Trade with China ... now a matter of national security

Pat Buchanan, What The U.S. Must Learn From Japan's Kowtow To China

The Chinese have just made a serious strategic blunder.

They dropped the mask and showed their scowling face to Asia, exposing how the Middle Kingdom intends to deal with smaller powers, now that she is the largest military and economic force in Asia and second largest on earth.

A fortnight ago, a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese patrol boat in the Senkaku Islands, administered by Japan but also claimed by China. Tokyo released the ship and crew, but held the captain...

Now Beijing has decided to rub Japan's nose in her humiliation by demanding a full apology and compensation.

Suddenly, the world sees, no longer as through a glass darkly, the China that has emerged from a quarter century of American indulgence, patronage and tutelage since Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese tiger is all grown up, and it's not cuddly anymore.

And with Beijing's threat to use its monopoly of rare-earth materials to bend nations to its will, how does the Milton Friedmanite free-trade ideology of the Republican Party, which fed Beijing $2 trillion in trade surpluses at America's expense over two decades, look now?

How do all those lockstep Republican votes for Most Favored Nation status for Beijing, ushering her into the World Trade Organization and looking the other way as China dumped into our markets, thieved our technology and carted off our factories look today?

The self-sufficient Republic that could stand alone in the world is more dependent than Japan on China for rare-earth elements vital to our industries, for the necessities of our daily life, and for the loans to finance our massive trade and budget deficits.

How does the interdependence of nations in a global economy look now, compared to the independence American patriots from Alexander Hamilton to Calvin Coolidge guaranteed to us, that enabled us to win World War II in Europe and the Pacific in less than four years?

Yet China's bullying of Japan is beneficial, for it may wake us up to the world as it is, as it has been, and ever shall be...

How should America respond?

As none of these territorial disputes involves our vital interests, we should stay out and let free Asia get a good close look at the new China.

Then explore the depths of our own dependency on this bellicose Beijing and determine how to restore our economic independence.

Ending the trade deficit with China now becomes a matter of national security.

So, while Greg Sheridan is painting a rosy picture of the US not surrendering an inch of the South China Sea, Buchanan demonstrates the Yanks could easily just let it go.

Sheridan should return to questioning the wisdom of trading with China.

Greg Sheridan, Giants of Asia-Pacific locked in a complicated relationship

This is not that China is planning to go to war with the US, but that it is planning to compromise and degrade US strategic supremacy in the Asia-Pacific. That, certainly, is a long-term trend in the US-China relationship.

As these trends mature, it is unclear if the US will decide that continuing to make China rich is in its own national interests. The US-China relationship is going to become more complicated. Those many pro-China voices in the Australian debate, especially those at the Australian National University, have no answer to why accommodating China on all points, which seems to be their policy, would produce a good outcome for Australia.

Greg Sheridan, Appeasement gets us nowhere with bellicose Beijing

Many commentators wrongly say Australian wealth is dependent on China and therefore we must forgo our principles in order to make money. This is not true. The Chinese economy is at least as dependent on Australian commodities as we are on Chinese customers. The Chinese will buy commodities on the basis of price and reliability. The political dimension makes very little difference to that trade. And if they did go somewhere else that would chew up other suppliers and thereby leave other customers for us, of which there are many.

The bellicosity and arrogance of the Beijing government are very difficult to deal with at the moment...

... there are serious signs that the US is reconsidering its policy of taking as many exports as China can dump on it.

There are going to be a lot of headaches in Australia-China relations over the next few years...

File under: the ideology of indiscriminate trade is now a matter of national security.