From a Reuters report on U.S. economic diplomacy with China:
"China is committed to growth, growth and growth and, in that circumstance, anything that looks like caps on emissions, or whatever, is going to be seen as something boxing them in and as a luxury that they can't afford," said Dan Blumenthal, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Bringing the State Department into the talks was a positive step that the former Bush administration should have taken from the outset, Blumenthal said.
He warned, however, that China and the United States have fallen into an unhealthy economic dependency that will be exceptionally hard to correct.
"It's like two drunks leaning on one another in a bar -- we reinforce one another's worst instincts because we continue to borrow from them and they keep expanding exports and lending money to us to buy them," he said. "It's extremely hard for either to stop."
Browse 15 Years of the Weekly Standard
