It is of course ridiculous to imagine that China wants conflict with the US
We've been in conflict with China for 35 years, it's called a trade war. What we have today under the name "free trade" isn't free trade at all. It's free coming into the U.S. because our market is about 98% open to the world, but in the other direction, it's not. It's mostly merchantilism: gaming the system. Foreign governments understand, as ours does not, that international trade is an arena of national rivalry, and they play the game in their own national interests. Our government is hostage to an outdated 19th-century economic theory of global harmony, and on this basis conducts our trade relations with blissful naivet??.
