3 ms·

Western companies make too much money by shipping jobs out to cheap Chinese labor for Western politicians to care that the Chinese government often executes dis

by csense 8y ago

Western companies make too much money by shipping jobs out to cheap Chinese labor for Western politicians to care that the Chinese government often executes dissidents and sells their organs.

philwelch 8y ago
That's a stone-cold take right there. That might have been the case in maybe the early 90's at the very latest, but things have changed since then. Not the part about executing dissidents and selling their organs. I don't know a lot about the organs, but they're an authoritarian government and they always have been. That ship sailed when Nixon decided to stop pretending that the Nationalists were the legitimate government of China. (Except Chiang Kai-Shek was still alive at that point, and he was also an authoritarian dictator who executed dissidents, so...). And yeah, in general, I'm on board with the "let's not trade with dictatorships that kill dissidents" idea. Except the US tried that, too, with the embargo on Cuba. The US even agreed to unconditionally take in any Cuban refugees who reached the dry land of Florida. Did it make a difference? No. Would it have made a difference if Canada and Western Europe joined the embargo? Also probably not. But the part about "shipping jobs out to cheap Chinese labor" is extremely dated. Chinese manufacturing isn't a cost-cutting alternative anymore; it's, in some cases, the global state of the art. There is no country on earth that can match China's capacity for manufacturing or construction. Putting an embargo on Shenzhen at this point would be as crippling to Western economies as putting an embargo on Silicon Valley. Possibly more. It's not just that it would be more expensive--the infrastructure doesn't exist, and even if we built it out again, we wouldn't do as good of a job at it. To make matters worse, China has the most population, the most industrial capacity and the ability to construct infrastructure more cheaply and efficiently than any other nation on earth. If you embargo them, you immediately do two things: you remove any incentive they have to maintain friendly diplomatic relations with literally anyone else and you free up much of that industrial capacity for military uses. The population factor is even worse than you'd guessed based on raw population count because they have such a high ratio of men to women, particularly among military-age age cohorts.

by csense 8y ago

Western companies make too much money by shipping jobs out to cheap Chinese labor for Western politicians to care that the Chinese government often executes dissidents and sells their organs.

philwelch 8y ago

That's a stone-cold take right there. That might have been the case in maybe the early 90's at the very latest, but things have changed since then. Not the part about executing dissidents and selling their organs. I don't know a lot about the organs, but they're an authoritarian government and they always have been. That ship sailed when Nixon decided to stop pretending that the Nationalists were the legitimate government of China. (Except Chiang Kai-Shek was still alive at that point, and he was also an authoritarian dictator who executed dissidents, so...). And yeah, in general, I'm on board with the "let's not trade with dictatorships that kill dissidents" idea. Except the US tried that, too, with the embargo on Cuba. The US even agreed to unconditionally take in any Cuban refugees who reached the dry land of Florida. Did it make a difference? No. Would it have made a difference if Canada and Western Europe joined the embargo? Also probably not. But the part about "shipping jobs out to cheap Chinese labor" is extremely dated. Chinese manufacturing isn't a cost-cutting alternative anymore; it's, in some cases, the global state of the art. There is no country on earth that can match China's capacity for manufacturing or construction. Putting an embargo on Shenzhen at this point would be as crippling to Western economies as putting an embargo on Silicon Valley. Possibly more. It's not just that it would be more expensive--the infrastructure doesn't exist, and even if we built it out again, we wouldn't do as good of a job at it. To make matters worse, China has the most population, the most industrial capacity and the ability to construct infrastructure more cheaply and efficiently than any other nation on earth. If you embargo them, you immediately do two things: you remove any incentive they have to maintain friendly diplomatic relations with literally anyone else and you free up much of that industrial capacity for military uses. The population factor is even worse than you'd guessed based on raw population count because they have such a high ratio of men to women, particularly among military-age age cohorts.