Why Pick On China

Gilder's opinion piece went from nebulous to outright flamebait upon reading these back-to-back lines:

It is ironic that liberals who once welcomed appeasement of the monstrous regime of Mao Zedong now become openly bellicose at various murky incidents of Internet hacking.

Nonetheless, with millions of Islamists on its borders and within them, China is nearly as threatened by radical Islam as we are.

His other comments aside, the answer to Gilder's question of "why antagonize China" isn't "to make another enemy." He claims that it's self-destructive for Western nations to pressure the Chinese government on issues such as human rights or pollution, but without such pressure, the results will be much more destructive for the Chinese citizens marginalized by their government.

Allowing the PRC to get away with their "but we're still a developing nation" cop-out every time the pressure is on to do the Right Thing is setting ourselves up for much bigger problems later on. If China wants to work with us, trade with us, and be regarded as a modern nation, it needs some help, yes, and some peer pressure along with it. We're a global community and we have some expectations - ones unsurprisingly not met by the "enemies" listed in Gilder's article.

We are, in fact, attempting to guide China towards a particular path so that it DOESN'T become an enemy later on. That is why we pick on them: it's tough love.