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De-globalizing certainly helps in all round development of all countries and allows for much more dynamic relationships between countries. It helps build local

• dash2 5y ago
  Why wouldn't the US and China go to war over Taiwan? Both countries plan for that possibility. China perceives the US as weak, divided and unwilling to sacrifice for foreign wars. It has said it wants to resolve the Taiwan issue.
  • DeathArrow 5y ago
    US can't afford to not go to war if China invades Taiwan. Otherwise they will lose access to much of the semiconductors supply and also they will become irrelevant for international affairs. Nobody will care about US anymore. But China also can't afford to invade Taiwan. That will be a major economic and political disaster. It would bring China back 20 years. Regardless of actually winning the war or not.
    • mrep 5y ago
      How would the US lose access without all other countries also losing access putting everyone on equal footing? I highly doubt the foundries would survive an invasion.
    • esturk 5y ago
      The foundries aren't nearly the lifeline people think it is. If China uses sneak attacks to destroy all the foundries, then what? Do you suppose US won't intervene? If US will still intervene then it was never the critical piece to begin with.
• SkyMarshal 5y ago
  > There is no realistic scenario where the US and China go to war. How many wars have been preceded by everyone believing they can't happen.
  • adrianN 5y ago
    Not that many in recent history I think. If my history knowledge is not wrong, major wars have always been preceded by heavy investment in the military. Why would countries invest in their military if they believed that war can't happen?
    • eloff 5y ago
      That's what's going on right now. China is building ships at rates unprecedented since after WWII. It's concerning. My feeling is they have a window of a decade or two during which they can make a grab for Taiwan. After which it may become relatively more difficult with demographics against them, increased defenses in Taiwan, and increased cooperation and perhaps commitment among its allies.
      • nebula8804 5y ago
        Once they open that door there is no going back. They would need to act at a moment where the US is extremely weak. It might happen if(most likely when) Trump gets elected again. Man I don't even wanna think what happens if that Pandora's box is opened.
        • MarcoZavala 5y ago
        • elzbardico 5y ago
          As much as I hate trump, as a foreigner I fail to see how the US could look weaker than right now. Admiration is a different thing from respect. I might have thought bullies were ridiculous specimens of the human race, and yet, I never dared to cross them. edit: typo
• redisman 5y ago
  Hide your strength, bide your time
• lumost 5y ago
  Manufacturing has economies of scale, in a global market there will inevitably be winners who win by being bigger than all other participants. Why wouldn't the global economy settle on a single manufacturing power eventually?
  • gumby 5y ago
    This has been true in the past but need not be true in future. The US took the manufacturing crown from Britain, France, and Germany (the “made in” label was invented by the British back in the 1880s to try to fend off Germany’s rising manufacturing), Britain having supplanted India and, to Anlässen degree China, through force of arms. Manufacturing was only partially centralized. The US had lots of land, water transport, raw material, and young labor. This worked for the new steel processes and other mass production. The Europeans were busy with other things. China had a young workforce, lots of raw material and partially took over some of the legacy industries (e.g, steel), but really picked up new stuff. The USA was busy with other things. Now China faces a demographic cliff (the workforce is aging) plus major unemployment (of the uneducated) and isnstarting to get busy with other things. What’s different now is automation, telecom, and automated management. Economies of scale may not apply so much with next gen products from phones to clothes to lawnmowers. If you can get a factory in a box it may be better to sprinkle those around to reduce supply, demand, and transport shocks. These may be more locally configurable. It seems kind of absurd but I remember when packet switching was wasteful and absurd.
