Improving human and religious rights, encouraging social, political and economic reform in China, ensuring China's cooperation on economic issues of importance to the region, and enhancing our national security are doomed to failure if attempted in an atmosphere of increasing hostility and confrontation. As has often been pointed out, there are only six countries in the world with which the United States does not currently conduct normal trade relations. Revoking a country's MFN status puts it among these pariah states and has been accurately described as tantamount to a declaration of economic war. Such a rash decision in and of itself would abandon any pretense of cooperation in our relationship with China and, in effect, define that relationship as one of only confrontation. Given its growing economic, political, and military power, our relationship with China is clearly one of the great foreign policy challenges facing the United States.
China has one-fifth of the world's population.
It is a nuclear power with the world's largest standing army. Clearly, China is simply too important to ignore or treat in an openly hostile manner. V. Conclusion I just returned from a trip to China, and I have a few concluding observations. We all recognize that there are troublesome issues with China, many of which are not going to be solved easily or quickly. Such options would be futile and end up harming the United States and other Asian countries as much or even more than China.