Trade ban and sanctions in the early 2000s when it should have become clear their ambition and dirty tactics would put us on a collision course. Instead, we were blinded by the cheap cost and outsourced everything there. To a country that doesn't respect IP, or even basic human rights, and, on top of that, is now ready and able to export their world vision and order.

Now it's a bit too late to stop them. NATO/West id too preoccupied by Russia when, imo, China is the bigger threat, by far.

Sorry, but we did this to ourselves. We moved our manufacturing capability to China in a hundred thousand tiny transactions and a couple of smaller ones for better quarterly earnings, the kind of stuff that Wall Street drools over.

Early 2000’s?

Here’s Joe Biden in 2011 fawning over King Xi and calling for a rising China.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CQaBdlu4rL4

Nixon, really

I think the person you're replying to meant that China should not have been allowed to join the World Trade Organisation without further requirements.

Or stay in it when it became clearly asymmetric.

I think the hopes were that China would benefit from trade and developed its own industries in a largely decentralized fashion (which happened). What didn’t follow was the assumption that this would cause them to become less authoritarian and more democratic.

Quite the gamble in the end; I don’t think those responsible over many decades realized what the consequences would be for getting this wrong. They all were championed by equally blind stock-market driven CEOs who wanted cheap labor, low/no environmental laws, no unions, a helpful and competent government, and new large markets who didn’t already have lots of stuff.

The US has gotten terrible at long term vision, while China has nothing but long term vision and long term memory.

The UN was also giving them subsidized shipping rates via the UPU. And as they exploited the subsidies in increasingly-vast numbers, domestic shipping had rates to be increased yet more to compensate. It was cheaper to ship from China than domestically in the US. Basically a tarriff on domestic goods. What do you expect businesses to do? Even if manfacturing wasn't cheaper, it would still be cheaper overall to manufacture there.

Trump finally withdrew from the UPU in 2018 and ended the subsidies.

Trade deals, foreign investment, joint ventures, etc.

China got powerful by doing business with the rest of the world.