For years, China has been engaging in a pattern of misbehavior that is integral to its aggressive, mercantilist strategy for becoming an economic superpower, write Robert Atkinson and Stephen Ezell in The Hill. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way. When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, experts hailed it as a sign that China would embrace market-based economic principles and commit to the core tenets guiding liberalized trade and globalization. The United States cannot wait for China’s ruling officials to wake up to the error of their ways, however. Now it is time for a new policy of constructive confrontation that puts less emphasis on legalistic engagement and more on achieving tangible results.
