The risk, it is said, is that the United States will irritate China and solve nothing, but full-throated criticism, when repeated over and over, can have its effects. For sure, Chinese officials won't like it, but it is precisely because they won't that they will be encouraged to modify their behavior. If they can get the United States to avert its gaze from injustice by snapping back, such will be the preferred response. The Chinese may make it sound as if the United States may pay some penalty for criticisms, but China needs the United States more than the United States needs China. As Albright has reiterated, U.S. policy does not link trade with human rights.
Engagement is deemed preferable to disengagement.
Still, the United States is promoting the idea of China joining the World Trade Organization. The advantage to China would be an enhanced international status and increased assurance that its exports will get their competitive chance around the globe. The cost is that China will have to decrease its own tariffs and abide by rules of the game that it sometimes ignores. At some point in the next century, many agree, China itself may be a superpower, and what it should then not be is one that behaves like a rogue elephant, running far from the herd and wreaking havoc as it chooses. The U.S. opportunity to affect that outcome is now.