Readers of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass will remember the White Queen’s pride in teaching herself to believe six impossible things before breakfast. In This Brave New World, Anja Manuel, former State Department official and now partner in RiceHadleyGates LLC (more on that later), struggles to get her readers to do the same. Her six impossible propositions concern China, the country that occupies the bulk of her discussion of why “a prosperous, confident China and India are good for the United States.” In India’s case, she’s certainly right. In China’s, Manuel’s main thesis — that “it is preferable to have China and other rising powers inside a larger tent, even if they often disagree, rather than on the outside creating an alternative order that Washington cannot influence” — requires ignoring certain key features about today’s China, not to mention geopolitical reality.
Unfortunately, that’s an occupational hazard in Washington when it comes to China. Advocates of appeasement of China thickly populate the major think tanks and top lobbying firms, not to mention certain key offices at State and even in the Pentagon. Manuel’s book gives us a close look at how they rationalize away the truth about China and its geopolitical ambitions.
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