I don't agree with much that Spencer Ackerman is saying here - for one thing, he goes way out on the fringe to identify China hawks, making everyone else dove-ish by comparison - but this struck me:
It wasn’t long ago — the 1990s, in fact — that there was a broad political consensus on the perfidies of China. It held China in contempt, over everything from human rights and labor abuses to its presumed military ambitions.
Compare that with Norway's response to Liu Xiaobo's Nobel last year: firstly, that the Nobel has nothing to do with the Norwegian government, and also, boo-hoo, they won't buy our fish. People go on about China's soft power failings, but that in itself is a fundamentally defensive attitude. It doesn't get anyone out of jail.
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