Should We be Friends With China? | Jeff Smith

For the better part of a decade, China has played the role of America’s greatest long-term strategic competitor.

American foreign politicos have long advised a pivot to Asia as Washington slaps tariffs on Chinese goods. The CCP has served as America’s bête noire, guilty of repeated intellectual property theft, human rights abuses, and imperial ambitions towards the essential island of Taiwan.

And yet, as Bob Dylan once crooned, the times, they are a changin'.

President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently wrapped up a new round of talks here in Washington, with many noting the meeting seemed much more amicable than expected.

If polls are to be believed, Americans are less hostile toward China than they were just a few years ago with younger Americans considerably less likely than their parents to see China’s rise as a critical threat.

Overseas, countries that have traditionally looked to Washington are increasingly weighing closer economic ties with Beijing.

At the same time, China still dominates critical supply chains, including rare earth minerals and questions remain about whether the United States can or should decouple its economy from Beijing.

So where does the U.S.-China relationship stand? Are Americans becoming more comfortable with Beijing and Can China really present itself as an alternative to the United States on the world stage?

Jeff Smith, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center may have the answers.

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