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Heinrichs Calls for Resolve in China Talks

Rebeccah Heinrichs, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (and fellow graduate of the Ashbrook Scholar Program) writes today at FoxNews.com about the upcoming visit to the United States by Chinese President Hu Jintao and the resolve that will be required of President Obama in his talks with him.  Heinrichs is especially alarmed at China's willful disregard of its own interests in their capacity to turn a blind eye toward North Korea's increasingly aggressive posture toward South Korea.  This, combined with China's own increased attention to defense offense capabilities, ought to give the US sufficient reason to amp up its own efforts and alliances in the region, says Heinrichs. 

You can watch Heinrichs discuss these issues in further detail here.  
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Discussions - 6 Comments

When fascism is truly understood as a collectivist disease (i.e., a Leftist disease), then it is clear that China has become a fascist nation. Strong ethnic policies, check. Strong nationalist industrial policies, check. Central government regulating everything in the nation, check. Antagonistic toward the outside world, check. Conflation of nationalism/ethnicity with a strong sense of destiny, check.

And our "free trade" policies are pumping up this dragon. What's not to like? Obama looks more like Chamberlain every day.

Chamberlain was hardly a free trader--he was the primary architect of the Imperial Preference system. And, in fact, he negotiated a bilateral trade treaty with Germany that was highly favorable to British interests. Indeed, one of the reasons why Chamberlain was reluctant to take a strong military stand against Hitler was that Anglo-German trade was so important to the British economy.

Whenever people tell us that the rise of China to superpower is nothing to worry about, I'm always reminded of President Reagan's poignant question: What if the Soviet Union had gotten the bomb first?

I meant to add: interesting and pertinent information, Dr. Moser. Thank you.

I think you miss my point, John. I never claimed that Chamberlain was a free trader -- just a man too desperate for peace. So are we -- we fear standing up to China because they own an enormous amount of our debt and because many (most?) of our consumer goods now come from China. Unfortunately for us, the Chinese aren't doing any of this in libertarian good-faith. They don't believe in free trade or peace through prosperity.

Libertarians often forget that all that "spontaneous order" of the "invisible hand" requires parties to act in good faith and in economic rationality. Chinese ambitions go much, much deeper, just as Hitler's did. For once, let's spot the Devil before he spots us!

You're trying to draw a parallel between Anglo-German relations in the late 1930s and U.S.-Chinese relations today, and that parallel does not hold. China isn't committing acts of aggression against its neighbors; it is an unlovely, highly repressive regime, but the worst it can be accused of doing internationally is pursuing "beggar-thy-neighbor" economic policies. Indeed, if you want to draw a parallel between the 1930s and today, the best one is not between China and Germany, but China and the United States. We were the world's largest creditors, world's largest producer and consumer, yet we insisted on protectionist and inflationist policies. And the world suffered.

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