than terrorism. Asians find the American "obsession" with terrorism tedious, Karim Raslan, a prominent Malaysian writer, told The New York Times. "We've all got to live. We've all got to make money," he said. "The Chinese want to make money, and so do we."

America must articulate and defend a clear vision of where it wants the international order to go. And it must do more than simply dictate it through force of arms. It has to make friends and convince them to follow along, but talk of a looming Chinese threat won't do that. No one got popular by talking smack about the cool kids.

And to some extent, our challenge is not only to win the battle of popular opinion against the Chinese, it's to convince the Chinese themselves of those values. I spent last summer in Beijing, and I can tell you that the people don't hate America or what it stands for. They eat McDonalds and KFC (they actually hold weddings in KFCs), dream of attending an American university, try their best to learn English, have access to BBC, and surf the Internet. China is not like the secretive totalitarian regime of North Korea. They certainly think we're arrogant (who doesn't?), but they don't want a war with us. Yet when Americans rant about the dangers of rising China, none of that matters. They get a bit scared, the hardliners become a little stronger, and the world moves a little closer towards insanity.

Full Disclosure: I am of Chinese descent. Take what you will from that.