OK, be patient with me on this one. It’ll take a minute for this argument to develop. First, a new report on genetically modified food:

Chinese food and agricultural experts said no evidence has proved genetically-modified crops are unsafe for people and the environment.

Huang Dafang, director of Biotechnology Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said Friday that the genetically-modified crops are of great significance to the sustainable development of agriculture and China’s competitiveness in global arena.

“It could help increase the output to ease the food supply strain caused by the shrinking of farmland,” Huang said.

China has been interested in GM crops for a long time from a food security standpoint. At the rate that arable farmland is being parceled off to developers at rock bottom prices to build much needed {cough, cough, bullshit, cough} shopping malls. luxury condos, cement factories and hotels, someone better start figuring out a way to grow wheat off of concrete.

The U.S. has been in the GM food biz for decades. The big trade obstacle has been the EU, which has insisted that the WTO allows them to block “frankenfood” when it fails to meet reasonable hygiene/safety standards. The science behind all of this is highly debatable of course. This has led to some very entertaining WTO case law, giving students countless hours of fun trying to unravel the logic of rulings from panels and appellate decisions — such fond memories.

The U.S. would love to export GM food to the EU. China is looking to move into GM food in a big way. You can be sure that if they get really good at it (i.e. develop some valuable patents) in the future, they will want to export as well. And why not? Doesn’t everyone secretly want to eat frankentofu and steamed genetically-modified-pork buns?

So here’s the idea. GM food presents common ground for the U.S. and China, and it also comes with a common enemy, the EU. What more do you need?

I can see it now: joint US-China conferences on the benefits of GM food (sponsored by Monsanto and ADM, natch), renewed calls for the intractable Europeans to recognize the “good science” that says GM food is safe, dueling Op/Eds in People’s Daily and the New York Times about how GM food is a marvel of modern science destined to feed the world’s hungry.

It’ll be beautiful, man. The yellow man and the pasty white man will once again sit together at a metaphorical campfire and sing Kumbaya. I’m choking up just thinking about the brotherhood and all that crap.

Look, China and the US have some sizable disagreements on some very important global issues at the moment.

Solidarity and amicable relations are important. A “trust building” issue needs to be found, and quickly. For better relations, the GM food issue is tailor made (well, poor choice of words there at the end, but you get my point).

As usual, Washington Post columnist George Will strings together a bunch of statistics in his latest column, hoping that no one will notice that he fails to connect the dots. It’s like a cryptographic puzzle — take these 47 numbers and try to figure out what their relationship is to one another. Gives me a headache every time.

In the latest edition, which is ostensibly a diatribe against the U.S. government’s budget (a productive discussion during a recession, huh?), Will stumbles upon the facts that: Americans are living longer, and health care for old people costs more.

Pardon my language, but what a fucking genius.

So the U.S. will be spending a lot on health care in the future. What does this have to do with China? Will quotes economist Robert Fogel’s recent article in Foreign Policy:

It carries the headline “$123,000,000,000,000.” Fogel’s subheadline is: “China’s estimated economy by the year 2040. Be warned.”

Why should we be warned? Oh right, I forgot. Zero sum game, and all that. George Will is firmly stuck in Cold War land, so any rise by China must mean something terrifying for the U.S. Got it. Let’s move on.

He expects that by 2040 China’s GDP will be $123 trillion, or three times the entire world’s economic output in 2000. He says China’s per capita income will be more than double what is forecast for the European Union. China’s 40 percent share of global GDP will be almost triple that of the United States’ 14 percent.

I haven’t checked any projections by sane sources (i.e. economists not affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute or an investment bank) lately, but don’t those forecasts smell a little bullshitty to you? It’s either that or my cat (sitting two feet away from me at the moment) is having tummy problems again and polluting the air.

Fogel finds many reasons for this, including the increased productivity of the 700 million (55 percent) rural Chinese. But he especially stresses “the enormous investment China is making in education.”

Yes, China is spending a lot of money on education. It still has a lot of ground to make up and is a long way from having schools that can turn kids into creative thinkers, but the government is trying. All that being said, I somehow don’t think that Fogel, or Will, understand the challenges facing China over the next few decades.

Using China’s education spending to argue for a decrease in U.S. spending is, however, a bit illogical, even for a retard like George Will (oops! We’re not supposed to use that word anymore). If the U.S. government did things his way, they would cut Medicare and Social Security and move towards a balanced budget. You would assume that this would free up money to spend on education, which the U.S. apparently needs to do more of to keep up with those clever Chinese.

But you’d be wrong. George Will would never advocate an increase in federal spending on education. Talking about China’s investment in this area was entirely disingenous as he doesn’t support the same thing in the U.S.

No, he just wants to use the spectre of a rising China to frighten people into cutting social services, his longstanding policy position.

Good job, George. If you had only thrown in a few more irrelevant statistics, maybe I would have been so sleepy that I would have ignored your blather entirely.

Everyone is in a tizzy over the supposed downturn in U.S.-China relations. (See here, here, and here.) The rhetoric is heating up on both sides, and new issues of contention appear to pop up daily.

[ . . . ]

Frankly, the potential for a full-blown deterioration in relations between our two countries has been grossly overblown. There is nothing new here. We are merely witnessing the reality of the U.S.-China relationship, which is marked by almost no trust, a weak foundation of real cooperation, and a lack of shared values and commitment to true compromise.

[ . . . ]

The only “new” issue on the table is the Chinese cyberhacking of Google, a number of major American companies and think tanks, and Chinese dissidents…and even that is probably not all that new. We just didn’t know about it.

Read the article in full at the CFR site.

For me, I’m not so much worried about the bilateral tension. I’m pissed off at the stupid rhetoric itself making things worse. I totally agree that everyone is getting into a tizzy (haven’t heard that word used in a while, but it fits) over very “normal” points of bilateral contention. Even the “new” stuff, the Google dispute, is not so much new as newly discovered.

None of these issues freaks me out, but there have been quite a few stupid moves on both sides to comment on - the Taiwan weapons sale is just one example. These are not so much evidence of a catastrophic downturn in bilateral relations, but they are a signal that the two sides are not moving closer together.

I would also caution calm. If nothing else, when folks panic, they tend to make even more irresponsible and inflammatory statements about the other side. Stopping a downward spiral into IR oblivion sounds like a good idea.