Tags
China, conservatives, economics, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Making News, national security, Trade
I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my participation in a late July panel discussion on “China, Geonomics, and Great Power Competition.” Here’s the link.
The event was especially interesting because it was held as part of a conference put on by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), and because for decades intellectually honest conservatives have been torn over the question of how and even whether to respond to China’s wide-ranging economic predation. (As with liberals, other conservatives have simply served as corporate-funded backers of coddling China.)
On the one hand, many have recognized that growing national economic power (which China has amassed largely through its tariffs, technology blackmail, intellectual property theft, and other practices having nothing to do with free trade or any form of free markets) tends to translate into growing national military power. Therefore, some limits on doing business with the People’s Republic have always been considered justified (e.g., no arms sales). On the other hand, even these conservatives’ fundamental opposition to limits on economic activity has bred a decided reluctance to endorse any but the most threadbare curbs – which folks like me have viewed as pathetically inadequate (for reasons I lay out).
As ISI has explained, the purpose of the overall conference was to “hash out what a conservative approach to the economy should look like today” – which reflects its admirable willingness to reexamine longstanding dogmas. So IMO, the Institute deserves a lot of credit for including China policy on this list, and I’m grateful to have been included in this piece of the process. P.S. I attended most of the rest of the conference, and found the treatment of other issues fascinating. If ISI posts the entire event at one link, I’ll pass it along as soon as I can find it.
In the meantime, keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.
