A devaluation of China's currency could throw Asia into a financial crisis worse than that in l997. In short, this is a proud, populous, ambitious country trying pragmatically to establish itself as one of a handful of global powers and as Asia's first power. That makes China's neighbors nervous and causes them to look to us for protection and help. That said, China will not possess military or economic power over the next decade sufficient to threaten vital American interests. Nor need it do so then.
China needs Western trade and investment.
It needs continuing normal trading status with the U.S. and U.S. support for its World Trade Organization membership this fall. As it develops, China will remain socialist at least for a time but it will not be an ideological, if inconsequential, state like Cuba. Its students are in western universities and grad schools, its economists increasingly are more Keynesian than Marxist, and its people aspire increasingly to high-consumption Western lifestyles. All of this calls for firm, patient, realistic American policies that engage China but avoid provocation. These grandstanding politicians are the clearest present threat to peace and stability in Asia and to our own security.