A Shining Model of Wealth Without Liberty

(Jon Hicks - ¿ Jon Hicks/corbis)

So what can U.S. leaders do to turn things around? The most important change is a conceptual one. We need to get beyond the arid framework of seeing every policy dispute involving China as a choice between "engagement" and "isolation." Those loaded words set up a false selection and have little meaning anymore, if they ever did. With the third-biggest trading economy in the world, China is already engaged.

We also need to get beyond the notion that our trade, investment and interaction with China are going to transform its political system. Any serious policy must be based on China as it is, not on our mistaken assumption that prosperity and liberty inevitably go hand in hand. Trade and investment should be evaluated for their economic costs and benefits to the United States, not for their political impact on China.

Take, for example, the economic meetings coming up this week between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi. China has maintained its currency, the yuan, at a value so cheap that the U.S. trade deficit with China has soared to more than $200 billion a year. The result has been to boost Chinese exports and depress U.S. employment and production. But some American officials are concerned that pressing China too much on this issue might spoil U.S.-China ties. I don't think so.

Above all, we should approach China through the lens of our national interest. That includes not just security and prosperity but our interest in a world with open political systems and the freedom to dissent. If we don't take China's new model as seriously as the rest of the world does, we could find that we're the ones on the wrong side of history.

jmresponses@comcast.net

James Mann, author in residence at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies,

is author of "The China Fantasy."