So much for catching flies with honey

Famous economist and blogger Brad DeLong has long held that getting on China's good side is Job #1 for the U.S. Earlier this year he wrote:

Come 2047 and again in 2071 and in the years after 2075, America is going to need China. There is nothing more dangerous for America's future national security, nothing more destructive to America's future prosperity, than for Chinese schoolchildren to be taught in 2047 and 2071 and in the years after 2075 that America tried to keep the Chinese as poor as possible for as long as possible.

I have long argued that this is nonsense. Helping China - or any rising power - will rarely cause that rising power to develop a permanent stock of goodwill toward the one who helped it. Britain helped Japan modernize its economy and navy in the late 1800s and early 1900s, going so far as to manufacture the battleships that Japan used to defeat Russia's fleet in 1905. Forty years later, Japan was conquering the British colonies in Southeast Asia. Goodwill, in other words, is ephemeral.

Now there's evidence to back me up. In the past two decades, th U.S. massively invested in China, made China our "most favored nation" in trade deals, facilitated China's entry into the WTO, etc. Now we find that 34% of Chinese people view the U.S. as an enemy, compared with only 13% who view us as a partner.

So much for the goodwill theory.