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However, it can be argued that the inclusion of China into the architecture of the global economy (through bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). and investment by global corporations in China) will lessen the chances of conflict (through bodies declares that China’s rulers “want to do business, and their highest priorities, by far, are economic their adhesion to the World Trade Organization is the surest indication that the want to be integrated into a capitalist world economy 20 From this perspective, it could he argued that a China included into the space of “globalization” will present less danger than non-state actors, such as deterritorialized and flexible terrorist networks. Although the Realist could point out that such a line of argument is exactly what an intellectual such as Mearsheimer is trying to protect us from as the sense of fear that people feel after 9/I I—with its violent immediacy and visceral power—may lead politicians to focus on sources of insecurity that are really not that dangerous for the long term security of the state. A terrorist network could not have access to the type of weapons of mass destruction that China has access to states—by definition of their military capability—are still the main agents of destruction on the geopolitical scene. Of course the Realist may argue that China plays by the rules of the capitalist system because they are means to an end—but what happens when it becomes a peer competitor. From the Offensive Realist perspective, this is the underworld to the “optimistic” vision of liberal theorists who argue that enlargement of the spaces of economy and democracy will lead to order and progress in international affairs.

Fear of China is not unique to Mearsheimer’s work on Offensive Realism and it is a discourse of danger that circulates in many areas where the future of security and the global economy are debated, This fear of China in the contemporary political imaginary of Europe and the United States appears to stem from an awareness by the “developed” of the power of capitalism and technology to unleash huge changes in society (creating a condition of “everlasting uncertainty.” as Marx and Engels put it). It stems from the view that in Europe and the United States there are moral limits imposed on the market civilization of liberal democracy (although these moral limits may become flexible outside of the “core”). As Max Weber put it the “inner attitude of the adventurer that laughs at all ethical limitation is universal”2’ the fear of China emerges from the sense that a capitalist China competing in a global economy will unleash the power of the market without an sense of ethical limitation. In this sense, commentators from both Left and Right fear a territory where 1.3 billion individuals are willing to work for low pay as in a zone where “even thing is permitted” The Economist comments that China has an “inexhaustible supply of workers, willing to work long hours for pitifully low pay.” In November 2002 Wired, a magazine that celebrates—some would say fetishizes—the vision of an information age driven by free markets and a borderless economy, published an article on “The I lot zone” “An untamed technology boom is sweeping through China’s Pearl River Delta, where cheap labor, mass production, police thugs and get-rich-quick dreams rule. It’s a terrible, Horrible, lawless frontier. And it works.” The fear of China is combined with a perverse fascination—and maybe even admiration—for the ‘unrefined” market free from liberal concerns and maybe this is what scares Mearsheimer: a population that does not hold the “deep-seated” optimism and liberalism of the United States. This fear of “unrefined” capitalism is what lies at the core of these views of China, a fear that “unthinking hordes.” used only to totalitarian governance, will threaten the decadent tame zones of liberal democracy. A similar fear drove the imaginary of the Cold War, articulated through Holly wood fantasies of immoral scientists and unthinking robot armies or zombies attacking the free communities of 1950s America.