Great powers seem to need foreign demons. For the US, the Soviet Union and Japan fitted that role for much of the second half of the last century. Now it is China's turn. The paroxysms of anxiety unleashed by the bid by China National Offshore Oil Corporation for Unocal seem oblivious to reason or facts.
America's China-bashers claim a CNOOC takeover would imperil US security. Yet Unocal is a second-tier oil and gas company, most of whose production is in Asia and under long-term contract to customers there. CNOOC has said it will operate Unocal's US business at arm's length and sell it, if Washington so requires. Even if the US bought Unocal's Asian oil, it lacks enough west coast refineries to process it. So much for scare stories about China meeting its energy needs by filching US supplies.
Critics also complain it is unfair that China can bid for US companies, when the latter cannot acquire Chinese state-owned enterprises. Yet Beijing is desperate to sell the two thirds of the equity the state still owns in China's 1,377 listed companies, in an effort to speed stock market reform. US investors are spoilt for choice. Most, knowing the quality of most SOEs, are wisely keeping their distance.
A third argument is a little more sophisticated but just as muddled. It is that since Bill Clinton decided in 1994 to engage China economically by abandoning the ineffectual US policy of linking trade with human rights, Beijing has failed to change its authoritarian regime. Therefore, it is said, the US should revert to a hardline stance.
A recent e-mail from Professor Peter Morici of Maryland University business school exemplifies this line of reasoning. It says "a well-armed, authoritarian China, bent on subverting global institutions that support democracy and free market values" could easily become "a fascist menace with global reach". The proposed solution: stop "appeasing" China and hit it with trade sanctions until it mends its ways.
It is depressing to think that future US managers are being weaned on this tosh. It is not even historically accurate. Mr Clinton's volte-face, and the US decision in 2000 to guarantee permanent market access for Chinese exports, were prompted mainly by heavy lobbying by US companies anxious to expand in China. Achieving political change there was, at best, a secondary objective.
While China's regime is clearly authoritarian, so is Saudi Arabia's. The latter is governed by a repressive feudal monarchy with an appalling human rights record. It is linked to the export of terrorism. It is so far from being a free market economy that it has still not qualified to join the World Trade Organisation. Yet Washington not only tolerates Saudi leaders, it cossets them.
The US needs to keep the Saudi regime sweet because of its oil. But to assume, as American China-bashers implicitly do, that the US does not need China and can bend it to its own will is self-delusion. The two countries are deeply interdependent. China's need for US exports and inward investment is mirrored by its importance as a prime source of funding for the US budget and current account deficits. To rage about China's designs on a medium-sized energy company, while relying on it to pay for the upkeep of federal government - including its defence programmes - verges on the surreal.
Penalising China's exports and investments would hurt both China and the US. But as Washington's paymaster, with almost $700bn in foreign exchange reserves and big holdings of Treasury bills, Beijing could inflict far greater damage on the US economy by dumping the lot. It is unlikely to do so because, unlike its American critics, apparently, it knows that cutting off one's nose to spite one's face is senseless.
In truth, the furore over Unocal is not about US national security. It is a symptom of national insecurity. If America wants to be more secure, it should open the door to Chinese investment, not slam it shut. The greater China's involvement in the US economy, the bigger its stake in its success and the more powerful its incentive to avoid bilateral frictions - political as well as economic. Money talks, in more ways than one.