I have attempted to avoid/limit purchases ‘made in China’ through the years to avoid funding their military build up, it’s difficult. Wal Mart is just an example.
There are two potential plusses in our trade with China.
Their low cost goods help keep our cost of living low and our standard of living higher, and -
It is very difficult for a totalitarian country to operate successfully under “free enterprise.” They either eventually destroy their economy with totalitarian decisions or free enterprise destroys the totalitarian system. Freedom and tyranny cannot coexist.
If they build a large military with the fruits of free enterprise they will eventually lose it through the destruction of free enterprise and the inability to support the military, ala the USSR or -
If free enterprise destroys tyranny then we will have a well armed friend and ally.
If Russia’s (USSR) abandonment of Communism was genuine it was because Communism is a terrible economic system. They had to adopt a free enterprise system, what they call Capitalism, in order to survive. Regardless, now that Putin is in control they have reverted to the old days of central control, mafia influence and bully tactics with the old Party bosses becoming the owners of the infrastructure and key industries. They will fail.
They are totally dependent on their oil and natural gas for government income. Little economic activity is taking place. A country like that must expand through conquest or die, as they eventually will anyway.