I think it is essential to see how fuzzy-headed thinking emplaces scales over the eyes of the Administration. We have all seen the Adminstration more or less confess that they fear enforcing diligently the immigration laws against illegals because of the short-run economic turbulence the U.S. economy would experience.
Now we can see that the same argument which captured the President's mind on illegal aliens are being repeated with regard to China.
George Gilder is representative of the problems. Yes, the same George Gilder who believes in Christian Capitalism. (Apparently just not in China however).
George Gilder's 'freaking out' column was first printed in Forbes last year.
As can be seen, he claimed that China was VITAL to the U.S.?
Not as a market. Not as an ally. Not as source of natural materials. But for its cheap labor.
His sole concern was the rise of U.S. protectionism....but in his litany of alarm ...he in fact made a telling and IRREFUTABLE case for that same protectionism.
He said we were dependant already. That if cut off we would be destroyed.
Seems to me, that destructive "cut off" is thus right within the power of the Chinese Communist Party. We have them right where they want us.... :-)
So precisely who will be cracking the whip in this 'relationship'? Who has the high cards? Who has the leverage? One would assume that a U.S. President who truly valued U.S. sovereignty would reach for and use our advantages. But we know he didn't.
We already saw that with the conspicuous failures in Bejing with the President's visit late last year. Complete and utter humiliation for the President. Tyranny, censorship and oppression, from one end of the country to the other...and we do nothing about it.
Meanwhile, George Gilder sees no evil. Just like Google.cn does no evil.
And what is especially tragic is that he has totally lost any real credibility as regards national security. His blatant espousal of transferring the remaining U.S. technology advantages, such as the higher density semiconductor production equipment, demonstrates an ignorance that simply has to be the product of a systemmatic and willful disregard for all the evidence of Chinese enmity.
The problem of those fail to ascertain or appreciate that China is not a U.S. "technology advantage."
Don't worry, the Chinese love us, and live only to ship us snazzy low-cost consumer goods in exchange for thin-air helicopter money.
This will continue forever, because we are Americans, and it is our birth right.
It's like the fool who was saying we all have a trade imbalance with our grocer so our losing industry to China is a good thing.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my grocer hasn't been plotting for over a hundred years to destroy me.
The problem with these articles is the complete lack of any hard numbers to put the problem in perspective. For example,
1) How much trade do we have with China in dollars & as a percent of GNP?
2) How much is the trade gap?
3) And if trade with China was cut off, how much could be replaced (esimtated dollars) thru increased trade with other countries?
My feeling is that collapse of trade with Chna would cause some disruption but we would soon recover. I also think (but have no numbers to back it up) that China trade is a VERY SMALL PART of our GNP.
Our probblem with immigration is that we are not sucking in the world's technology brains any more. Our public schools do not produce them in nearly the numbers that our industry and government need to remain the economic and military top dogs in the world. Formerly the world's techies and engineers got their educations in America and most of them went to work here because they preferred the freedom and working in a system that lets them keep a substantial portion of their earnings. We have been denying visas to these people at much higher rates in some scheme to combat illegal aliens and have been pushing them back offshore when they get their degrees.Other countries have been forced to build high class tech schools to make up for the American cold shoulder. We are by these policies cutting off our technological superiority and future political and military superiority. That is a normal government response to a problem. If folks complain about illegal immigration then you cut down on legal immigration where it really will hurt and then say see? we can't stop the illegals because we need immigrants.