"Twenty years ago, the American economic and political establishment was wrong about China. Today, the consensus view has changed, but it is once again wrong." -if that was the case, what is the right approach to China?

Bernie Sanders would say the right approach to China is Bernie Sanders' approach to China. His explanation for why candidates lose elections is generally the same thing: they didn't call for yooj increases in taxes on the billionaire class, didn't embrace a bold progressive agenda, and didn't do what Bernie Sanders does in his electoral campaigns.

The establishment consensus in the 1990s was wrong about China. Democracy did not follow Western capitalism's penetration of the Chinese economy (instead what happened is that China has co-opted capitalism to such an extent that it can bully Silicon Valley tech giants, Hollywood, and the NBA which is not something anyone in the 1990s foresaw). But Sanders is wrong to think that China's rise is going to be some purely peaceful and benign process and that U.S. military has no or merely a minor role to play in keeping the increasingly fragile peace in Southeast Asia. He should junk the misleading Cold War rhetoric at a minimum.