Washington falling into a trap of its own making

Editor's note: Some US politicians have been clamoring that China has stolen US technologies, and aims to be the global space leader. Zhong Sheng, a columnist of People's Daily, comments:

All of a sudden, the United States seems on the verge of collapse because of China's rise. It is often through people's own stupidity that they threw themselves into unrecoverable disasters in history. That is exactly what those US politicians are doing, as their minds still linger in the Cold War era in the 21st century.

The US decision-making circle is inflicted with a zero-sum mentality. It seems they believe that by increasing tariffs on imports from other countries they can eliminate the US trade deficits; that other countries' breakthroughs in science and technology are because of the US having its know-how stolen; other countries' making new friends at the cost of the US losing its old friends and the rise of some countries will necessarily lead to the fall of other countries, including the US.