Hu Cares?

For all the pomp and state-dinner circumstance, Hu Jintao's visit to Washington generated little actual news. The Chinese "paramount leader" agreed to buy a few airplanes, agreed to talk a bit about human rights (with Chinese characteristics), and got some good press back home. All that our China hands could say was that the trip was a welcome punctuation to the declining relations of the past year.

That the visit was a nonevent is just as well, for the United States could use a little quiet time to rethink its basic approach to China's rise. The post-Cold War policy of "engagement" has run out of steam. China's mercantilist trade and financial practices prevent even economic engagement from fulfilling its open-markets promise. Nor has engagement made for a more open Chinese politics. Beijing remains repressive. China's expanding middle class is more often aggressively nationalistic than globally cosmopolitan.

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