By rights, China should be much respected and even praised for its continuing record-setting poverty reduction, but there are signs that it is becoming the object of a growing and unhealthy obsession in the west, particularly the US. The mood about China in America is 'a combustible mix of euphoria, fear, admiration and cynicism', according to Ted Fishman's, China, Inc: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, one of a number of business books on China now sweeping the US. It adds: 'On those emotions ride great tides of capital, the strategic plans of businesses great and small, and the gravest political calculations in the world's capitals and city halls.' A year ago, fear and cynicism were not part of the American public reaction to China. Yet, disturbingly, at public, legislative and even governmental levels, a hostility-tinged obsession with China is developing because of its extraordinary success in business. This success has led, on the one hand, to the loss of some American jobs, and, on the other, to rock-bottom prices for US consumers as well as investors in China. Whatever the tradeoffs, this is strictly business. Is China breaking the trade rules? No - if its exports fall foul of the World Trade Organisation, other countries, as the US and Europe are now doing on textiles, are entitled to challenge China. Is it because China is not passing on the rich returns to its people? No - it won a World Bank accolade last year for lifting 400 million people out of poverty between 1978 and 2003, a feat no other country has come close to matching. Is China somehow being unfriendly? No - poverty reduction is an essential step towards freedom and democracy, as nearly all eastern Asian countries have demonstrated. Yet the US has moved against China by activating an agreement with Japan to project their power together internationally - specifically targeting Taiwan, which was one of the reasons for the protests in Chinese cities. There is no question that the US is interfering in Asian affairs - openly and aggressively. The obsession in America seems to ensure that the administration of President George W. Bush will make the containment and slowing of China's rise a top foreign policy priority. The US has two partners in the Asian enterprise, Tokyo and Taipei, both of which share its fear of a rising China. To counter this, Beijing has been successfully reaching out to South Korea, Southeast Asia, the Kuomintang in Taiwan, and Europe. India, the other Asian world-power-in-waiting, is the wild card, which both sides are wooing. A crucial factor in this equation is that the American, Japanese and Taiwanese economies are now so deeply interlocked with the mainland's that all-out conflict will be seen as highly undesirable by all the players and is, therefore, quite unlikely. Still, within that boundary, the power game will definitely be on. Washington must demonstrate goodwill and stop the US grass roots from igniting a campaign against China. S. Wayne Morrison is an editor on the Post's opinion pages