    • cgio 5y ago
      You bring a relevant dimension, often overlooked, to the discussion, I.e. the evolution of the manufacturing model and of mechanics of scale economies. Also, to add to that, what we witness with Covid is the disruption of logistics that makes that transition even more relevant. And the social pressure from societies that, whether right or wrong, now associate isolation with better local opportunities and bearable impacts from limited trade. China is understanding the loss it faces in global market trends. That’s why it focuses introspectively on fairness of distribution of wealth. Because fairness will enable a decentralised supply and innovation model targeted on internal consumption of increasingly sophisticated consumers. A tough balance in the context of socialist principles but China has demonstrated impressive ability to weather conceptual stresses on ideological boundaries on the supply end, now they will focus on demand. I am actually optimistic that, for a while at least, benefits will be felt across all economies. It’s the mechanics of the next crisis that will draw the fields of the next conflict.
• devcpp 5y ago
  One problem is that globalization comes hand in hand with centralization. All industries have a tendency to cluster around a specific place with the most talent or existing resources. While this gives disproportional power to some states, this also means no state gets all the cards since none has all the industries. China without its partners is nothing. This is a form of mutually assured destruction, which isn't ideal but better than most alternatives.
  • kumarvvr 5y ago
    While I agree, what we see practically is different. Who in the world has genuinely condemned the Uighyur atrocities that China continues to this day? China is wielding a lot of clout using its supply chain hegemony. The problem with manufacturing is that you cannot spring up factories and upstream vendors in an instant. Costs lot of money and time. For many industries, looks like China has captured a good part of the value chain. So, costs of setting up a semi conductor fab is compounded because you have to set up not only the fab, but the whole ecosystem of vendors and suppliers required to run the fab, not to mention the logistics to transport raw materials and the finished goods. China has industrialized itself at the cost of developed nations (unlike industrialization in other nations, which was built from within). It has fast-tracked its way to manufacturing top spot with blatant IP copying, aggressive value chain development.
    • spats1990 5y ago
      >Who in the world has genuinely condemned the Uighyur atrocities that China continues to this day? Parliaments, heads of state, etc have referred to this as "genocide" despite insufficient evidence (the view of US state department lawyers). I don't know what further condemnation you're looking for there.
      • cehrlich 5y ago
        Actually doing anything of consequence
        • 5y ago
• refurb 5y ago
  De-globalization will likely hurt development of countries. It's hard for a poor country to trade internally when they're poor.
• zhdc1 5y ago
  > De-globalizing certainly helps in all round development of all countries How? Globalization allows companies to exploit comparative advantages, such as cheap labor. The increased demand for labor, over time, leads to higher wages, which leads to a number of social and - obviously - economic benefits. It's certainly not the end all, be all, but better living conditions through economic activity is the primary driver the large decline in extreme poverty that's occurred over the last half-century. Globalization didn't play a role in all of this - export-led economic policies, along with targeted investments in prestigious industries by many countries, also helped. However, this decline in poverty, at this magnitude - absolutely - would not have happened without globalization. Case in point. In 1990, there were almost one billion people living in extreme poverty in East Asia, South-East Asia, and the Pacific. In 2017, that number fell to 27 million. Source: World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/10/07/global-action-urgently-needed-to-halt-historic-threats-to-poverty-reduction https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/10/07/global-.... > Concentrating all manufacturing in China leads to power centralization Employment in the Chinese secondary sector is almost static over the last ten years. GDP from the secondary sector as a percentage of GDP is down significantly. While the size of the secondary sector in absolute numbers, iirc, has gone up, this is due to Chinese manufacturings moving towards higher priced exports. China will likely continue to be world's largest manufacturer for a long time. However, there is nothing that suggests that global manufacturing continues to centralize there, and there are a - very, very, large - number of signs suggesting that companies are off-shoring away from China to lower cost countries. > as is evident, and forms the basis of creation of another hegemony. To quote Game of Thrones, "Power is Power". Russia has an economy that is smaller than Italy's by several hundred billion dollars. Russia also has a blue water navy and nuclear weapons. > The effectiveness of military power goes only so far. Agreed. > There is no realistic scenario where the US and China go to war. We can agree to disagree here. There is no reasonable scenario, but there are a number of realistic ones. > So China has great leverage and will continually nibble its way to global dominance. Let's assume that China's economic and demographic issues are beginning to catch up to them, which is very common for middle income export-led countries with poor demographics. They share borders with two nuclear armed countries and several other highly developed countries. Their largest trading partner is their largest "adversary". Their lines of communication run through other countries, and they are dependent on other countries for their energy needs. China also happens to be a highly heterogeneous country, which has been concealed by a thin-veneer of nationalism. In short, China much more closely resembles 19th century Germany than it does 20th century Russia or the United States.
