ARTICLE: “As Trade Deficit Grows, So Do Tensions With China,” by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 10 March 2006, p. C1.

OP-ED: “Trade And the China Card,” by Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post, 6 March 2006, p. A15.

ARTICLE; “China Plans to Address Wealth Gap: Premier Offers Education In Effort to Improve Lives Of Rural and Urban Poor,” by Andrew Browne, Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “In Latin America, Commodities Boom Has Unlikely Fallout: Many Mayors Flub Opportunity To Help the Region’s Poor; Populists See an Opening,” by Matt Moffitt, Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2006, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “China Defense Outlay To Increase by 14.7%, The Most in 4 Years,” World Watch column, Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2006, p. A8.

Expect the China bashing to grow mightily this spring, especially when President Hu Jintao visits.

Of course, the “trade deficit” drives this, even though it’s largely a chimera created by our multinationals going over to China for final assembly reasons, and then, by the rules of trade, we instantly declare the total value of the assembled good as being Chinese in origin, so when the same multinational ships the final goods to America for sale here (with that transnational transaction really being more accurately described as intra-MNC trade than interstate trade), we call that an import and say “China’s beating us in a trade war!”

Stupid as shit, but there it is.

So we’re going to have a hard time not playing the China card on trade. As Mallaby (always brilliant, almost to the point of restoring my faith in Brits in general) points out, “For a fear monger with a club, next month’s Chinese state visit is a self-teeing golf ball.”

Why? Mallaby’s just great here:

China … has become a proxy for all globalization anxieties; It’s painted as a low-wage threat and simultaneously a high-science threat [Boy! There’s Tom Friedman’s book in one fear-mongering sentence!], a piratical menace to technology patents and simultaneously a challenge to America’s scientific preeminence. Meanwhile, China constitutes a security threat too: It’s spending billions on an arms build-up, and lying about the real numbers [which, in our highest estimates, don’t come anywhere near what we will spend in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, or on our acquisitions, or on our R&D; but no mind, Sebastian’s on a roll!]. If demagogues can turn a tiny ally such as Dubai into a villain, you can bet they’ll do the same for China.

Damn straight!

And who will lead this charge? The Dems, of course. See why I pine so for Clinton’s return? Instead we have world-class dumbasses like Chuck Schumer speaking for America (yes, the bad NY senator). And his shenanigans may well push the prudent Bush into something truly stupid WRT China.

But even if you buy all this hyping of the threat. Why does China seek such rapid export-driven growth?

Buddy, have you checked out the 900 million or so Chinese living in poverty inland? I mean, we’re only talking the equivalent of the entire Western Hemisphere in population! Big enough development challenge for you?

The world saw the biggest reduction in global poverty in the last 50 years. Almost all of it was due to China’s emergence and India’s emergence. That’s the most poverty reduction we’ve ever enjoyed in five centuries--bang! Just like that.

Do you want to pay for all that global development while enjoying cheap goods in Wal-Mart? Or do you want to fight some senseless war with China in the future? Which path seems to make America more prosperous and safe over the coming decades?

People want to point out China’s defense spending (roughly one-tenth of ours when all our “supplementals” are added in) and say we’re looking at Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.

I say check out the UK at the start of the 21st century. Look like a dominant global power to you? Want to know why it isn’t? Because it let itself be sucked into two pointless wars with rising Germany, which Europe and the U.S. mishandled in the extreme following the first self-immolating civil war known globally as WWI.

Feel like becoming a second-tier power in the 21st century? Or would you rather see those 900 million get a better deal?

Yes, yes, WWJD?

Meanwhile, the commodities boom created by China and India has the possibility of lifting even more millions upon millions out of poverty elsewhere, like in Latin America. Should we be focusing on how to help those states use this wealth more effectively, or should we treat China’s growing economic presence there and in Africa as a zero-sum threat to America’s “national interests” (Ah, to be a realist! Or should I say, a national-interest patriot!).

Seriously, stupidity knows no bounds in U.S. national security and foreign policy thinking today. People want me to declare “victory” over the smallest little changes here and there, when in reality, my work will never be done.