Japan’s recovery from the devastation of World War II was assisted by another war. Japanese manufacturers and the service industries around military bases received a big lift when they helped U.S. forces during the Korean War.

A little over a decade later, South Korea got a similar boost when its manufacturers helped the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.

Both countries also followed a model of state-led industrialization that the United States would probably not have tolerated a generation later during the heyday of stricter trade rules and neoliberal investment regimes. The U.S. need for economically strong non-communist allies in the region, during and after the Korean and Vietnam Wars, also contributed to this tolerance for the “unorthodox” economic strategies of Japan and South Korea.

China is already the world’s second biggest economy. It doesn’t need a boost from the Ukraine war, but it is getting one anyway. Chinese exports to Russia, whose trade with many countries has been reduced by international sanctions, surged by nearly 70 percent in the first 11 months of last year. Chinese combustion-engine cars, which are no longer as popular among Chinese consumers, have now monopolized the Russian market, and China’s factories are benefiting from the cheap energy that Russia has difficulty selling elsewhere.

Meanwhile, China continues to engage in a state-led industrialization in which it chooses to subsidize winners (renewable energy) and withdraw support from losers (combustion-engine cars) in the marketplace.

The Biden administration is not happy with China’s stronger economic relationship with Russia or its economic strategy. The........

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