Some of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nastiest attacks have been directed at China. He has accused it of "raping" the United States with its trade policies, and of creating global warming as a "hoax" to undermine U.S. competitiveness. Why, then, are many Chinese policy advisers and commentators sanguine about future U.S.-China relations?
The reasoning seems to be that Trump is a businessman, and, to paraphrase U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, the business of China is business. China, the thinking goes, can work with a swashbuckling deal-maker like Trump better than with a supposedly "ideological" Hillary Clinton.
Many people would be surprised to see Clinton categorized as an ideologue. And there is scant evidence to support the claim that businesspeople somehow embody pragmatism, given that so many powerful U.S. business leaders are committed ideologues. The Koch brothers, for example, stubbornly cling to impractical and thoroughly debunked libertarian ideas, and numerous Fortune 500 CEOs instinctively side with Republicans, even though the U.S. economy consistently performs better under Democratic administrations. And one should not forget Andrew William Mellon's infamous and reckless advice to President Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Great Depression: "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate."