When an American missile punctured a Chinese spy balloon last week, it was a dramatic symbol of what many have long suspected: the U.S. policy of engagement with China has collapsed as completely as that balloon.  Engagement — the idea that if the U.S. wrapped China in a cocoon with Western economies a more liberal China would emerge — had a hell of a run and scored some big victories over the last half century. China's economic reforms have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and made the country a manufacturing powerhouse whose inexpensive exports helped slash the shopping bills of American consumers. China even worked with the U.S. to oppose the Soviet Union and limit the spread of nuclear weapons, after its fall. But engagement ultimately failed to produce the political change and respect for human rights in China that American politicians and business leaders had all but promised it would. American leaders believed that engagement would weaken the