We have no national interest in 1.3 billion poor, frustrated, and angry Chinese. We have a big national interest in 1.3 billion increasingly prosperous, optimistic Chinese. China has finally figured out that it doesn't have to be poor. That's good.
China still has huge problems. Despite the growth in the cities, it still has 600 million people in the countryside living at subsistence levels. It has terrific infrastructure and environmental problems and a rudimentary social safety net. It has to figure out a new role in the international economy as it matures as an economic giant, and therefore a leader; it has to begin taking responsibility for systemic order. (It may take a severe recession or two to drive the point home, but China is too big to be a freeloader any longer. That's a hard lesson to learn.) It has to shift from export-led growth to a greater reliance on domestic consumption, and it has to become a better customer for its major trade partners to maintain open markets.
Probably most difficult, it has an enormous political and human rights hill to climb. I wouldn't want to trade places with them. But the emergence of China as a market oriented economy with a mass middle class is one of the most positive developments of the past generation, the growing pains notwithstanding.
So ... one of these days, China will have the world's biggest economy. For awhile. Then India may overtake it. Or we will, once enough Mexicans move north and we get to a billion people ourselves. But that's a story for another day.
I get it.
So we should just be unconcerned about what’s good for America, because China is bigger.
China is paying very close attention to what is good for China.
How about we start looking out for America, for a change.