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> The sheer force of will needed to cut them off from the global economy It's already happening. China is no longer the us' #1 trading partner. Europe is del

> The sheer force of will needed to cut them off from the global economy It's already happening. China is no longer the us' #1 trading partner. Europe is deleveraging off of china. Canada is on the verge of boycotting the chinese olympics. Even if there weren't geopolitical conflict involved, it's going to happen out of sheer economics; labor costs in china are no longer competitive with those in neighboring countries e.g. thailand, vietnam, bangladesh, and, for the US, mexico, and there is going to be a rough demographic transition as due to decades of one child, there are fewer entry-level people to take on entry-level low-skilled jobs in china (and basically no one wants to immigrate to china because the government has stoked chauvinistic nationalism way worse than trump ever did).

dnautics 5y ago
I should add that there is a way out for china -- high skilled production, but they are really shooting themeselves in the foot on that one. High skilled production requires input of low-skilled labor, and after several decades of what looked like it could be a rapprochement, since the ascendancy of Xi Jinping, china has increasingly alienated its closest neighbors (phillipines, vietnam, taiwan, japan, south korea, india), some of whom would be ideal sources of low-skill inputs. And a LOT of their tech comes from copying the west. That will get you only so far; to be truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena you need to have a source of creativity and critical thought which after a short period of flourishing, I hear is being repressed by the state again these days (I don't know for certain, I'm not in china).
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply, and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. Personally I think they'll do better than many are expecting, the biggest threat to their success being their own governance.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. They are working hard on eliminating the language barrier.
    - bmn__ 5y ago
      The coastal urbanites (respectively their children) learn foreign languages because they can afford the teachers. The rurals do not benefit.
      - SamReidHughes 5y ago
        I'm talking about the various Chinese dialects, which my understanding is share a written language.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        They don't; what do you think it would mean for two different languages to "share a written language"? Everyone is trained to read and write Mandarin; writing other dialects is not encouraged. But more than that, China is hard at work at ensuring that all Chinese speak Mandarin.
        coupdejarnac 5y ago
        Mandarin isn't the written language fyi.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Yes, it is.
        whoevercares 5y ago
        Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. There are simplified and traditional Chinese in written form. Mandarin is close to how Northern Chinese speak and can be written in both form without any difficulty and most of times equivalent Edit: perhaps you mean other Chinese dialects use different words to describe something - commonly seen in Southern dialects which inherits more from ancient Chinese. However for many common esp professional sentence the written form is universal Source: I’m native Chinese
- angelzen 5y ago
  Clone legacy tech, leapfrog at the cutting edge. Masterful strategic execution, hats off to China. One example. Drones have proven to be a strategic gamechanger in the 2020 Azeri-Armenian war. In the same league with the musket, the machine gun, the tank, the airplane, the carrier. Who is the world leader in commercial drones? DJI, a Chinese company. US market share? 76%. It's not even close. https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war-changed-djis-drone-market-share-the-latest-from-drone-industry-insights/ https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war...
  - ChemSpider 5y ago
    Is this for professional drones (say > US$ 2000) or including all the RC toy drones?
  - dnautics 5y ago
    > leapfrog at the cutting edge is there anything cutting edge about DJI products aside from volume? TBH I think probably the only thing truly special about DJI is that their software interface actually works, but in the world of "all software" it's still pretty janky (the bar is low in drone-world).
