Ellen Bork reviews Chinese dissident Liu Xioabo’s new book, No Enemies, No Hatred:

But Mr. Liu is not a purist. He urges tolerance and respect, including for those working inside the system. Nevertheless, he distinguishes between tolerance and compromising on principle, warning that “when the ‘rise’ of a large dictatorial state that commands rapidly increasing economic strength meets with no effective deterrence from outside, but only an attitude of appeasement . . . the results will not only be another catastrophe for the Chinese people but likely also a disaster for the spread of liberal democracy in the world.”

Bork works at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative, so it’s not surprising that she would be interested in drawing attention to Liu Xiaobo’s references to appeasement. It may not be the author’s desire to imply that the U.S. and other states should try to contain and block China’s rise, but Bork wants us to think that it is. This is the usual “appeasement leads to disaster” argument, but it doesn’t follow that more accommodating policies will lead to either of these things. It should go without saying that the escalation of tensions between China and the U.S. and its regional allies would not help the prospects of internal Chinese political reform. It would make conditions even harder for Chinese dissidents, especially such overtly pro-American ones such as Liu Xiaobo. What could be more useful for the current Chinese leadership’s hold on power than for the U.S. and its allies to pursue a confrontational policy that Beijing could use to whip up nationalist resentment against the U.S. and China’s neighbors?