The US also believed that giving China an example of "the good way" via access to the US markets would cause them to open up and allow access in kind. Turned out that was a pretty naive belief.
Anyone who was critically thinking saw this coming a long way out.
No one with half a brain thought anything else would happen. Even if China was a liberal democracy, this would still happen.
It was just arrogant and short term thinking.
I read a dozen books on post-Nixon US politics.
The amount of allegations from both sides of US politics that the other benefitted in the personal capacity from trade with China is staggering.
At least some of them must be genuine.
It comes to a very simple explanation that communists have indeed been influencing US politics for decades with very crude means, and that they were successful in that.
This is an embarrassing admission US has to do first before any recovery can be started.
But... but one can't believe into any other explanation as any much credible.
Do hundreds of US political insiders lobby for China in one voice just for nothing?
You don't have closet communists, just a lot of very greedy, amoral, and easy to exploit power holders.
American legal system prohibits jailing people for anything but being caught red handed in cases of political corruption.
I have no idea what you can do about that without doing political persecution, but on other hand if you leave it be it will keep being exploited like hell.
Lol you’ve just described capitalists.
Capitalism vs Communism is a useless debate if the will isn't there to hold the corrupt accountable and ensure that the average citizen is empowered (with said power secured both physically and legally.)
Here's what lead me to come back to HN:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/03/is-china-hacking-rando...
Like, actually impressive.
It has nothing to do with infiltration or influence. It's simply the basic structure of the American political system that, since its very founding (who was able to vote?) oriented the government into the facilitation of profit above all else.
That is actually the realization the US has to do, but it seems somehow even more embarrassing than the conclusion that the US government is infiltrated by commies, for some odd reason.