Historically, we Americans have a habit of seeing adversaries as larger than they are, their weaknesses as strengths we should emulate.
This was true for Iraq in the 1990s, for Japan in the 1980s, and for the Soviet Union through the Cold War. There were Americans who wanted to copy Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and who thought the Confederacy would win in the 19th century.
We’re still doing it. Take this piece from supposed “deep thinker” Noah Smith. China, he says, is crushing us, thanks to “overproduction” in manufactured goods. It’s a war, and we’re losing.
This is an obvious pile of cow dung. It’s also dangerous.
China is Not Winning
China is not winning. China is losing.
Xi Jinping made a deliberate decision to crush his tech sector in 2020, seeing it as a threat.
Instead, he has focused on manufacturing, which requires few brains and limited creativity. Manufacturing also offers limited financial gains. The result is that America is not losing economic ground, it’s gaining. Despite having one-quarter of China’s population, our gross national product is 55% bigger. Chinese incomes are less than 20% of America’s.
The Peterson Institute insists this isn’t true but it is. Technology drives economic growth today. More than half of the world’s stock market capitalization is in the U.S.
You can credit clouds, you can credit AI, but the real reason is software. Even if coding is automated, software can only be created by trained, empowered minds. That requires maximum liberty, freedom to learn and freedom to think. This has been the American advantage since Ben Franklin with a key and a kite.
You see it, right?
Where China is Succeeding
Then there’s the question of where China is “winning,” and “crushing” us.
China is building what we need for human life to continue. We need batteries. We need solar panels. We need EVs of all kinds. We need new infrastructure, we need fast trains, and we need to electrify. That’s where China’s “overcapacity” is.
By contrast, America is leading the way in polluting the planet. Our cars still run on gasoline. We’re the world’s biggest oil producer. When the clouds need new power for AI, their owners are forced to consider old technologies like nuclear and even coal.
If any nation is threatening the world today, it’s America. It’s not China.
I know that’s hard to understand, even harder to accept. Alongside an assumption that foreigners have the power to crush us there stands American hubris and imperialism. We crushed Germany, we crushed Japan, we crushed the Soviet Union and Iraq. We killed a ton of people. But it’s economics that drive mankind forward. America’s new best friend in Southeast Asia is Vietnam.
We’re winning and yet we still pretend we’re losers. This has been getting people killed for hundreds of years.
What Should Happen
What should happen between China and the U.S. is a trade agreement. We have reciprocal strengths.
We’re not going to stop China from getting AI technology. We’re not going to control what they do with it. We need their manufactured goods, especially batteries and panels. And don’t get me started on “Communist” China. China is the model for what Trump wants to build here, only with a Christianist tinge, so what’s the big deal?
But rather than learn from our history, we’re about to repeat it. Children will die because we accept the fears of people like Noah Smith as real.
God help us all.
