I don't think there was much rational reason for the war in Iraq, for example, as the US government ended up spending hundreds of billions more dollars than oil companies and American contractors were able to take in afterwards. There was no profit to be made, the removal of Hussein merely created a power vacuum that replaced him with ISIS, which is by almost every definition far worse, and the war was incredibly unpopular and sunk the careers of MANY otherwise popular figures. And even if you thought Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction", it was nowhere close to becoming a threat to the US halfway across the world.
Similarly, I can name many political phenomena in China itself that was pushed by the leadership and actively harmed the development and prosperity of the country, like the Cultural Revolution.
While it is important to keep an eye on each state's interests, you should not *always* expect each state to act rationally. I don't think Trump's a perfectly rational actor - his policies on China seem very self-destructive to me. I don't think China's a perfectly rational actor - their goal has always seemed to me to maintain their economic growth and allow their burgeoning middle class to expand no matter what the cost.
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I don't think US charitably pulled China out of its poverty. I think pre-Deng China was crushing the latent enterprise/industry of its people, and Deng merely released the world's largest population of education-obsessed, industrious people willing to work for low pay for incredibly long hours under incredibly hard conditions. If there's a defining trait of the people of China, it's their capacity for enduring hardship without initiating violent revolutions or rebellions.
I don't think they did so, either, but I do think that they contributed HEAVILY to China's rise out of poverty by offering a mature market with high demand for China's quickly growing manufacturing industry to produce for. Their rapid modernization and growing wealth would not have been possible without the markets in the United States to sell to. Now that China's finally entering a more mature phase of their economy, with skyrocketing demand and a wealthier middle class, they've shown a significant appetite for American goods, in everything from music and TV shows (media) to brand name designer goods and electronics. To threaten diplomatic ties with this country at this time is, in my opinion, the worst decision you could make.