China: Engage or confront?

The Nation has a very good article on China's future economic development and how we should act and react to it.

Confrontation or acceptance? While there's shades of gray in the middle, nonetheless, I think we can confront more. Sure, China holds a lot of government debt, but it's still less than a majority, or even close to it. And, our debt is like a Tar Baby to China; there's only so much they can do at once in response, anyway.

So, I agree with James Mann, referenced on page 3:

The bible for many of those who believe that China isn't about to change is James Mann's 2007 book The China Fantasy. Mann, a former Los Angeles Times reporter now at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, argues that China is unlikely to disintegrate or democratize. Instead, he says, it's most likely that decades from now China will be both superrich and undemocratic, and he says those who believe in the possibility of democratization are "hopelessly gullible." China, he says, "is still a Leninist regime, run by a Communist Party governed, in hierarchical ascending circles, by a Central Committee, a Politburo, and a Standing Committee of the Politburo."

I'm not sure about decades in the plural, but a decade from now? I'm sure Mann will be right on the continuing undemocratic nature of a still-unified China. Now, given that the Uighurs of the far west probably pay little attention to the state's one-child policy, disintegration may happen at some future point, true.

As for strikes at Foxconn and elsewhere? If not government-condoned, and therefore government-controlled, they wouldn't be happening. So, let's not claim that China is undergoing some massive liberalization of labor law. It ain't.