Would that it were so. But America has had enough experience with sanctions to recognize the conditions under which they succeed, and China fulfills none of them. Sanctions work when powerful countries band together to isolate a rogue government. But Western Europe isn't even willing to condemn China in symbolic votes at the United Nations, let alone cut its lucrative economic ties. And sanctions work against regimes that are accountable to their people, because democratic governments, unlike authoritarian ones, cannot watch their citizens suffer and still remain in power.
Sanctions also work, in a different sense, when they embolden dissidents in their internal struggle.
But in China most dissidents seem to want more trade, not less. But if the argument for sanctions is weak and naive, the argument against them is weak and cynical. But to claim that the connection is inevitable or universal can stem only from either ideological blindness or financial self-interest. One wonders what Bill Clinton or Al Gore would have said 15 years ago if you'd told them we shouldn't impose sanctions against South Africa because American foreign investment would usher in democracy. The decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall has taught us that the relationship between markets and liberty is more complicated, not less, than we realized during the cold war, and more contingent on the vagaries of national culture, experience, and will.