I think some conditions on trade might be appropriate, and we certainly should not condone much in the way of unfair trade practices, but I do not think that with trade conditions we would be able to damage them enough economically to hasten the demise of the communist government there. I don’t see us beating them down much with an arms race either. The Soviet Union was a different animal. It may be true that with the Soviets the expense of the arms race was the straw that broke camel’s back, but China I think is a much more healthy camel. The Soviet Union was a country teetering on financial collapse that just could not get it together in the competitive world market. China doesn’t really have that problem. They’re an economic powerhouse. Seeds of capitalism are sprouting up everywhere there. The Soviets were stupid enough to engage us in an arms race. I don’t know that the Chinese are that stupid. They can’t beat us militarily and they know they can’t. I don’t know that they’d play the arms race game, and if they did fall for that one they might just be able to play for a lot longer than the Soviets did and we might just be the ones who end up bankrupting ourselves, or at least unnecessarily subjecting ourselves to a heavy and long lasting financial burden.
I’m not too worried about propping up the old guard because I don’t know that we are propping them up. It seems to me that the Chinese people are rebelling against the old guard in subtle and not so subtle ways, even though China is experiencing economic success. I think the Chinese people understand that it is not communism that is providing them with this success, it is their own hard work and industry. They’re chipping away at their government, basically telling the government to leave them alone and let them prosper. The Chinese people want more rights, more freedom, and they’re making that known. The old guard are dying off and being replaced by people more likely to have caught the capitalism/democracy/freedom bug. I think it is entirely possible that if we lean on the Chinese government too hard though we’ll only turn the Chinese people against us, putting them more on common footing with the old guard. What we do to China in the way of trade sanctions and so on hurts the Chinese people, and they’ll stand with their government against us when push comes to shove.