    - angelzen 5y ago
      I'm addressing the condescending Western trope, IMHO stemming from denial, that China somehow lacks 'a source of creativity and critical thought' to be 'truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena'. Commercial drones, mobile computing, 5G, Internet. High skill high growth industries that barely existed 25 years ago where China is at least on par with the West, and with evergrowing market share.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        Well I'm an American born asian, and I've worked with 1) Chinese professors, postdocs and grad students and 2) Chinese postdocs who did their undergrad in the US. The difference in creativity levels is night and day.
beaunative 5y ago
It will never happen. The talk will keep going, but it will never happen. In the case it does, it would be over Taiwan, not over a writer. I know people want to think human rights' are important (to their governments), but the governments would never place too much value on human rights in their calculation. (Taliban being the example) Cutting business ties is a playable card, but not over this. China knew. If you were the president of a country, you wouldn't either. There is too much on the table already to just give it away.
- echelon 5y ago
  We can get everything we currently get from China from India and Vietnam instead. It's just a matter of time. The focus of the 2020s and 2030s will be decoupling and decentralizing. New trading partners will be comfortably lower down the value chain, and we won't make the mistake of letting suppliers turn into adversaries again.
  - dustintrex 5y ago
    Oh yes we will, because business chases after the absolute lowest cost, and for manufacturing anything more complex than a T-shirt, the place to be remains China.
    - eeiac928 5y ago
      Businesses tend to prefer paying through the nose when it makes sense to for the executives to pay themselves and their allies. The absolute lowest number on cost is zero. China's governing organising principle over the last two U. S. presidents sounds rational if you compare the imagery of Jan 6's q-anon-man to 89's tankman.
  - beaunative 5y ago
    You are reading a lot on the 'conflicts' between China and the United States because China is potentially challenging US' dominance, and having competing interests in more areas than any would want. You wouldn't read this thirty years ago, not when the Soviet Union still have its influence. When the US is trying to have China on its side. Shared and competiing interest is, and will always the core of any diplomatic relationship. China isn't any less commie or more worker-friendly back then, but that wasn't the focus of the conversation isn't it. Vietnam isn't less commie than China is. India doesn't have better working conditions than China is. We aren't reading them because they are not as significant. Vietnam is simply too small, and India is still struggling to find its own way.
wonnage 5y ago
The predictions of China's demise will continue until they're all written in Chinese.
vkou 5y ago
> China is no longer the us' #1 trading partner. China has never been the US' #1 trading partner. That has been Canada, because Canada imports ~300 billion, and exports ~300 billion to the US. China only imports ~100 billion from the US, but exports ~452 billion. Both numbers are growing, year over year.
PlasticTank 5y ago
I would like to see it your way but all of this so-called decoupling from China seems very half-arsed and appears to me to be nothing more than a show for the electorate. None of it seems very concrete, for years we’ve read that country X is going to hold China accountable for Y but China just keeps on steamrolling forwards without much consequence.
- another_story 5y ago
  Decoupling is happening due to labor costs in China and its hardening stance on foreign investment. It'll take time, but it'll happen.
hyperpallium2 5y ago
Without the mutual benefit of trade, what will prevent war?
- flyinglizard 5y ago
  Good old nukes, that worked rather well between US and the far more expansionist USSR for decades without a significant trade environment.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    It also ravaged the third world continuously over that time while we fought proxy wars.

