What did the China hawks get right and wrong about China?

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is part of the closing bit:

Where does all this leave U.S. China policy? As a rule of thumb: If it is of clear and limited scope and can be conducted technocratically, and can avoid both excess media coverage and political polarization — and, crucially, if it requires no obvious sacrifices from American citizens — then a policy stands a pretty good chance of succeeding. But that is not enough to justify a new global crusade. Over the last year or so, no matter what you might think of the government in Beijing, it has become clear that the government in Washington faces some real limits in responding to it.

I would stress that predictively, in their analysis of China, the hawks got almost everything right and the accommodationists got almost everything wrong.  There is just not so much we can do about that…

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