America has legitimate concerns about Chinese nationalism and missile developments. Father Sirico of the Acton Institute has written about his many discussions with human rights activists on China. Never did a single one ever argue that there should be less American commerce, exchange of information, contacts or travel. Also many factories in China are owned by U.S. multi-national corporations. Cutting off American trade with China would be a devastating blow to world wide trade and bring on economic depression in many lands.
Political freedom comes later, as it did in Chile, Taiwan, Singapore and so on.
It is trying to legitimize itself by inflaming and using nationalism. It is not omnipotent. U.S. policy should be to reinforce the freedom and free market elements, not play into the hands of the old guard with all its talk of war and empire. Instead, the Chinese Left and American Right each agitate and feed off the other's arguments to further conflict, much of our Right to justify more military budget and the Chinese Left to try to stop opening up the the West. You can count on one hand the number of persons editing conservative magazines and op-ed departments who have lived in foreign nations outside of Europe or speak foreign languages.