A merica's foreign policy elites, liberal and conservative alike, share a common failing, a mind-boggling lack of common sense when the subject is China. This ignorance in and of itself is perfectly understandable, reasonable even.
Most people make no bones about being ignorant about what life is like in foreign countries.
Much of the world's population, even in our era of jumbojets and the internet, is necessarily going to be ignorant about most foreign countries' history, culture and people. I myself confess ignorance about the facts surrounding Scotland's historical relationship to England. Most people do not presume to micromanage the internal affairs of nations about which they know next to nothing. The problem is not ignorance. The problem is arrogance.