Well, one conservative view, anyway. There is no doubt a wide variation in views. But here's National Review deputy managing editor Kevin Williamson (taking a view that seems similar to economist Don Boudreaux's):
It is undeniable that Beijing plays games with China’s currency in order to bolster exports. To put it bluntly, China keeps its people artificially poor, their wages artificially low, and their savings diminished in value, in order to increase the profits flowing into the state enterprises run by Beijing’s power elite, a good deal of the returns being captured by the thriving entrepreneurs who make up the officers’ corps of the People’s Liberation Army. ...
...
... the Obama administration’s populist fist-shaking notwithstanding, China’s economic policy is not what ails America — any more than Japan’s economic policy was what ailed America during the Carter years, that awful interlude during which Honda and Toyota viciously conspired to dump affordable, reliable, fuel-efficient automobiles on unsuspecting Americans who really wanted to buy an AMC Gremlin but were duped into an upgrade by those inscrutable Orientals and their long-game industrial policies. China’s economic policy is what ails China. ...
In a nutshell, he says that a policy of currency manipulation is bad for China, but of very little relevance for America. And changing that policy wouldn't do much to help America:
So what should the United States “do” about China? Nothing. Nada. Sit on our national hands. Economists who have looked at the renminbi situation conclude that the currency is indeed undervalued, but that it could climb as much as 6 percent with basically no effect on the U.S.-China trade relationship. Even if the renminbi were allowed to climb the full 20 or 30 percent by which the most fearful China hawks believe it to be undervalued, it is extraordinarily unlikely that this would have the effect of causing manufacturing employment to shift from China to the United States. If that $5 plastic toy at Wal-Mart goes up to $6, is that suddenly going to make California, Ohio, or New Jersey more attractive to low-end manufacturers than China, India, or Bangladesh? Doubtful. In all likelihood, the result would simply be that the United States would pay more for its imports than it does today — meaning that our trade deficit would get worse, not better. Paying more money for the same amount of stuff would not make us any richer, nor would replacing Chinese imports with imports from Vietnam, Mexico, or Honduras.
There were some other interesting tidbits in the article. China imports quite a lot:
... Like any poor country that cares at all about feeding its people, China is hugely dependent upon imports, both for sophisticated goods from the West and for food, energy, and basic commodities. According to World Bank figures, China’s imports in 2005 were 32 percent of GDP; America’s imports were exactly half that: 16 percent of GDP. Our politicians are befouling their Underoos over the cheap foreign goods allegedly inundating U.S. markets, but China imports considerably more than we do. As China’s economy has grown, imports have declined a bit as a percentage of GDP, but not that much: In 2008, imports were still 27 percent of China’s GDP, a much larger share than in the United States. After the financial crisis, China’s imports dropped sharply, to 21 percent: One of the upsides to the Chinese police state that American progressives so admire is that it can shut its people off from goods and services, lowering their standard of living to achieve its immediate policy goals.
True, China remains the world’s largest exporter. It is also the world’s second-largest importer. It runs substantial trade deficits with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and Malaysia — five of its ten biggest trading partners. It has smaller trade surpluses with Germany, Russia, and Singapore. ...
And China is following the Japanese model, but only up to a point:
How Japan went wrong is a big and complicated and contested story, and it is really beside the point: What most matters right now is what Beijing thinks happened to Japan. In the Chinese version, the United States forced Japan to allow the yen to appreciate, with Washington orchestrating the Japanese catastrophe with malice aforethought. So when Barack Obama comes around saying, in effect, “Pump up that renminbi — or else!” the guys in Beijing are pretty sure they’ve heard that story before, and they do not plan to be played for chumps the way they think the Japanese were. They drive tanks over people who don’t see the world the way they do, and they are not going to be bullied by Professor Obama.
