There is nothing that China wants to import, nothing it does not believe it can make better and cheaper, nothing for which it wants to rely on foreigners a single day longer than it has to. For now, to be sure, China is still a customer for semiconductors, software, commercial aircraft and the most sophisticated kinds of production machinery. But it is a customer like a resident doctor is a student. China is developing all of these goods. Soon it will make them, and export them, itself.
Ah yes, China does not want to import anything, which is why we slap them with export controls, bar them from buying chips and other things that they wanted to import, and brag about how we are going to “decouple” from China. Perhaps there is a causal relationship at play here? Perhaps China has seen how the imperialist West weaponizes import dependence for geopolitical blackmail and unilateral sanctions?
This whole discussion is incredibly reminiscent of the situation that existed between Britain and China prior to the Opium Wars. Britain was importing tons of goods from China: tea, porcelain, etc. while the only good that they could export to China was silver, because the Chinese didn’t need anything that the West made. The difference? Unlike China back then, today’s China has become militarily unassailable.
Now you can understand why the Chinese people reacted so patriotically to the 80th victory anniversary parade. The Chinese military is the only thing that stands between the Chinese people and the destruction and plunder of their country by envious imperialists who cannot stand to see any country be truly self-sufficient and independent.
Conclusion: If you don’t have anything to offer China, that’s your problem, not China’s problem.
That leaves one difficult solution and one bad solution for Europe. The difficult solution is to become more competitive and find new sources of value, as the US does with its technology industry. That means more reform, less welfare and less regulation : not because welfare and regulation are bad per se, but because they are unaffordable given the competition.
Of course lol
but because they are unaffordable given the competition.
China famously having no regulations nor welfare
We need to make people’s lives shorter, poorer, and harder in order to make people’s lives longer, richer, and easier.
Makes sense once you realize that the first “people” and the second “people” does not refer to the same group of people
Holy fuck, was my reaction. Mush for brains.
Well my dear liberal, why dont you just out compete them instead of complaining they are winning on the free market?
But um the solution is your thinking like a capitalist your premise started out as such and reads through it, stop doing that. I could and probably should make a more nuanced take and I probably will later when I have more time but that is the beginning and end of it
