The Chinese are not a race of automata and there may be a time limit beyond which their government will not be able to defy the laws of Marxism The old boy had a point There is a relationship between economics and politics. The Chinese population has great incentives to remain peaceful. It is not so long ago that around one hundred million Chinese were eating grass in order to stave off starvation, while tens of millions did die. It should be easy for China and Taiwan to grow together so that the ultimate negotiations merely ratified what had already occurred.Yet no one can predict the development of Chinese politics over the next few decades. At present, it seems as if China might succeed in a peaceable evolution from authoritarian communism to authoritarian capitalism. The economic, cultural and educational links between Taiwan and the mainland are constantly increasing, reinforced by a common ethnicity.

In those circumstances, the US would gladly pay for the festivities. But rape would be another matter.If the Chinese government remained rational, rape would be out of the question. Capital markets, raw materials, trading patterns, domestic demand, railway systems: everything pointed to growing interdependence, and growing prosperity. Then the armies marched.It is in no one’s interests for the US and China to clash over Taiwan.

Apart from a few Cold War nostalgics, most Americans would be content if the Chinese were to woo, seduce and marry the island. Without either nation planning it, the two are now locked in economic symbiosis. Rarely if ever before has there been such a vital economic relationship between nations with such different political systems.That said, anyone who believes that economics prevents war should read Keynes on Central Europe just before the Great War. It accounts for the tone of pessimism in the midst of plenitude which is often detectable below the rhetorical surface, as long as it is not Don Rumsfeld who is talking.The Americans also have to worry about China, over Taiwan Sino-American conflict would seem impossible. That thought has sunk more deeply into the American official psyche than many European policy-makers realise.