Because allowing countries to maximize their comparative advantages is great for economic growth. It doesn’t make sense for every nation on earth to have their own copy of every industrial sector. We don’t need all nations to manufacture their own jet engines, oil tankers, t-shirts, and Tylenol. Trade is good.
The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new. Half of century of economic policy can’t be reversed in 5 years.
Great for who's economic growth? As in, when staring at the graph of GDP vs wages plotted over the last 50 years, that big-ass pie slice that everyone's excited about? That appears to have ended up in roughly 800 people's pockets. Meanwhile even mention domestic manufacturing in the country that basically invented consumer electronics and kazoo music starts playing in the background. grits teeth We knew NAFTA was bullshit, we knew it was going to break basically everything, and yet folks just couldn't quite get mad enough to scare the political elite badly enough to back off. I love my country, we have always been at war with Eurasia, I am going the fuck to bed.
For humanity? It is the same reason most of us don't grow our food or make our shoes. Specialization makes a lot of sense. Western tech wouldn't have been able to grow as fast if electronics manufacturing were not concentrated in China. It is (was?) a win-win.
One of those "wins" was based entirely on toxic wealth hoarding by financial elites, which is why we are we are, with the flailing remains of a US government taking a hatchet to science and education while infrastructure crumbles around it, and climate change alternately floods and burns prime real estate.
No. I guess it’s a matter of degree but my memory of the 90s, 00s and even early 2010s the middle east and North Korea both received far more attention from the press and politicians than China. China seemed to be on a trajectory towards a free market and less repressive government. I don’t feel like the current “cold war” esque situation set in until the late 2010s but maybe I’m wrong? What’s your take?
It's been a gradual shift with rising and falling tensions and various flare-ups, but if I had to pick a date I would pin it to around 2012, when Xi Jinping became the leader of China and began taking a more hardline stance.
You're right it's definitely a matter of degree. And I would have to say early 2000 when Clinton signed the trade agreement with them. That is when our manufacturing capacity started moving to China and with that our security. It's of course way more complex than that but..
China is a nuclear power and has been recognized as a major security threat since they acquired nuclear weapons (in the sixties?).
But your last sentence is true. Politicians and corporate executives failing to accurately extrapolate long-term consequences have not done us any favors over the past 50 years, and now we’re super fucked. It’d be hard even if we still had a competent government instead of the smoking ruin in progress.
(Thomas Friedman and his globalization-is-brilliant shtick making people think this was all OK wasn’t great either.)
> The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new.
And as far as I can see, that idea comes from China simply having grown its economy to a size comparable to that of the USA, nothing else?
But everyone during the Chinese miracle growth (from 1980's to today) expected China would've become the largest economy in the world by the 2020's. I guess people just didn't really take that seriously until it actually became true?
They expected China to grow in a way that would lead to the "west" exerting much more control over China than they ended up with today. Basically they wanted more western-style capitalism, reduction of state control, etc...
Now China is very strong, and the west exerts very little influence
China is weak, its current economic engines of real estate and internal consumption has failed. It is currently heavily dependent on export, of which, sanctions and tariffs on China would wreck their economy.
They account for 30% of global manufacturing, have the second largest GDP (largest GDP PPP), and are rapidly developing in the tech sector. Not weak by any means
China would have a hard time economically without being able to sell to the US. But it's been developing markets and economies in Rest of World, especially Africa. And its internal market is huge.
Meanwhile this is a thread about the US tech and retail sectors being unable to survive at all without imports from China.
Turns out offshoring was one of the most self-harmingly stupid decisions in US economic history.
Still - at least it prevented worker unionisation. So that was such a win for corporate America.
Exactly. We knew perfectly well it was coming, for decades, and we knew perfectly well the US would have put up a fight to prevent it. Not a competition, a fight: real and fake accusations, FUD, tariffs, or even actual war.
Now the time has come and we're in the middle of it. At least, I hope this is not just the beginning.
Because allowing countries to maximize their comparative advantages is great for economic growth. It doesn’t make sense for every nation on earth to have their own copy of every industrial sector. We don’t need all nations to manufacture their own jet engines, oil tankers, t-shirts, and Tylenol. Trade is good.
The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new. Half of century of economic policy can’t be reversed in 5 years.