The West should stop blaming China for its economic woes
The US is so deindustrialised and the EU so uncompetitive that they will not be able to meet the demands of Chinese consumers if the mainland market was flung open to them
If a cure for cancer were discovered, wouldn’t it be a cause for celebration? Not if China discovered it. At least that’s the view of the congressionally appointed US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“Imagine they [the Chinese] cure cancer. A shock would go through the system as we’ve never seen – our approach would have failed,” Commissioner Leland Miller told a public forum earlier this year.
“We want someone to cure cancer, but we don’t want China to control the pipeline for that cure. If China has enormous success in AI, quantum, and biotech, it shows we are failing on the national security side. I’m not against cooperation, and obviously, everyone wants cancer cured. But if there’s going to be a winner in that race, US industry – which funds enormous R&D – should be it.”
So a Chinese cancer discovery would be a threat to US national security. Any Chinese success, no matter the obvious public benefits it would bring, automatically means an American failure.
What Miller really means is that the US should discover the cure for cancer, control “the pipeline for that cure” and if necessary, weaponise it against other countries, notably China.
At least Miller was being honest. Sadly, though, this is typical Washington thinking: what is good for China is bad for the US. Vice-President J.D. Vance, for example, has repeatedly blamed the rise of the Chinese middle class for the decimation of the American middle class. Global Impulse, a current affairs YouTube channel, provides a good summary of Vance’s absurd claim.