I see a tiny glimmer of hope on the China issue. There is beginning to be some pushback against the cold warriors in the US government. 

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Here’s Bloomberg:

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned US policy makers to focus on building the country’s own economic strengths in its contest with China, rather than on attacking its adversary.

“If we change our focus from building ourselves up to tearing China down, I think we will be making a very risky and very unfortunate choice,” Summers told Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin. The US should instead concentrate on its own innovation, infrastructure, education and challenges such as opioid deaths, he said.

Summers also suggested that recent rhetoric coming out of the US government has increased the risk of a US-China war over Taiwan, which would be madness:

“We need to be very careful about giving China the sense that we are trying to change the traditional one-China policy,” said Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg Television. “Because I think that could risk disastrous conflict.”

This caught my attention:

The right approach is instead to “stand up for some of our fundamental interests in security and fair economic competition — but to leave it at that point,” he said. “I think ultimately we will prevail in this broad contest with China,” he said. 

I’m not sure what he means here. Taken literally, I agree with the statement. Fair economic competition is in our interest. But if he’s implying that the US supports fair economic competition, then I strongly disagree. I know of no other nation that flouts international trade agreements with such insolent disregard for the rule of law. It’s as if we think the rules don’t apply to us.

Another Bloomberg piece points out that Europeans are resisting the US push toward a new cold war:

President Xi Jinping started his week overseas mending ties with the US, and ended it with European leaders making the case for resisting the Biden administration’s sweeping chip curbs on China. . . .

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for engagement with Beijing and resisting efforts to divide the world into competing blocs. That followed similar appeals from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited China earlier this month, and efforts by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to coordinate with other key chipmaking nations in resisting US pressure. 

China is a danger to Taiwan. Putin’s Russia is a danger to much of the developed world. Commenters sometimes tell me that that there’s less that a 50-50 chance of a nuclear war with Russia, as if I’m supposed to be reassured that there’s less than a even chance of a few hundred millions deaths.

If China invades Taiwan, then put economic sanctions on China, just as we’ve done with Russia. Until then, all of our focus should be on stopping Russia. We need to do much more to help Ukraine (but stop short of US military involvement.)

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