[jwm]

equipping China with the skilled professionals it needs to produce the weapons of war to threaten the free world.

Do you think they really need technology? They have a population of plus one billion, and the strongest industrial capacity in the world plus just enough oil reserves. If they wanted to go to war, they could already very well do so as is and cause a really big bloody mess.

Look at Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan. All of us mistakenly believed the US's "superior technology" would make those missions a cakewalk. Technology doesn't win wars. People do. People we can reach.

And its not Germany vs France at the opening of WWII anymore. China already have machine guns, tanks and nukes (the horror if either "side" ever used one in anger). Diplomacy through cultural exchange is the best option we've got to prevent a cold war style escalation - and luckily the openness of both our cultures is the end goal we want to achieve anyway, right?

(apologies to all for the walls of text!)