6 ms·

In what world is China less "protectionist" than the US?

EA-3167 5mo ago
In the world of Chinese media I suppose? To me this all looks like the same hand-wringing angst we went through in the 1980’s with the industrialization of Japan bearing massive fruit. Right down to the shaky real estate markets.
- landryraccoon 5mo ago
  China has surpassed the US in total energy generation, and the gap is growing in their favor every year. Japan never surpassed the US in power or industrial output. China is different. They’ve clearly surpassed the US in some key areas.
  - EA-3167 5mo ago
    I would certainly expect a country with 4x the population of the US, which is used as the center of global manufacturing, to need a lot of power. I’m not sure that’s something that anyone should be concerned about from a geopolitical point of view. Likewise expecting Japan to have ever done the same is… silly.
    - TitaRusell 5mo ago
      [flagged]
    - esafak 5mo ago
      You're not concerned about the biggest army in the world flexing its muscles?
      - EA-3167 5mo ago
        If the size of an army represented a reliable measure of its ability to project power, we’d all be trembling at the might of North Korea.
      - mghackerlady 5mo ago
        Not really, china has never started a war and overall seems to understand it as a pointless yet necessary endeavour
        Lio 5mo ago
        China has 100% started wars. The Sino-Vietnamese War for starters.
        tartoran 5mo ago
        Not in the same sense the US or Russia. The Sino-Vietnamese war was brief, about a month. Compare that to US or Russian wars. Now, Im not saying that China won't start wars since they've become a lot stronger. Just looking at it through a historic perspective.
        EA-3167 5mo ago
        I'm sure that the people of Tibet at the very least would feel strongly about the notion of a peaceful, non-expansionist China. You could ask the people of the Philippines as well, or for an admittedly more complicated answer the people of Japan and the RoK. China is also happily supporting Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, which makes the "not waging war" distinction a bit academic.
        mghackerlady 5mo ago
        I never said they were peaceful and non-expansionist, just that it's unlikely they'd turn to war for those gains. They also have fought wars, and my wording was admittedly bad. They haven't fought a serious war in a long time, and their military activity in general has been limited to a few border standoffs which I certainly wouldn't take as an indication of its willingness to fight for something like expansion
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
plaidthunder 5mo ago
The world before all of the big beautiful tariffs. It's depressing that we can't buy BYD in the USA. It's feeling more and more like being stuck with a Lada in the 1980s.
- weirdmantis69 5mo ago
  Ya I heard that from some chinese facebook users... oh wait...
- leereeves 5mo ago
  Are BYD cars specifically banned or do they just not comply with all the US regulations?
  - plaidthunder 5mo ago
    100% tariff and political threats -- implying that they'd find a way to mark them as "unsafe", despite the fact that Canada and Europe tend to have higher safety standards than the US and already have BYD presence. You can see the political groundwork being laid here. https://homeland.house.gov/2025/05/21/homeland-republicans-probe-prc-affiliated-transportation-manufacturers-for-potential-national-security-threats/#:~:text=In%20the%20letter%2C%20the%20members,a%20U.S.%2Dbased%20domestic%20manufacturer. https://homeland.house.gov/2025/05/21/homeland-republicans-p... If these concerns are so pressing, why do we allow any electronics at all from China? It smells like air cover for a de-facto ban on BYD. To force US consumers to buy from politically blessed car makers instead of letting us choose the highest quality car available (at a given price point).
    - 1234letshaveatw 5mo ago
      Some level of protectionism is in the best interest of national security. How is the local electronics industry that you referenced in the US doing? What is the ramification of eliminating the job market for engineers or discarding all of the US manufacturing know how? The CCP knows the answer to that question
Pfhortune 5mo ago
I believe they're specifically referring to energy policy. As they said: > massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens up national parks for drilling and cancels solar/wind projects The protectees in this case are fossil fuel interests.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
everdrive 5mo ago
The modern discourse is quite rough -- people have been making these equivalencies for quite some time -- but as the US behavior becomes worse and worse, these equivalencies become more and more true. And as they become truer, the people who have always been pushing them only feel vindicated. It's quite unfortunate, but I can't say I blame them. From their perspective the tiger is finally showing its stripes.
dangus 5mo ago
There are two types of protectionism: 1. Protecting your interests by building a dynamic strategy. You protect your interests by enhancing your strengths and building on them. 2. Protecting your interests by playing “defense” against your decline. We all know which country chose which path. Chinese party leadership is stacked with literal engineers. They’ve prioritized development of industries crucial to their success. For example, they know they’re never going to be a big oil producer and that fighting wars over oil is expensive and futile, so they have developed their path to energy independence with their solar and wind industry along with electrified transit of all types. Meanwhile, in America, our leadership is stacked with grifters who only have experience in shifting money around. We are all stuck with oil and car dependence that nobody’s willing to address with long-term infrastructure development reforms. We are trapped fighting wars over oil because $6-7/gallon gasoline in middle America would trigger a major recession. Our government actively incentivizes wasting oil via automotive regulations written by industry lobbyists. That big F-150 parked at the Old Navy that doesn’t need to follow CAFE regulations is totally a “work truck.” We don’t strive to build the most competitive industries, instead we use sanctions and tariffs to prevent foreign competition from reaching our shores. And before you talk about China disallowing foreign competition, I’ll note that Chinese citizens can go to the mall in China and buy a Tesla, an iPhone, an Audi, Levi’s jeans, Coach bags, do a web search on Bing, deploy applications on AWS servers in Beijing, etc.
- strictnein 5mo ago
  > 1. Protecting your interests by building a dynamic strategy. "Dynamic" is doing a hell of a lot of work there. I guess what you mean is steal technology from the west, undercut pricing on foreign goods and dump products in their markets to destroy the competition, end up being the last one standing, because you freely violate trade agreements (as a member of the WTO) and other treaties. > " so they have developed their path to energy independence with their solar and wind industry along with electrified transit of all type" They have more coal power than the rest of the world combined, and are building more. Their "path to energy independence with their solar and wind" is purely propaganda. >they know they’re never going to be a big oil producer They're literally the sixth largest, just behind Iraq and ahead of Iran. I'm pretty sure people consider Iraq a "big oil producer", right? They also have the 13th most proven untapped oil reserves, and likely more than that since they're not in the business of oversharing.

