Monday's Wall Street Journal had an opinion piece by the director of the White House National Trade Council, Peter Navarro. His essay included an indirect reference to Butler County. It was less than flattering but it's nonetheless important to acknowledge because it demonstrates how fragile the world has become in modern times.

Navarro writes about China's unprecedented race to the top in trade, technology, investment and productivity.

How are they doing it? By not following or respecting the traditional rules, Navarro suggests.

“Why is the textbook model failing? The answer is that China's faux comparative advantage is the result of its state-directed investments, nonmarket economy and disregard for the rule of law.”

Since it entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 — it's mere coincidence, of course, that the World Trade Center Towers fell that same year — Chinese-controlled investment interests routinely shop technology-rich manufacturing markets such as the Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin — even the Pittsburgh area — in search of assets to plunder. Navarro spells out how three of the world's 10 largest sovereign wealth funds are controlled by the Beijing government.

But it doesn't stop there — and here is Navarro's Butler County connection.

Navarro writes that in 2006, China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. signed an $8 billion joint venture that resulted in the transfer by Westinghouse of more than 75,000 construction and technical documents on its signature AP1000 nuclear reactor. “Meanwhile, Chinese cyber operatives allegedly were illegally penetrating Westinghouse's Pennsylvania (Cranberry Township) computers and information systems to acquire technical documents from its extensive R & D efforts.

Nuclear technology definitely gives China grievous capabilities. But more specific to Butler County, the transaction gave China an unfair advantage over a local employer, Navarro alleges, because China helped itself to trade secrets that it wasn't entitled to.

“By 2015 China had broken ground on a plant to construct its cloned Westinghouse reactor, the CAP 1400,” Navarro writes. “Today, as Westinghouse has struggled to stay out of bankruptcy, China is constructing reactors in Pakistan and Romania, is scheduled to build them in Argentina, Britain and Iran, and is bidding on projects in Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.”

To be clear, while the United States welcomes the investment of foreign capital, China has perverted the investing process. In the process, it is literally stealing business and jobs from a Butler County employer.

“The biggest threat China's faux comparative advantage poses is to the global trading system itself,” Navarro concludes. We agree. When one trade partner rigs the system, ignoring rules and conventions, to reap nearly all the benefits, it jeopardizes the trade partnership.

—TAH