The Post has a useful reminder today that the danger of China burying us — in clean energy or output of engineers or whatever — is not as grave as it is made out to be. I especially liked the scary statistic that China is turning out almost ten times as many engineers per year as we are: “Just one problem: China’s statisticians count car mechanics and refrigerator repairmen as ‘engineers.’”

I also wasn’t surprised that the worst Republican senator is channeling Thomas Friedman in his admiration of the ChiComs: “Arguing for nuclear power, as well as renewable energy sources and cleaner ways to use coal, Graham said: ‘The Chinese don’t need 60 votes. I guess they just need one guy’s vote over there — and that guy’s voted. . . . And we’re stuck in neutral here.’” So I guess Beijing makes the reactors run on time.

But I did have one question for the authors covering China for the Post, about this sentence: “When we reported from China in the 1990s, some Chinese neoconservatives achieved rock-star popularity there for promoting the notion that the United States was conspiring to contain China, militarily and economically.”

What the heck is a “Chinese neoconservative”?