U.S. should address internal vulnerabilities rather than overstate external challenges: report

NEW YORK, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The United States has unilaterally squandered much of its competitive edge and is not bringing its best game to the playing field in the global arena, The National Interest, an American bimonthly conservative international relations magazine, has reported.

"Its economic, technological, and military advantages are at risk; its politics are polarized and dysfunctional; and its social fabric is fraying," said the report authored by Paul Heer, a distinguished fellow at the Center for the National Interest dealing with Chinese and East Asian issues.

"Though the United States seeks to confront these vulnerabilities, heightened awareness of them is driving a preoccupation with the challenge from China, and a tendency to overstate the nature and scope of that challenge," said the article titled "Why Americans Fear China's Rise."

"Washington's assertion (or assumption) that it retains the upper hand in the U.S.-China relationship, to whatever extent it conceals a fear that this may no longer be correct, reflects further resistance to the idea that the United States' global position has weakened," it said.

These circumstances can only push U.S.-China relations further down an adversarial path, said the article, noting that "arresting and reversing this trend will require both Beijing and Washington to retreat to a more realistic and pragmatic posture toward each other."