We’re Not Going to Beat the Chinese, Part I

Commentary The United States (the West) cannot beat the Chinese communist regime at its game: centralization of money and power coupled to an industrial policy that floods the world with underpriced exports. Economic domination. For the West to match China, a nation with no history of human rights or democracy, which is China’s comparative advantage, the West would have to abandon its comparative advantage: social, political, and economic freedom. Or, the West can conscientiously reinforce those freedoms by returning (at least in the United States) to its founding principles: citizens on their own, limited government. When the West colonized Africa, Latin America, India, and East Asia, it abandoned its principles. Severely reprimanded when those nations threw off their colonizers, the West now has no desire to return—except that those nations today, realizing they can’t make it on their own, want the West to return....