• simonh 5y ago
  Although China's share of manufacturing it eye watering, on it's own the US produces more than half as much as China. In fact the story the article is telling is how China is no longer just a manufacturing story as it's economy diversifies and matures. De-globalisation would be a disaster for developing countries. Being under-developed makes them heavily dependent on developed countries, they can only develop by increasing their engagement and integration with the global economy. Globalisation promotes access to technology and skills, access to markets, access to development capital. Cutting that off globally would be a humanitarian disaster and permanently relegate the developing world to economic backwater status. Localisation reduces efficiency, that means production requires more labour, more energy and produces less surplus value. It makes local development harder, not easier. We have seen this play out with recent experiments with protectionism. Tariffs to protect US manufacturing hammered US manufacturing, by cutting off supplies of parts and raw materials. In the longer term retaliatory tariffs would have cut off access to foreign markets for US goods too. Ultimately, globalisation is about individual liberties. The freedom to travel, to communicate and trade on equitable terms with whoever you choose. Are you really saying that this is a bad thing that must be stopped?
• fifilura 5y ago
  > What Globalization should have been is a butter smooth system to trade goods and services. > Concentrating all manufacturing in China leads to power centralization, as is evident, and forms the basis of creation of another hegemony. Sorry but 2 is an effect of 1, free trade leads to concentration. * Iceland has plenty of fish, they do the fishing and buy everything else. * Ukraine has good farmland, they grow all the crops and buy everything else. * China has cheap labor, they do all the labor intensive manufacturing and buy everything else. It is national economics 101.
  • pas 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage International organizations (like WTO, WIPO [even if we think the copyright is too long, and most of patents are dumb, etc] various UN projects), free trade agreements and such are supposed to keep that "power centralization" in check (eg. with things like ISDS and so on). But in the end we can't just ignore politics and hope for the best. Yes, maybe, maaaaybe in the graaaaaaaaaaand scheme of things we can. (After all if humanity fuck up so much that we go extinct maybe that's "the best".) But, but, it also doesn't mean that markets and free trade doesn't work. (They work, but they are not miracle tools.)
    • mschuster91 5y ago
      > International organizations (like WTO, WIPO [even if we think the copyright is too long, and most of patents are dumb, etc] various UN projects), free trade agreements and such are supposed to keep that "power centralization" in check (eg. with things like ISDS and so on). Unfortunately, almost all historic international organizations (no matter if the UN, EU, NATO or anything else - hell, even the WHO!) operate on a fundamental requirement of trust and the assumption that there are no obstructionist forces and everyone largely plays by the established rules. This fundamental assumption has been dismantled, starting in the early 90s with the collapse of the USSR... now we have the US and Israel blocking every investigation into war crimes (I do understand the reason though, given anti-Zionist resentments across the world), China not willing anyone to investigate what happened at Tiananmen Square or in the Uyghur concentration camps or with Covid, the Russians protecting the criminal Assad regime, Turkey fighting with Greece, Hungary and Poland blocking anything that could help refugees or hold their regimes accountable for corruption and a boatload of other bullshit.
• mbg721 5y ago
  > There is no realistic scenario where the US and China go to war. You can say that, but...
• Nasrudith 5y ago
  "More dynamic relationships between countries" sounds a lot like a situation of increased hostility and instability. Like pre World Wars Europe. A bit ironic given the first World War is the counterexample for interdependency preventing wars while also making it abundantly clear that they really should have listened.