What is becoming increasingly clear is that America (I'm looking at you, Nixon) really screwed up when we opened our markets to China rather than utilizing Mexico and South America's cheap labor and lifting them out of poverty through trade. They have their flaws and corruptions too, but at least they are generally friendly, share our core values, and are primarily Catholic rather than being an enemy whose god is the State. It would have also mitigated most of the immigration problems and helped to demolish the language barrier.
Big, big mistake, America.
Heck, making India our trade partner instead of China would have been an immensely wiser geopolitical move.
By the time Nixon tried to buddy up to the Chinese, the USSR was already starting to crack under its own weight. A simple strategy to stand up to and outspend the Soviets in an arms race was, as Reagan showed, all that was necessary to topple it--or rather cause it to tumble in on itself. We didn't need to build up China to achieve a balance of power in the region. They were dirt poor back then. We should have left them remain that way until they reformed their politics and treatment of humans. We laid down with rabid dogs and now we are covered in fleas.
Furthermore look at how it has come full circle; many now feel the need to reach out to and build up Putin's Russia as a counterweight to the Chinese (as Bruno Maçães suggests in his book History Has Begun). We fear that those two aligned will dominate Eurasia and ultimately turn us into one of its colonies.
Russia has natural resources but is otherwise a tiny player in all of this; its whole economy is much smaller than Texas's, which, to be fair, aint tiny $1.9 trillion, but Russia's $1.6 trillion pales in comparison to China's $14 trillion. After the Cold War China was always the real threat and we shouldn't have strengthened its hand.