NOT even 20 years have passed since the apparently unstoppable Japanese economic juggernaut struck fear in the hearts of Americans, and now China has emerged to be seen as the new economic menace threatening the nation’s vital strategic interests.
America’s boom in the 1990’s, coupled with Japan’s decline into an economic quagmire through much of the decade, quelled most fears that the Japanese were going to eat our economic lunch.
But now China has set out to snap up everything from Unocal to Maytag, not to mention a steady diet of United States Treasury bonds. And many of the leading voices who worried about Japan in the 1980’s are warning that China presents a much bigger and more complex conundrum.