In the world of Chinese media I suppose? To me this all looks like the same hand-wringing angst we went through in the 1980’s with the industrialization of Japan bearing massive fruit. Right down to the shaky real estate markets.

landryraccoon 5mo ago
China has surpassed the US in total energy generation, and the gap is growing in their favor every year. Japan never surpassed the US in power or industrial output. China is different. They’ve clearly surpassed the US in some key areas.
- EA-3167 5mo ago
  I would certainly expect a country with 4x the population of the US, which is used as the center of global manufacturing, to need a lot of power. I’m not sure that’s something that anyone should be concerned about from a geopolitical point of view. Likewise expecting Japan to have ever done the same is… silly.
  - TitaRusell 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  - esafak 5mo ago
    You're not concerned about the biggest army in the world flexing its muscles?
    - EA-3167 5mo ago
      If the size of an army represented a reliable measure of its ability to project power, we’d all be trembling at the might of North Korea.
    - mghackerlady 5mo ago
      Not really, china has never started a war and overall seems to understand it as a pointless yet necessary endeavour
      - Lio 5mo ago
        China has 100% started wars. The Sino-Vietnamese War for starters.
        tartoran 5mo ago
        Not in the same sense the US or Russia. The Sino-Vietnamese war was brief, about a month. Compare that to US or Russian wars. Now, Im not saying that China won't start wars since they've become a lot stronger. Just looking at it through a historic perspective.
        EA-3167 5mo ago
        I'm sure that the people of Tibet at the very least would feel strongly about the notion of a peaceful, non-expansionist China. You could ask the people of the Philippines as well, or for an admittedly more complicated answer the people of Japan and the RoK. China is also happily supporting Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, which makes the "not waging war" distinction a bit academic.
        mghackerlady 5mo ago
        I never said they were peaceful and non-expansionist, just that it's unlikely they'd turn to war for those gains. They also have fought wars, and my wording was admittedly bad. They haven't fought a serious war in a long time, and their military activity in general has been limited to a few border standoffs which I certainly wouldn't take as an indication of its willingness to fight for something like expansion
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]

plaidthunder 5mo ago

The world before all of the big beautiful tariffs. It's depressing that we can't buy BYD in the USA. It's feeling more and more like being stuck with a Lada in the 1980s.

