In a bitterly polarized era, China bashing is still bipartisan. President Donald Trump opens with tariffs, the Democrats call and raise, and then it's Trump's turn to up the ante again. The People's Republic is now almost universally seen both as an economic rival that has ravaged the American economy and as a military rival that threatens American allies and world peace.
It is certainly reasonable to be suspicious of the Chinese Communist Party. Its recent trajectory is dispiriting: Where many of us hoped economic liberalization would produce political liberalization, an authoritarian backlash instead started clamping down on both free markets and free speech. The longstanding repression of ethnic minorities and political dissenters was industrialized and digitized.
And while previous Chinese leaders preferred to set aside contested geopolitical issues and leave them to later and wiser generations, today's wolf warriors have increased military pressure against their neighbors, threatening Taiwan with invasion and other countries with trade coercion.
