Recent presidential candidates have been trying to outdo each other on how tough they are going to be on China, with many claiming they will ban the purchase of real estate for either government or private citizens from China.
Since the “spy balloon” traveled across Canada and the U.S., it has been very trendy to be anti-China. But the truth is that the U.S. averages a billion dollars per day in trade deficit to China and the taxpayers pay an average of $100 million per day for interest on our debt.
If we really want to get tough on China, we should get our act together and pass a balanced budget. Spending three times as much money as China spends on military doesn’t get us any respect. They know that a nation that can’t pass any substantive legislation, and which changes its domestic and foreign policies every four to eight years, does not threaten them. New administrations don’t just tweak the policies, they erase their predecessor’s impact where they can.
Maybe we fear China! They have used the trillions dollars we have sent to them to build world-class infrastructure, expand military bases around the world and monopolize many of the critical rare earth minerals that will drive future prosperity.
Fear is neither productive nor useful in a strategic way to out maneuver China in the global economic dominance. The war is an economic one, and we need not continue to strengthen our “enemy “ with our credit cards.
We need to curb our government spending and buy local as much as possible. We need to manufacture flat-screen televisions, smartphones and computers. Outsourcing these technologies has been the key to China’s economic success, as the U.S. descends from a global leader in exports to a global buyer.
Tom Turner
China Village
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