Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
>
> On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Richard K. Moore wrote:
>
> > Is "national interest" a major determinant of US > China policy - more
> significant than kultur or human rights?
> >
>
> Transnational interests, and internationalism, are the major determinants
> of US-China policy. Transnationals are seeking to integrate China into the
> global economy. This is the material basis for ideological and political
> practices surrounding policy behavior towards China.
This would be a plausible, though debatiable, thing to say about
Japanese policy toward China. For the US, though, I think that
commercial interests pale beside the desire of Christian evangelists to
re-enter the fray.
People with serious business interests in China number in the hundreds,
and even if you add up all the jumbo jets and cell phones exported, it
doesn't pay the cost of operating the Seventh Fleet.
Evangelists and their families, by contrast, number in the hundreds of
thousands, and families with three hundred hears of evangelical
experience in China populate the backbone of America's intellectual and
cultural elites.
These, it seems to me, are a source of influence and power more serious
than the Johnnie-come-latelies of trade and industry.
-dlj.
(Neither a slogan nor an academic quote there, Andrew: it's all
straightforward fact and reasoning...)