Finally Found a Kindred Spirit Regarding China

Here's the guy's post: http://blog.eop.org.uk/415-morals-or-gold/ To open it in a separate window (so you can keep from just leaving here) right mouse click (or control click on Mac) and select Open in new Window.
Okay, so here goes:
There are no accidents in politics. China's hegemony has spread rapidly because very smart strategist identified a brilliant solution to a tough problem.
China needs food and wants minimal interference in their Communist Dictatorship. They don't want their wall to come down like it did for the Soviet Union. Lucky for them they have a deep strategic tradition that goes back to before the birth of Christ. I don't think it took long after the pressures of Tien Min Square (and the fall of the Soviets Union) for China's leadership to decide that a 25 year plan for securing their empire long term was necessary and that it required an innovative approach to the ENEMY. That approach was and is based on a profoundly simple insight: COLD WARRIORS ARE CAPITALIST FIRST AND WARRIORS SECOND AND THEY CAN'T RESIST THE LURE OF CHEAP LABOR. THEY ALSO DESPERATELY WANT TO BELIEVE THAT FREE MARKETS SOLVE EVERYTHING BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE MEANS THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE TO ACCEPT COMPROMISES TO COLLECTIVE NEEDS - LIKE HIGHER TAXES.
So now comes the even MORE exciting part. Some great stategist among them says, "Hey, we can get huge amounts of hard currency, modernize our ancient industrial capacity, secure our sources of energy and food for generations and neutralize our enemies without firing a shot. All we have to do is create zones where we allow them to treate our people like the subjects of a third world dictatorship! "
At that point I think China was expecting plenty of hard currency and the kind of international muscle that comes from being a neuclear power with an economic pistol. I don't think ANYONE could have dreamed when China started opening its doors that the first world would so easily and happily lay down every last moral objection to economic and political slavery and every hint of basic recognition of national difference. But the US went Manchurian Candidate on the world and said, "We love your cheap workers.... We can't treat our people like that so we'll FIRE THEM and hire yours.... Gosh, your cheap goods make us feel like we're doing something right - you must be an ALLY." And the world followed.
Now we're going to have Olympic games in 2008 on streets that were cleared and clean by FORCE. The US recently had a Chinese submarine surface in the dead center of a full blown Naval excerise pointing at the command ship and we grumbled and waved. The US and Europe have handed over our plowshares to China. When they finally offend our sensibilities enough will they beat them into swords and send them back?
All of this sounds xenophobic and paranoid, right? Like the next thing I'm going to say is that China plans on taking over the world and that we should put the big wall up right now. Well, actually no. First, China doesn't need to take over the world, they'll own it all in good time without firing a shot. Second, I don't think we should cut off relations with them, I think we should understand as nations that global Jihad and the growth of non-state actors is a force that is an ADDITIONAL THREAT not a replacement to the threat of various state actors. Countries like the US have to draw lines between maintaining open channels and ceding critical national power. And we need to pressure China to treat ALL of it's people according to the rule of law that includes freedom of speech, movement and self determination.
Instead we're going the other way, we're using the threat of terrorism to expand police powers and errode privacy rights. There is a bombastic aspect to all debate, even international ones, that requires characters taking the moral high ground to have clean enough hands not to drip all over it. How are we going to compell any change in China's human rights behavior when we approach the table wearing the fruits of their slave's labor? How are we going to call ourselves the exemplars of freedom when we're willing to punch a hole in habeas corpus and LEAVE IT THERE for half a decade (Or in the case of Britain - take more pictures of our citizens in a given day than a super model gets in a lifetime of New York Fashion Weeks)?
Ultimately China is not an enemy, they are a state actor preserving the status quo of their state in an extraordinarily clever way. WE, the countries that used to be called the "free world" are the ones that need to change before we expect greater change from China. This goes quadruple for the US - WE NEED TO ACT LIKE STATEGIC STATE ACTORS while we pursue the dream of open trade and WE NEED TO PUT THE RULE OF LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST AND FREE TRADE SECOND OR WE WILL ENJOY NEITHER FOR LONG.