The Western World’s attempt to bring China into the world of Democratic nations using economic incentives has failed. The laissez-faire approach favored by the West has revealed China and its leadership do not intend to allow their country to enter the modern era of personal freedom. Although China has embraced modern economics and the advance of technology this has not led to the adoption of a modern political and human-rights ideology. If anything China’s rejection of individual human rights has grown even more abusive as it suppressed information about the coronavirus, places over one million Muslim, Uighurs, in thinly disguised concentration camps, and adopts a computer-driven social rating and internal spy system that persecutes its own citizens restricting everything from the individual right of travel to job prospects and what consumer products the unworthy can buy. As China oppresses its own people, it has attacked Taiwan’s free and open elections and exerted unprecedented control over international and multinational entities bringing organizations ranging from the NBA, Uber, and even a worldwide technological behemoth like Google, to heel.

If the United States stays the course, and, what used to be known as the free world, can put aside its petty political machinations, then the Chinese goal of world economic, military and political dominance can be stopped. The United States is challenging China for the first time since Richard Nixon opened the door to Chinese economic expansion in the seventies. This challenge has shown us that China is a paper tiger and it will never have a greater effect on the world than it does now if we stay the course. Had the political opposition been less vicious and unrelenting and if U.S. leaders can unify on foreign policy and trade, as it has in the past, then the West would be in an even better position to control Xi Jinping’s attempt to assert Chinese hegemony then it is now.

China’s largest natural resource is its labor force. However, the growing wage demands of Chinese labor have made it uncompetitive with other low-cost manufacturing nations. In an attempt to alleviate this burden, some Chinese companies have even resorted to conscripting foreign, slave labor. Economically, absent its huge low-cost labor force, it has insufficient resources or intellectual capital to keep its industry afloat. Most notably, its petrochemical reserves provide less than 40 percent of its total oil and gas needs, and without its ability to plunder the intellectual property of businesses and countries who use its factories it would be technologically moribund. Allegations that the Chinese government modified computer motherboards to include spying hardware is also driving large industry and governments away from using products with hardware origins in China, which hurts the high-end technical aspect of China’s industry. United States’ tariffs and now the coronavirus is also beginning to reduce interest in investment in China. Investors and manufacturers are moving their production to avoid future trade wars and resultant supply chain issues.

China’s military strength is also overblown. Overly regimented and isolated, it has substandard land and air forces and little strategic naval power or a naval tradition on which to build one. Certainly not a nation any country would want to invade, the narrow trade routes leading to Chinese ports mean U.S. naval forces could blockade and stop Chinese aggression by sea and it is unlikely, even with its obsolete and underfunded forces, Russia would be unable to stop Chinese aggression to the west. Oil, the lifeblood of its economy, could be stopped far from the Chinese coast and naval exit pathways out of China must pass by major United States’ military installations throughout the Pacific. Absent an unexpected surprise, or a nuclear attack, in the event of war it is unlikely any Chinese shipping would get into or out of the East and South China Seas. Leaving its only supply routes overland through Russia, India or Central Asia which would require years of infrastructure build-up in the west and other than Russia, which might see an opportunity to hurt the United States none of these countries have any great interest in helping China.

In the end, we can continue to politically oppose U.S. policies aimed at reining in Chinese economic and humanitarian abuses or we can set aside our political differences and support a unified foreign policy.

The future of the free world awaits our decision.

Arthur Machado is the Cincinnati Regional Vice President for a business analysis firm.

Image: Reuters