By: Gregory Treverton – First Published in The Hill

Even by the usual Washington standards, the current debate about China is remarkably caricatured. Indeed, it says more about us than about them, and, sadly, what it says is how much our self-confidence has taken a beating.

Now, every Chinese militarized rock in the South China Sea is a strategic defeat, and every Chinese bad loan to Africa is a debt trap. It is easy to understand why, politically, the Biden administration is tempted to sell what we ought to do in any case — like dramatic increases in government R&D for basic research — as a way to compete with China, shades of President Eisenhower and the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, sold as a Cold War necessity. The risk, though, is that the sales pitch only unleashes the helots who care more about bashing China than building technology. Read More …