WPR's The New Rules: Using China to Scare Ourselves Straight

Judging from the accounts of virtually every pundit, the Chinese emerged as the foreign threat of choice in the just-concluded U.S. elections, with the breakthrough “Chinese Professor” ad being compared by the always-calm James Fallows to such incendiary hall-of-famers as “Daisy Girl” (1964) and “Willie Horton” (1988).  I’m with Fallows:  The exceedingly clever ad represents a crystallizing moment in our increasingly contentious relationship with China, elevating the Chinese far beyond Iran’s mullahs and Osama Bin Laden as the pre-eminent fear-driven threat dynamic motivating calls to get our house in order.

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.

Comments

[louis heberlein]

It is curious how US and Europe benefited 'accidently' from real and imagined relations with China. Europe came back from a long economic disaster when its business folks and politicians read about Chinese trade 'and supposed wealth' from people like Marco Polo. They discovered the American continent looking for a quicker 'and safer' way to link to China for trade. The US railroad industry got $ from Europeans for our transcontinental RR because they wanted quicker and more cost-effective was of sending people and goods between Europe and China. I think new books, or long articles, on China and globalization need to start with a brief, but effective reminder of such past globalization experiences. Some readers will become informed, many more could be reminded of things that could improve current perception.