weirdmantis69 5mo ago
Ya I heard that from some chinese facebook users... oh wait...
leereeves 5mo ago
Are BYD cars specifically banned or do they just not comply with all the US regulations?
- plaidthunder 5mo ago
  100% tariff and political threats -- implying that they'd find a way to mark them as "unsafe", despite the fact that Canada and Europe tend to have higher safety standards than the US and already have BYD presence. You can see the political groundwork being laid here. https://homeland.house.gov/2025/05/21/homeland-republicans-probe-prc-affiliated-transportation-manufacturers-for-potential-national-security-threats/#:~:text=In%20the%20letter%2C%20the%20members,a%20U.S.%2Dbased%20domestic%20manufacturer. https://homeland.house.gov/2025/05/21/homeland-republicans-p... If these concerns are so pressing, why do we allow any electronics at all from China? It smells like air cover for a de-facto ban on BYD. To force US consumers to buy from politically blessed car makers instead of letting us choose the highest quality car available (at a given price point).
  - 1234letshaveatw 5mo ago
    Some level of protectionism is in the best interest of national security. How is the local electronics industry that you referenced in the US doing? What is the ramification of eliminating the job market for engineers or discarding all of the US manufacturing know how? The CCP knows the answer to that question

Pfhortune 5mo ago

I believe they're specifically referring to energy policy. As they said: > massive growth in Chinese renewables while the US opens up national parks for drilling and cancels solar/wind projects The protectees in this case are fossil fuel interests.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

everdrive 5mo ago

The modern discourse is quite rough -- people have been making these equivalencies for quite some time -- but as the US behavior becomes worse and worse, these equivalencies become more and more true. And as they become truer, the people who have always been pushing them only feel vindicated. It's quite unfortunate, but I can't say I blame them. From their perspective the tiger is finally showing its stripes.

dangus 5mo ago

There are two types of protectionism: 1. Protecting your interests by building a dynamic strategy. You protect your interests by enhancing your strengths and building on them. 2. Protecting your interests by playing “defense” against your decline. We all know which country chose which path. Chinese party leadership is stacked with literal engineers. They’ve prioritized development of industries crucial to their success. For example, they know they’re never going to be a big oil producer and that fighting wars over oil is expensive and futile, so they have developed their path to energy independence with their solar and wind industry along with electrified transit of all types. Meanwhile, in America, our leadership is stacked with grifters who only have experience in shifting money around. We are all stuck with oil and car dependence that nobody’s willing to address with long-term infrastructure development reforms. We are trapped fighting wars over oil because $6-7/gallon gasoline in middle America would trigger a major recession. Our government actively incentivizes wasting oil via automotive regulations written by industry lobbyists. That big F-150 parked at the Old Navy that doesn’t need to follow CAFE regulations is totally a “work truck.” We don’t strive to build the most competitive industries, instead we use sanctions and tariffs to prevent foreign competition from reaching our shores. And before you talk about China disallowing foreign competition, I’ll note that Chinese citizens can go to the mall in China and buy a Tesla, an iPhone, an Audi, Levi’s jeans, Coach bags, do a web search on Bing, deploy applications on AWS servers in Beijing, etc.

strictnein 5mo ago
> 1. Protecting your interests by building a dynamic strategy. "Dynamic" is doing a hell of a lot of work there. I guess what you mean is steal technology from the west, undercut pricing on foreign goods and dump products in their markets to destroy the competition, end up being the last one standing, because you freely violate trade agreements (as a member of the WTO) and other treaties. > " so they have developed their path to energy independence with their solar and wind industry along with electrified transit of all type" They have more coal power than the rest of the world combined, and are building more. Their "path to energy independence with their solar and wind" is purely propaganda. >they know they’re never going to be a big oil producer They're literally the sixth largest, just behind Iraq and ahead of Iran. I'm pretty sure people consider Iraq a "big oil producer", right? They also have the 13th most proven untapped oil reserves, and likely more than that since they're not in the business of oversharing.