I say unconventional wisdom, you can say rank stupidity

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - 2:11 PM Share

Foreign Policy asked many smart people, and then me, for some nuggets of unconventional wisdom heading into 2011. My contribution is on how China isn't all that and a bag of chips.

My closing paragraph:

Exaggerating Chinese power has consequences. Inside the Beltway, attitudes about American hegemony have shifted from complacency to panic. Fearful politicians representing scared voters have an incentive to scapegoat or lash out against a rising power -- to the detriment of all. Hysteria about Chinese power also provokes confusion and anger in China as Beijing is being asked to accept a burden it is not yet prepared to shoulder. China, after all, ranks 89th in the 2010 U.N. Human Development Index, just behind Turkmenistan and the Dominican Republic (the United States is fourth). Treating Beijing as more powerful than it is feeds Chinese bravado and insecurity at the same time. That is almost as dangerous a political cocktail as fear and panic.

Be sure to read the rest of them -- really, the other contributors are all smarter than me.

EXPLORE:INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, CHINA, GREAT POWER POLITICS, POWER, UNITED STATES

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CEOUNICOM

5:28 PM ET

January 4, 2011

re: its not a contest, dumbass...

Big whoop, Bacon

Your cited 'statistics' (or lack therof) & argument mean zippo. Half of china's population lives off the land; how many companies does china have in the Forbes Top 1000?; China has 'friends' everywhere? You mean like North Korea? Sudan? Burma? We should be so jealous. The "average" chinese make "poor" Americans look like emperors in their relative living conditions. Even we "dumb" americans blow the chinese out of the water in overall rates of literacy and scientific competency. If your only comparable measure is who has a larger and faster growing export economy - well, then no contest. But it's apples and oranges. They are many decades behind us in the economic development curve; you might as well be comparing todays' Facebook growth and relative valuation to ... I don't know... IBM? Perhaps not a fair comparison (IBM isnt horribly in debt!); and I think china is less of a one-trick-pony compared to facebook; but the general drift is the same - there is no 'beating' each other when you're dealing with two different entities at entirely different stages of existence. Growth by itself is illusive when you're dealing with a nation that has so far still to go; we're largely suffering from being *too successful* ourselves for too long. Most of the panic attacks people have about China are nothing but a symptom of our own Vanity.

The idea of countries "beating" each other - as though we are perpetually engaged in some kind of existential 'whip it out and see whose is bigger' contest - is itself meaningless. They need us as much or more than we need them. We are in a relationship which is largely positive for both countries. Our own current problems (e.g. horrible foreign policy choices, horrible fiscal crisis, despondent economy) are, contrary to 'conventional (non)wisdom', not a consequence of their successes; there is no 'zero sum' in interenational economic affairs; we have mostly dug our own hole without any help from them. People who point to our exporting our industrial capabilities to other countries fail to appreciate the mutual benefits that emerged over the decades from doing so. There will be no return to a 1950s economy in America, and people need to stop thinking that would be a good thing even if we could.

Ultimately all the concern over China is a matter of either people being horribly egotistical abiout American Power... (like a beautiful woman who suddenly has a nervous breakdown because she discovered her first grey hair)... or, like you - narrow-minded player-haters who will pile on shoddenfreude at the drop of a pin. Both are extremely boring. You aren't commenting at all about China, really. I doubt there's any topic here you couldn't find an opportunity to offer your Deep Insights into the horror that is America Today. For Christ's sake, last time I recall your name, you were berating FP for criticizing *North Korea*. I mean, come on. What *is* America an improvement on, by contrast? Haiti? *Hades*? The Dark Side of the Moon? In your view, the country is nothing but a waterslide to endless disaster and misery. What I find funniest about this worldview is how common it is amongst the children of the wealthy middle-class: only the most spoiled and pampered of Americans can really afford to spend their time hemming and hawing about the certainty of how 'its all downhill from here'....

CEOUNICOM

3:44 AM ET

January 5, 2011

re: a rose by any other name...

#1 ""The subect of this thread is a contest between China and the US. The title of professor Drezner's piece is: "...AND CHINA ISN'T BEATING THE U.S""

Right. Because he's disproving the idea there's a competition in the first place. You seem to think that playing the "Oh yeah they are!" line is a rebuttal.

Again, you're blatantly avoiding the core point: they say they 'support' EU bailout measures? So freaking what. EU like US is one of their biggest customers. God forbid they should stop consuming. It doesn't make them BFF with anyone. Id rather you started citing EU nations voting with china against US interests. Fail.

Shanghai and Hong Kong are not "China". They are the urban elite of China. When you talk Nations, deal with national statistics. Yes, asians outperform Americans in math and science in general. We have underperformed for years. The statistics you cite do not make them out to be the great Educators of the planet, however. You ignored my also-factual point about the 'averages' of *basic competency*.. not who is best, but who is better at basic literacy in important fields, and responded with basically a 'where are the 'top 10'? A lot of this high scoring data is also BTW highly incomparable = testing is not in any way consistent across nations, and there is also in every case an interest in tweaking data for national bragging rights.... maybe a more interesting stat is : how many Americans are traveling abroad to get educated in China vs vice-versa? Dwell on that.

Yes, China has large funds in R&D. And they *still can't build anything nearly as complicated as anyone else* See recent news stories about their dependence on outside countries for most high-tech, military, or scientific development. Name the last major inventions by Chinese firms that have had any significant impact on the global economy.... excluding rampant intellectual property violation.

Seriously, try again Gomer. You threw three sideswipes and hit nothing but air. Plus you missed the fundamental point... *it's not a competition*. There is no "beating" anything. We are partners in a global economy. What is good for them is mostly also good for us and everyone else. No one is trying to "win" anything.

CEOUNICOM

3:45 AM ET

January 5, 2011

ps...

Ok, I'm a dumbass = how do you do that nice little indented quotation thing?? :) I have tried .. type stuff but it never works...

CEOUNICOM

9:02 PM ET

January 5, 2011

....duhhhh

Thats weird, because I've tried the same thing with italics before....and it never seemed to work

Maybe they updated the way the threads work.

BUT YOU'RE STILL WRONG ABOUT CHINA!!!! BWOO HA HAHAHAHAHA YOU'VE BEEN READING TOO MUCH TOM FRIEDMAN

Kidding.

No really though, you really have probably been reading too much Tom Friedman though. He hates the sloppyness of multiparty democracy, loves re-education camps and high-speed rail...

OLIVER CHETTLE

2:00 AM ET

January 15, 2011

You're too hard on yourself,

You're too hard on yourself, only seven of the other writers are smarter than you, based on these pieces alone.