Getting real on China

The pendulum swings back to common sense

Notable op-ed from The Hill describing how the general mood among the China watchers is shifting back from the confrontationist stance of recent years to something closer to pragmatism.

The core of the opinion piece — over several grafs, with plenty to unpack:

Mounting international crises may be causing elite practitioners and expert commentators to trim their established positions on China. Some are modifying or outright rejecting earlier views or even coming full circle to return to positions they had previously discarded. 

Translation: when Washington doesn’t need Beijing’s help, it feels free to demonize it as an existential threat. But when international dangers pile up, we do want China’s help as we grow nervous that all this tumult might trigger direct superpower conflict and nobody wants that — thus analysis and positions are re-arranged to fit the circumstances.