Tommy Denton

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Whether in matters of national security, trade or the environment, China's long-term but growing potential to challenge U.S. global supremacy in coming decades has intensified concern among American policy-makers.

In the current edition of The Atlantic magazine, James Fallows presents a sobering portrait of a burgeoning Sino industrial giant. China, he suggests, is now poised to perform feats of economic dexterity that call to mind the similar position enjoyed by the United States at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

As Fallows notes, the dynamism of the modern Chinese productive behemoth offers both opportunities and dangers for America's prevailing dominant position among the world's community of nations.

For now, U.S. companies receive tremendous returns on their investment in Chinese workers to manufacture products at a fraction of the cost of U.S. factory workers, and American consumers enjoy the resulting low costs of those products imported from China.

Workers laboring at 12-hour shifts and earning $1,000 per year in a tax-exempt Shenzhen factory offer considerable benefits when they help American designers, marketers, engineers and retailers who make $1,000 per week or more.

Alas, that brutal, exploitative, debasing "benefit" translates into quite another set of circumstances for U.S. production workers as more jobs in this country become either outsourced or simply go away.

Still, much of current U.S. economic viability relies upon at least two aspects of China's own dynamism: the productivity savings to U.S. firms from employing Chinese factories and the accumulation by the Beijing government of U.S. Treasury notes, which helps fuel the fiscal irresponsibility of deficit spending by the Bush administration.

As the economic clout swells in China, the response from Washington has been to gird loins and issue stern rebukes about artificially low currency exchange rates between the yuan and dollar. Well, yes, but Beijing happens to be more concerned with other problems: dire poverty among its billions of rural peasants; regional tensions that have roots in centuries-old rivalries; and a sense of destiny in the face of a United States that is projecting economic and military power in a way that Chinese leaders consider harmful to their security interests.

The Chinese have observed such maneuverings -- abandonment of international nuclear treaties, rejection of global environmental agreements, the military invasion of Iraq, to name a few -- and accelerated both economic and military development that represents a genuine threat to U.S. global hegemony within the next few decades.

As has been evident throughout his term, President Bush is inclined to prefer the exertion of unilateral power over diplomacy. His administration in almost all cases follows a policy of "might makes right" with virtually no regard for analyzing history's cruel lessons of imperialistic overreach.

Fallows' article offers some idea of how China's perverse practice of state capitalism will pose an aggressive challenge to the economic growth and dominance of the United States.

For a more comprehensive and sobering study of the interrelated factors that pose economic and military threats in the future, the Council on Foreign Relations has published "U.S.-China Relations: An Affirmative Agenda, a Responsible Course." The study characterizes the last 35 years of engagement between the two countries as basically positive but also warns of the self-defeating tendencies of continuing the Bush administration's unilateral heavy-handedness.

Trying to bully Beijing into doing what Washington demands won't work, the CFR study reported. The better course is to continue engaging China in a multinational, incremental exercise of mutually rewarding collaboration. That's harder, because one side doesn't get to dictate outcomes, but then partners to the collaboration -- the U.S., China, Japan, Russia, the European Union, the functional Middle East nations -- are more likely to fashion mutually reinforcing terms capable of sustaining long-term security and stability without a constant rumor of war hanging over the arguments.

As the Bush administration, "fearful" of growing Chinese strength, invests hundreds of billions of dollars in an expanded network of military bases worldwide -- probably 1,000, according to Chalmers Johnson in his book "The Sorrows of Empire" -- no one should be surprised at China's aggressive reaction to being on the short end of the imbalance of power.

Beijing exhibits enough brutish, inhumane tendencies as it is, so the administration should avoid setting an example that needlessly aggravates its worst inclinations.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday edition of The Roanoke Times.