Are we ready for China?

• Author: Sempa, Francis P.
• Position: Brief article

Politics and international affairs professor at Princeton and for two years Vice President Richard Cheney's deputy assistant for national security affairs, Aaron Friedberg has written in Commentary that the United States is almost two decades into a "protracted geopolitical rivalry" with China. The growth of China's economic and military power and its skillful diplomacy (using "tools of culture" and "tools of business"), Friedberg believes, are designed to both enhance its influence and power in the Asia-Pacific region and simultaneously weaken the United States' strategic position there. Despite that, most American experts, in and out of government, downplay China's strategic challenge to our interests, while emphasizing the benefits of "engagement."

Friedberg develops his argument by drawing on two recent books by Joshua Kurlantzick and James Mann, who both dissent from the conventional view that China's economic progress and growth will likely lead to further domestic political liberalization and stability in...