Think Outside the Defense Budget: The Real Cost of Keeping China Our Enemy

By Thomas P. M. Barnett | July 11, 2011 | +

Mark Thompson picks up on Chins’s cheeky advice to visiting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen regarding our coupling of world-class defense spending with our world-class national debt/faltering economy. We can brush it aside, of course, seeing that it’s coming from our #1 excuse for defense spending (Mustn’t let those Chinese . . . ).

Follow the money

But Americans would do well to consider the ancillary costs of this approach with China. See the Economist chart depicting the cumulative stock of Chinese foreign direct investment around the world. Despite having lots of commodities and companies and technologies that China would love to invest in, North America ranks last. Even in this bottom-feeding period of Western distress, the growth of Chinese FDI into Europe is almost twice that into the US.

Yes, there is just as much popular angst about China’s rise in Europe, but right now they’re getting the shot-in-the-arm direct investments from China that we are not. What Chen Bingde should have said was, “How that demonizing-your-banker-thing working out?”

Related Topics: China, defense budget, defense spending, China

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