Challenging the Groupthink on China

Weiss’ warning against “reflexive fear” is important and necessary.

Ian Johnson has written an interesting profile of Jessica Chen Weiss, a scholar who has become a relatively rare dissenter against the hawkish groupthink on China. Earlier this year, she warned the administration against falling into “the China trap” of treating U.S.-Chinese relations in zero-sum terms. As she put it:

The current course will not just bring indefinite deterioration of the U.S.-Chinese relationship and a growing danger of catastrophic conflict; it also threatens to undermine the sustainability of American leadership in the world and the vitality of American society and democracy at home.

Weiss’ warning against “reflexive fear” is important and necessary. Whenever U.S. political leaders and policymakers identify another country as a major threat or “challenge,” they tend to go overboard in their desire to express their hostility. When hawkish groupthink takes hold, the focus turns to how to inflict harm on the other country and how to thwart their government at every turn regardless of the costs of doing so. Stoking tensions for the sake of stoking tensions tends to become the default approach. This encourages provocative actions and makes efforts at conciliation difficult if not impossible.