Communication drives America's "China-scare" meme

There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post from former Beijing bureau chief (and author of the good book Chinese Lessons) John Pomfret and his colleague, Steven Mufson looking at the rising “red scare” meme in the US. The two journalists do their best to inject a needed dose of reality into a heated issue. It’s well worth reading the entire article, but a couple of paragraphs in particular caught my attention. Both point out that some of the current attention to China’s rivalry with the US is driven by communication in support of particular agendas:

[In] large part, politicians, activists and commentators push the new Red Scare to advance particular agendas in Washington. If you want to promote clean energy and get the government to invest in this sector, what better way to frame the issue than as a contest against the Chinese and call it the “new Sputnik”? Want to resuscitate the F-22 fighter jet? No better country than China to invoke as the menace of the future.

They then inject a little useful perspective into the discussion:

In other areas, politicians and pundits also have a tendency to overestimate China’s strengths — in ways that leave China looking more ominous than it really is. Recent reports about how China is threatening to take the lead in scientific research seem to ignore the serious problems it is facing with plagiarism and faked results. Projections of China’s economic growth seem to shortchange the country’s looming demographic crisis: It is going to be the first nation in the world to grow old before it gets rich. By the middle of this century the percentage of its population above age 60 will be higher than in the United States, and more than 100 million Chinese will be older than 80. China also faces serious water shortages that could hurt enterprises from wheat farms to power plants to microchip manufacturers.

And about all those engineers? In 2006, the New York Times reported that China graduates 600,000 a year compared with 70,000 in the United States. The Times report was quoted on the House floor. Just one problem: China’s statisticians count car mechanics and refrigerator repairmen as “engineers.”

That a communications agenda is behind much of the current American anxiety will come as no surprise to many Imagethief readers, but it’s good to see it being addressed in a level-headed fashion. The article doesn’t trivialize the importance or the impact of the rise of China, and neither would I. But it’s good to cut through some of the hyperbole. Read the whole thing and see what you think.

Previously:

Book review: Chinese Lessons, by John Pomfret (August, 2006 – on the old Imagethief).