Corrine -The funniest part of JD Vance’s speech is the ending:“I am angry about the rise of China… but I am most angry that American leadership let it happen.”Let it happen?As if China’s rise was an American clerical error.As if 1.4 billion people industrialized because Washington forgot to lock the door.China was sanctioned, contained, smeared, tariffed, and technologically strangled.And still it became the world’s strongest industrial economy.India had the population.India had English.India had earlier access to the WTO.India had Western approval, “democracy” branding, and decades of geopolitical courtship.Capital still chose China.Factories still chose China.Supply chains still chose China.Why?Because civilization is not built by flattering Washington.It is built by infrastructure, discipline, engineers, workers, logistics, electricity, education, and state capacity.America’s next ten years are not about competing with China.That phase is already over.America is now competing with India for who can disappoint capital less.China’s real opponent was never America.China’s real opponent is its own execution, its own discipline, its own ability to keep building without believing Western noise.Vance is angry because China rose.But what really humiliates him is this:America tried to stop it.And China rose anyway.

arnaud Bertrad-Honestly, this just shows what a complete idiot Vance is.

The notion that it was a mistake to engage China is wrong on every level - morally, factually, economically, diplomatically and politically - and represents the absolute worst kind of American exceptionalism thinking.

Morally, it's, of course, an utterly disgusting thing to say: it's basically "we should have kept a fifth of humanity poor because their misery was good for us." 

It's sociopathic and depraved: the guy loves to virtue signal around his supposed "Christian values" but he obviously didn't even get to the "love thy neighbor" part of the bible...

Factually, he acts as if the Chinese had zero agency, as if they'd have just said: "Oh, the US wants us to stay poor? Well, okay then, guess we'll just stay poor 🤷" As if a civilization that's been around for 5,000 years was just sitting around waiting for Washington's permission to develop.

Also, he acts as if their development was in fact a consequence of US engagement. If that were the case, why didn't India develop at the same pace, why didn't Indonesia develop, why didn't every single poor country the US engaged with develop?

The dirty truth is that most US leaders - for a long time - have thought along similar lines as Vance: the objective obviously never was for China to rise to a level where they'd become a US peer competitor. But, just like the Trump administration (during either terms) didn't succeed in shaping China to US interests - despite all their efforts - neither could any previous administration. 

The idea that there was some magic policy that would have let America enjoy cheap Chinese labor forever while keeping China permanently subordinate is pure fantasy.

Economically, contrary to popular belief, China's rise actually didn't come at America's expense. For proof just check the evolution of the share of global GDP:

- For China: in 1980, their share of global GDP was 2%, it rose to 17% by 2024

- For the US: in 1980 their share of global GDP was 25.5% and IT ROSE (!) to 26.3% by 2024

In other words, economically speaking, the US lost nothing: not on an absolute basis and not even on a relative basis. On both levels, it actually gained and conserves an absolutely disproportionate - and frankly unfair - share of global economic output: more than a quarter for just 4% of the global population. Complaining about this, as if America were the victim here, is frankly obscene.

Diplomatically, why say this? How does this serve the US in any way whatsoever? Obviously, saying this will antagonize China big time - as it should. But it will also send a message to just about every country out there that wants to develop (that is, basically ALL countries): as far as America is concerned, things are zero-sum, your prosperity is their loss.

This objectively makes US foreign policy harder, as it does the job of every American company trying to sell stuff abroad - hard to sell something to a country when your Vice President just said that it makes him "angry" and it's a failure of policy if his customers do well. 

Lastly, it's also idiotic politically. Sure, I get that America always needs enemies and that scapegoating foreigners is the oldest trick in the book. But there comes a time when it stops being useful and starts being actively harmful - and we're well past that point in the US. 

Because, what is scapegoating's main function? To redirect the blame onto others for things that you yourself can get fixed. And while the US did manage to - overall - maintain its share of the global economic pie, it failed to distribute it fairly at home: the gains were mostly hoarded by a small elite while ordinary Americans saw little benefit, or even lost out with insane healthcare costs or crumbling infrastructure.

You can blame China all you want for this but eventually it comes to bite you in the ass: your people's lives don't get better for it and they'll eventually realize they should stop looking at where the finger is pointing, and start looking at who's doing the pointing.

So, yeah, no matter how you look at it, it's completely unredeemable: morally repulsive, factually illiterate, economically wrong, diplomatically self-defeating, and politically stupid. Almost impressive, in a way.