SYMPOSIUM: THE ACHIEVEMENT OF AMITAI ETZIONI China: Making a Friend Daniel A. Bell Published online: 9 July 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract The United States and China are the two most powerful countries in current global affairs, and Amitai Etzioni has put forward ideas for improving the relationship between the two powers. In his article, “China: Making an Adversary,” Etzioni argues that “adversarial predispositions” in the United States may be turning China into an adversary. My article draws on Etzioni’ s insights to think further about how China can be made into a friend. Keywords Amitai Etzioni . Friend . Adversary . China . United States . Democracy . Authoritarianism . Political meritocracy Amitai Etzioni is a phenomenon: he writes about one high- quality book a year, publishes about one innovative academic article per month, all the while writing almost weekly com- ments in leading media outlets. His personal output outranks the output of most social science departments: and his rate of production has been increasing over the years, it seems he has not yet peaked. I could have written these words 20 years ago when I first met Etzioni as a fellow at the Center for Communtarian Studies, and yet we are commemorating his 85th birthday! Most important, I think, Etzioni has been consistently advocating humane and realistic ways of looking at the political world, and we’d all be better off by paying more attention to what he says. Etzioni is a public intellectual, and his works are partly driven by the desire to shed light on the key political problems of the day. The United States and China are the two most powerful countries in current global affairs and Etzioni has put forward ideas for improving the relationship between the two powers. He writes from the American perspective, and worries that “adversarial predispositions” in the United States may be turning China into an adversary. In this article, I will draw on insights in Etzioni’ s article “China: Making an Adversary” to think further about how China can be made into a friend. 1 Etzioni argues there are two main approaches to China’ s rising power: those who characterize China as an adversary that should be contained, and “those who hold China is leaning toward a peaceful development and should be en- gaged by the United States” (p. 4). He refers to the former as “adversarians” and to the latter as “engagers,” adding that “one can as a rule discern whether the basic outlook of the various scholars, think tanks, and public leaders who com- ment on China’ s rise fall into the adversarian or engager camp” (p. 5). Focusing mainly on military/geopolitical assess- ments, Etzioni recognizes that there are good arguments on both sides, but at the end of the day he seems to side (without explicitly saying so) with the engagers, if only because “char- acterizing China as an adversary is one factor that can make it into one …. [S]ocial scientists have shown that nations do respond to being defined and treated as an adversary with moves that confirm the initial claims of the adversary-makers, leading to a vicious cycle” (p.4). But Etzioni supports this claim with a reference to a book published in 1962, and adversarians can respond that their approach eventually succeeded in toppling the Soviet Union, so why not do the same with China? And whatever the risk of war with China— a war the US is likely to win—there is no real risk of global nuclear annihilation, unlike the vicious cycle of military com- petition between the US and the USSR. In short, adversarians might welcome a new “cold war” if it speeds up the collapse of China. 1 Amitai Etzioni, Hot Spots: American Foreign Policy in a Post-Human- Rights World (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2012). D. A. Bell (*) Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China e-mail: daniel.a.bell@gmail.com Soc (2014) 51:369–371 DOI 10.1007/s12115-014-9794-x