White House Weighs Limits on U.S. Portfolio Flows Into China
The growing confrontation between the West and China seems to me to boil down to a philosophical problem:- Should free markets/societies/cultural entities allow participation by all actors, even those which (in their own spaces) obviously don't play by the rules of the entered market/society/culture?- Or, should entry into the entity be restricted to those that themselves (in their own space) follow the rules of the entered culture?It seems to me that there are definite advantages and disadvantages to both approaches and it's probably something that game theorists have addressed. To use a convoluted, over-simplified metaphor of a playground:- If we allow kids (that have different rules in their own playground) into our playground, we run the risk of their rules overcoming or having a negative effect on ours. We also enable them to play with us while having "bad" rules on their own playground - some of which might give them an (unfair) advantage over us on our own playground. However, we get the benefits of having more kids and toys to play with. And, maybe the kids will choose our rules (which we perceive as better) over their own.- If we don't allow them into our playground, we have less kids and toys to play with. We also have no real direct influence on them - they can't see that our rules are better in person, and we can't threaten to kick them out of our playground if they aren't in it to begin with. However, we avoid the risk of having their rules overwhelm ours and we worry less about them having unfair advantages over us on our own playground.