The other day, we talked a bit about the dangers of neoconservatives trying to resurrect their agitation for military confrontation with China. "The response is something the Left should be thinking about now," I wrote. Tim Fernholz responds, and makes a good point: One of the dangers going into this debate is that the Left has spent years attacking China on economic grounds, accusing the country of everything from currency manipulation to brutal labor abuses. Some of those accusations are, of course, totally true. But they help lay the groundwork for Americans to view China as a hostile competitor, rather than a predictable power whose rapid development has been a complicated, and often disruptive, story. Some of the outcomes are good, or at least a version of good: Americans like cheap stuff. Some are bad: They don't like not making the stuff. But as Tim writes, "it's very easy to make China out to be our enemy if Americans think, rightly or wrongly, that it's taking their jobs." That's not to say that folks on the Left should quit criticizing China's labor abuses or occasional dips into mercantilism, but they should be careful to avoid a simplistic strategy of economic demonization that'll be easily appropriated by neoconservatives aching for a Grand Enemy. However rough globalization has been, its downsides are nothing compared to what we'd face in a showdown -- be it economic or military -- with China.
