David P. Goldman:
“…There is only one effective way to come to terms with China’s rising economic power and global assertiveness, and that is to strengthen the United States. I have long argued for a return to Reagan-style investments in basic R&D driven by frontier defense technologies in order to counter China’s drive for technological leadership. As former House Speaker Newt Gringrich argues in his new book Trump vs. China, “It is not China’s fault that in 2017, 89% of Baltimore eighth graders couldn’t pass their math exam. . . . It is not China’s fault that too few Americans in K-12 and in college study math and science to fill the graduate schools with future American scientists. . . . It is not China’s fault the way our defense bureaucracy functions serves to create exactly the ‘military-industrial complex’ that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about.”
Gingrich warns, “There is every reason to believe that China is catching up rapidly and may outpace us. This is because of us not because of them.” In the grand scheme of things, the Hong Kong business is a distraction, magnified by the same foreign policy establishment that distracted us with endless wars. Hong Kong provides no real leverage, and our attempts to exercise leverage well might bring disaster on the people of Hong Kong. The U.S. needs to get down to the grim and urgent business of competing with China for technological preeminence…”