dnautics 5y ago

I should add that there is a way out for china -- high skilled production, but they are really shooting themeselves in the foot on that one. High skilled production requires input of low-skilled labor, and after several decades of what looked like it could be a rapprochement, since the ascendancy of Xi Jinping, china has increasingly alienated its closest neighbors (phillipines, vietnam, taiwan, japan, south korea, india), some of whom would be ideal sources of low-skill inputs. And a LOT of their tech comes from copying the west. That will get you only so far; to be truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena you need to have a source of creativity and critical thought which after a short period of flourishing, I hear is being repressed by the state again these days (I don't know for certain, I'm not in china).

SamReidHughes 5y ago
China has a vast hinterland of rural Chinese, much larger than the Phillipines or Vietnam could supply, and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. Personally I think they'll do better than many are expecting, the biggest threat to their success being their own governance.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > and there's less of a language barrier, where not none. They are working hard on eliminating the language barrier.
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    The coastal urbanites (respectively their children) learn foreign languages because they can afford the teachers. The rurals do not benefit.
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      I'm talking about the various Chinese dialects, which my understanding is share a written language.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        They don't; what do you think it would mean for two different languages to "share a written language"? Everyone is trained to read and write Mandarin; writing other dialects is not encouraged. But more than that, China is hard at work at ensuring that all Chinese speak Mandarin.
        coupdejarnac 5y ago
        Mandarin isn't the written language fyi.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        Yes, it is.
        whoevercares 5y ago
        Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. There are simplified and traditional Chinese in written form. Mandarin is close to how Northern Chinese speak and can be written in both form without any difficulty and most of times equivalent Edit: perhaps you mean other Chinese dialects use different words to describe something - commonly seen in Southern dialects which inherits more from ancient Chinese. However for many common esp professional sentence the written form is universal Source: I’m native Chinese
angelzen 5y ago
Clone legacy tech, leapfrog at the cutting edge. Masterful strategic execution, hats off to China. One example. Drones have proven to be a strategic gamechanger in the 2020 Azeri-Armenian war. In the same league with the musket, the machine gun, the tank, the airplane, the carrier. Who is the world leader in commercial drones? DJI, a Chinese company. US market share? 76%. It's not even close. https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war-changed-djis-drone-market-share-the-latest-from-drone-industry-insights/ https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war...
- ChemSpider 5y ago
  Is this for professional drones (say > US$ 2000) or including all the RC toy drones?
- dnautics 5y ago
  > leapfrog at the cutting edge is there anything cutting edge about DJI products aside from volume? TBH I think probably the only thing truly special about DJI is that their software interface actually works, but in the world of "all software" it's still pretty janky (the bar is low in drone-world).
  - angelzen 5y ago
    I'm addressing the condescending Western trope, IMHO stemming from denial, that China somehow lacks 'a source of creativity and critical thought' to be 'truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena'. Commercial drones, mobile computing, 5G, Internet. High skill high growth industries that barely existed 25 years ago where China is at least on par with the West, and with evergrowing market share.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Well I'm an American born asian, and I've worked with 1) Chinese professors, postdocs and grad students and 2) Chinese postdocs who did their undergrad in the US. The difference in creativity levels is night and day.

beaunative 5y ago

It will never happen. The talk will keep going, but it will never happen. In the case it does, it would be over Taiwan, not over a writer. I know people want to think human rights' are important (to their governments), but the governments would never place too much value on human rights in their calculation. (Taliban being the example) Cutting business ties is a playable card, but not over this. China knew. If you were the president of a country, you wouldn't either. There is too much on the table already to just give it away.

echelon 5y ago
We can get everything we currently get from China from India and Vietnam instead. It's just a matter of time. The focus of the 2020s and 2030s will be decoupling and decentralizing. New trading partners will be comfortably lower down the value chain, and we won't make the mistake of letting suppliers turn into adversaries again.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Oh yes we will, because business chases after the absolute lowest cost, and for manufacturing anything more complex than a T-shirt, the place to be remains China.
  - eeiac928 5y ago
    Businesses tend to prefer paying through the nose when it makes sense to for the executives to pay themselves and their allies. The absolute lowest number on cost is zero. China's governing organising principle over the last two U. S. presidents sounds rational if you compare the imagery of Jan 6's q-anon-man to 89's tankman.
- beaunative 5y ago
  You are reading a lot on the 'conflicts' between China and the United States because China is potentially challenging US' dominance, and having competing interests in more areas than any would want. You wouldn't read this thirty years ago, not when the Soviet Union still have its influence. When the US is trying to have China on its side. Shared and competiing interest is, and will always the core of any diplomatic relationship. China isn't any less commie or more worker-friendly back then, but that wasn't the focus of the conversation isn't it. Vietnam isn't less commie than China is. India doesn't have better working conditions than China is. We aren't reading them because they are not as significant. Vietnam is simply too small, and India is still struggling to find its own way.

wonnage 5y ago

The predictions of China's demise will continue until they're all written in Chinese.

vkou 5y ago

> China is no longer the us' #1 trading partner. China has never been the US' #1 trading partner. That has been Canada, because Canada imports ~300 billion, and exports ~300 billion to the US. China only imports ~100 billion from the US, but exports ~452 billion. Both numbers are growing, year over year.

PlasticTank 5y ago

I would like to see it your way but all of this so-called decoupling from China seems very half-arsed and appears to me to be nothing more than a show for the electorate. None of it seems very concrete, for years we’ve read that country X is going to hold China accountable for Y but China just keeps on steamrolling forwards without much consequence.

another_story 5y ago
Decoupling is happening due to labor costs in China and its hardening stance on foreign investment. It'll take time, but it'll happen.

hyperpallium2 5y ago

Without the mutual benefit of trade, what will prevent war?

flyinglizard 5y ago
Good old nukes, that worked rather well between US and the far more expansionist USSR for decades without a significant trade environment.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  It also ravaged the third world continuously over that time while we fought proxy wars.