Opinion: U.S. companies should look past politics and focus on selling products in China

China’s crackdown on domestic dissent, paranoia about espionage, persecution of private executives and harassment of foreign businesses have instigated widespread fear, pessimism and deflation.

However, China is not Japan in the 1990s. It has a formidable export machine that is not simply based on a cheap currency, inexpensive labor and subsidies. Otherwise, China’s consumer spending growth would be negative rather than just growing less rapidly owing to a lack of real income, not simple apprehension about the property sector,…