China: Hegemonic Threat or Just Another Sputnik?: William Pesek 50th anniversary of Sputnik. Just as U.

S. lawmakers panicked over the Soviet Union s 1957 space launch, they re overstating the effects of China s economic rise.
U.

S. hysteria over China is reaching a fever pitch this year. Impatience is rising fast over what the U.

S. views as predatory trade practices, including an undervalued currency. The U.

S. Treasury seems to have become an all-China-all-the-time operation.
America.

Most people in the U.S. believe the size of China s fast- growing economy will one day equal their own, and they re largely untroubled by the prospect, according to a multination survey by WorldPublicOpinion.

org.
Americans believe China will reach economic parity and, in 12 disagree. It said that in none of the surveyed countries did a majority view China s ascendancy as ``mostly negative.

significance of China catching up with the U.S., overall the world public s response is low key -- almost philosophical, said WPO editor Steven Kull.

China needs to be reined in. Yes, some of the rhetoric reflects the fact that 2008 is an election year. China is a convenient U.

S. wages aren t rising faster. It s akin to the role Japan played in U.

S. politics 20 years ago.
U.

S. may indeed one day be surpassed by China and its 1.3 including Stephen Richter, president of Washington-based online magazine TheGlobalist.

com, sensed an evolving policy of Chinese containment.
During the Cold War, Richter was saying as far back as 2003, missiles at its territory. Now, a containment effort is shaping up toward China.

This time, the weapon of choice is the yuan.
All this is a huge distraction, much like the U.S.

and The fear was that the Soviet Union would become an economic, political and technological hegemon. That chatter, says economist and satirist Ben Stein, was based on faulty assumptions and a good deal of hysteria. The worst, obviously, never happened.

sobriety. ``China is a much bigger problem for Congresspersons than it is for everyday persons, says Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.
it comes with plusses and minuses.

For all the carping about its as China s capital holds down U.S. interest rates and its cheap labor lowers costs on everything from clothes to electronics.

And really, why does would it matter if China rivals the U.S. economy or even surpasses it?

Politicians in Washington won t like vying with China for global dominance, yet the rise of developing nations isn t a zero-sum game. In the long run, the more Chinese living standards increase, the more the global economic pie increases in size, benefiting Americans.
short run.

As economist Robert Samuelson put it in a May 14 to benefit China even if it harms its trading partners. Moreover, he argued, ``on its present course, it threatens to wreck the entire post-World War II trading system.
The operative word here is ``threatens.

In order to knock the global economy off balance the way many fear China will do, Asia s No. 2 economy needs to beat the system, so to speak.
Obviously, there are some razor-sharp minds overseeing China s 11 percent growth.

Yet the combination of untold numbers of bad loans, stock bubbles, poverty, limited transparency and worsening pollution represents an unprecedented balancing act.
ascendant China. Not enough focus is on what might happen if the world s No.

4 economy hits a speed bump or two. All the chatter that a Chinese economy in crisis might not be too big to fail, but too big to save.
crises.

Still, much has to go right for China to catch the U.S., and Main Street.

The China threat might just be Sputnik once more.
(William Pesek is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.