I think you three very thoroughly sidestepped the reality that the Party isn’t prepared to be a good neighbor to any society where liberalism and pluralism are shown to work.
Look at the subversion and intimidation of foreign academics, the brutal methods employed to exert control over first the Falun Gong diaspora and now the global Uyghur diaspora… there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Party views the existence of functioning remocratic states as a threat to its model.
It is plainly not so self-confident as to genuinely believe it is the future, and if it needs to encourage “the past” to disappear with a little push, so be it.
This isn’t to say we don’t need to work with China; even if the Party were to fall, its replacement will not be a liberal democracy. It is simply to say that it is entirely possible for a system of authoritarian governance to undermine and destroy a system of liberal governance. Even if the latter is in the long run superior in every way, it is doable if the totalitarians have control over sufficient resources and the liberals aren’t paying attention.
Cable has always seemed to me to be committed to a view of the world that lends itself to that lack of attention, alongside some unusually short-termist American and German commercial interests.
From my perspective, denying China market access and doing our utmost to prevent it from engaging in the IP “transfer” it needs to climb the value chain is just plain common sense in any “Western” nation, impeded mainly by the folks referred to in the last paragraph.
I think you three very thoroughly sidestepped the reality that the Party isn’t prepared to be a good neighbor to any society where liberalism and pluralism are shown to work.
Look at the subversion and intimidation of foreign academics, the brutal methods employed to exert control over first the Falun Gong diaspora and now the global Uyghur diaspora… there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Party views the existence of functioning remocratic states as a threat to its model.
It is plainly not so self-confident as to genuinely believe it is the future, and if it needs to encourage “the past” to disappear with a little push, so be it.
This isn’t to say we don’t need to work with China; even if the Party were to fall, its replacement will not be a liberal democracy. It is simply to say that it is entirely possible for a system of authoritarian governance to undermine and destroy a system of liberal governance. Even if the latter is in the long run superior in every way, it is doable if the totalitarians have control over sufficient resources and the liberals aren’t paying attention.
Cable has always seemed to me to be committed to a view of the world that lends itself to that lack of attention, alongside some unusually short-termist American and German commercial interests.
From my perspective, denying China market access and doing our utmost to prevent it from engaging in the IP “transfer” it needs to climb the value chain is just plain common sense in any “Western” nation, impeded mainly by the folks referred to in the last paragraph.