All the amazing gain and growth given to us by the free market worths nothing if it fuels oppression, if it raises barriers to entry to markets, if it pushes the whole economy toward monopolies and monopsonies, toward fragile centralization, and toward worse lives for the participants.
And no, it should be more cultural, not less. There are clever and efficient policy tools to manage healthy free markets. Allowing China, the US or anyone to make people forget/ignore these cultural foundations and all the achievements of good policy (as in political cooperation and economic competition; from the forming of the US itself from the individual original states to the contemporary EEA integration such as traditional/geographical origin protection and indication, Schengen border control union, emission quotas, common food and drug inspection standardization, etc.), just because some country is strong would be a folly of the greatest magnitude.
- China require companies to transfer all intellectual property to a venture owned 51% by Chinese before getting access to market
- people running joint ventures like clockwork open competing companies cutting western partners out
- China is a developed country that declare themselves as developing to skirt economic and environmental controls
- China has state owned companies that compete with western companies that they regularly subsidize to beat competition
Also on a softer end China is trying to spread its way of ruling their people to the west [2]. How long do you think you’d last under such a system before being “re-educated” like the Muslim Uighur or Confucian Falun Gong?
[1] https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2018-USTR-Report-to-Con... [2] Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1641770546/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Da...
You're asking me to give up QoL/future income/whatever based on what? Their threat of violence? That's ridiculous, threaten them back and follow up on it if necessary.
The issue here is much less cultural that you might think.
China has been weak in the past couple of centuries and was thus on the receiving end. But as they grow stronger the rules will have to change to take them and their interests into account.
This obviously does not mean that we should cave in to everything. It means that they should have an equal say in the rules.
At the moment it's the US fighting China more than the West as a whole. It makes sense because it's US dominance that is under threat. The question is whether the US want to fight a losing battle or work constructively for the long term.