Quit bashing Beijing — China’s rise is good for America

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:30:00 +0000

In tonight’s presidential debate on foreign policy, we’ll likely hear plenty of China bashing from both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney: Expect an earful about trade "cheating" and "currency manipulation," and about how the candidates will "get tough" on the rising superpower.

The routine scapegoating of China -- which no less a figure than Henry Kissinger, the architect of U.S. rapprochement with Beijing in the 1970s, has called “extremely deplorable” -- is targeted at vulnerable people who have suffered deeply from the effects of the economic recession.

It is easier for both campaigns to shift blame to foreigners than to remind voters that the global financial crisis began on Wall Street, not in Beijing. Or to point out that trade with China – America’s third-largest export market – has helped pull the United States out of the global financial crisis.

Demagogic attacks by both campaigns on China are particularly dangerous since they play into often unspoken but prevalent anti-Asian racial prejudices in various parts of the United States. American leaders should try to overcome the sad history of anti-Asian prejudice, not exploit it for political gain.

Salon.com > US Foreign Policy

Quit bashing Beijing — China’s rise is good for America