It has been said many times that President Bush just doesn't do nuance. True, for what it's worth. On the other hand, U.S.-China policy has been quite stable, do in no small measure to the nuanced administration approach of pacifying Congress once in a while, unleashing a bit of protectionist rhetoric at the proper time, and allowing the U.S.-China relationship to develop on its own. This has been the case, more or less, since 1972.

The perception of the "China Threat" in some circles, mostly in the U.S. and chiefly in the U.S. Congress, certainly paints the world in stark terms. It is no surprise that a lot of the people that have these concerns are either Cold Warriors or Reagan worshippers nostalgic for a nice ideological, and bilateral, struggle between two great superpowers. There is some comfort in knowing who your enemy is, after all.

The "China Threat" theory does break down upon scrutiny, particularly in the economic arena. I will definitely be blogging more about the topic in the future, but I did come across a particularly thoughtful editorial this morning in the Shanghai Daily from a UK professor that discusses just how China's economy is interdependent with Asia and the rest of the world:

[I]s China still largely the conduit through which money and technology from other
countries is processed (and much more of it has its roots in the United States
than the bilateral figures can show us, but that would take another
presentation)? Is China the engine of global growth, or is China dependent on
both the supply of money from elsewhere and the demand for goods elsewhere?

From the standpoint of technological progress and raw materials, China is certainly dependent on others and remains as a significant part, but only a part, of the global supply chain. The author goes on further, however, with this little zinger:

Is it China that's leading or the United States? The aggregate GDPism approach
based on the state as the unit of analysis simply does not capture the
importance of non-state actors.

Obviously true from a value-added point of view. The bilateral trade surplus China enjoys with the U.S. is always misleading in this sense, and the author rightly points out elsewhere in the editorial that the U.S. deficit says more about its relationship with the entire region of Asia (which is supplying the Chinese production machine) than it does about its dealings with China alone.

However, is the "GDPism" approach that flawed? We have been hearing for many years about the breakdown of the state and the rise of globalism, with dark predictions about a world dominated by a few MNCs. Hasn't happened yet, and I've personally been reading predictions about this ever since the "Japan Threat" stories in the 1980s. Certainly a GDP-centered analysis is useful, if flawed.

To look beyond these flaws, however, I guess that I'm all in favor of the nuanced approach. Without delving into the details, looking beyond GDP and other aggregate statistics, we certainly do not get a good picture of what is going on and what the real issues are with respect to China's place in the world. That being said, the "China Threat" lobby in the U.S. not only doesn't care about the details, it is in their best interests to remain focused on a state actor as the enemy. That won't go away no matter how far globalization progresses.