> This will take time. Decoupling is not an instantaneous process. China spent two decades becoming the workshop of the world; the rest of the developing world isn’t going to mirror that accomplishment in one or two years.
It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China.
This reminds me of my day-to-day work so much; especially w.r.t. transitive dependency management. So:
If service A is 100% dependent upon service B which is 100% dependent upon service C, then service A is 100% dependent on service C.
At some point you need redundancy to protect against disruptions, outages, supply chain issues, policy changes, wars (either physical or economic), etc.
My (probably silly) question is: Does anyone know of "building block" or "core" services (such as authentication, authorization, BLOB storage, data storage, queuing) which are multi-cloud by design? Meaning service X offers SLAs for service endpoints hosted in AWS, GCP and Azure? If/when any of these "go down", consumers can (automatically?) flip a switch to route to another cloud service implementation?
> It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China.
This is already happening with more than ~80% of products that are "Made in Vietnam" and at least ~40% of products that are "Made in Korea." Not only do the raw materials come from China, but most of the work is done in China. The product is shipped overland from a Chinese factory to Vietnam or Korea, then some screws are tightened, some paint is slapped on, or a label is applied, and the product is re-exported.
Among other things, this is effective for tariff evasion.
And it's usually at least somewhat legitimate. It doesn't take much to make a product that's assembled in China "Made in Vietnam," even in a legal sense. Consider: https://casetext.com/case/ferrostaal-metals-corp-v-us
Basically, there was a tariff on Japanese steel. US-based plaintiffs -- steel distributors -- sent that steel to New Zealand, had it galvanized, and re-exported it to the USA as a "Made in New Zealand" product. A Judge holds that the galvanization process (which is laughably cheap) is enough to render the steel "Made in New Zealand."
When all's said and done, Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising (by more than American GDP) which tells you that the "decoupling" has to be in some respect illusory.
> The product is shipped overland from a Chinese factory to Vietnam or Korea, then some screws are tightened, some paint is slapped on, or a label is applied, and the product is re-exported.
The whole point of this article is to rebute the point you've made. From the article:
> The Economist’s basic argument is that because many of the goods exported to the U.S. from countries like Vietnam contain a lot of parts and components made in China, “decoupling is phoney”.
Here's one of the arguments the article makes against this:
> But there are reasons to think that at least part of the drop in U.S. dependence on Chinese imports is real — at least, the recent drop in the last couple of years. First, Chinese exports overall are down substantially from 2021.
[...]
> To the extent that falling investment in China is due to corporate de-risking, it’s probably eventually going to spread all the way up the supply chain. If you’re a U.S. company that moves production from China to Vietnam because of the risk of war, and your Vietnamese factory is importing most of its parts from China, you’ll know it. And you’ll know that you’re still exposed to China risk, and you’ll look around for alternative places for your Vietnamese factory to get its parts and components. That might take time — years even, given China’s dominance of manufacturing. But as long as the risk of conflict stays high for years, companies will keep looking for ways to build entire supply chains that never run through China. And they will succeed.
> In 2022, both U.S. exports to China and imports from China continued to grow for a third year in a row. U.S. exports totaled $153.8 billion, an increase of 1.6% ($2.4 billion) from 2021; U.S. imports from China totaled $536.8 billion, an increase of 6.3% ($31.8 billion); and the trade deficit with China was $382.9 billion, an increase of 8.3% of ($29.4 billion).
Those percentage increases seem to be lower than the rate of inflation at that time, which would mean the real value of imports and exports was flat or lower.
Total 2023 Chinese exports are projected to be fairly close to what they were in 2021, which is not that bad given macroeconomic trends across the world.
The risk for companies to build supply chains that completely avoid China is that they will be outcompeted by competitors who won't and who will make use of these loopholes.
Wouldn't that be extremely bad, given that 2021 was a year with many lockdowns and COVID related disruption especially in China? Surely 2023 should have experienced a rebound?
PRC export value went from 2.5T in 2019 to 3.4T in 2021, to 3.6T in 2022. It increased more during 3-4 years of covid than previous 10 years combined (1.4T in 2009). Primarily because 0covid left most of PRC undisrupted, most of the time, which setup PRC to export to most of world, especially global south. Currently everyone's exports down due to global slow down, but PRC exports down from stupid high peak. It's more surprising how much of exports PRC is holding onto due to artificial conditions caused by covid. Reverting back to 2021 (3.4T) would be a 5 steps forward 1 step back situation vs, reverting back to 2020 (2.6T) which would be status quo.
The average Chinese was locked down for less than the average American, and while the lockdowns were far more severe, they weren't much worse for the economy.
2021 was a great year for Chinese exports especially due to COVID. It's one of the countries that suffered the least economic damage, and it's exports actually grew immensely compared to previous years.
Xi Jinping has already enacted likely unpopular economic policies that were failing without the US starting its economic cold war. He's already enacted purges and other violent measures to centralize power as I understand it.
What degree of economic damage would fundamentally destabilize China politically such that Xi is deposed?
If stupid me is thinking about such vulnerabilities/risks, would foreign businessmen bet on Chinese factories, or move them to the newer/cheaper labor markets I've been hearing about for the last 10 years like Vietnam and Malaysia?
And Jinping is 70, do you think he's lasting to 80? When he croaks, due to his elimination of what semblance of political power handover / elections that used to exist in China, it will be a bloodbath.
"Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising"
This line is so wrong. You can't have 22% (at least) youth unemployment rate, and 19th straight month collapsing land sales revenue https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-landsales/chin... (which is how local government get most of its money), and your biggest and second biggest real estate developer going bankrupt, and still support a 5% GDP growth as mentioned by the Chinese government. just doesn't happen in a real world.
And there are so many reports of factories closing down, especially in the Shenzhen and Dongguan districts, either online videos or news reports https://thediplomat.com/2023/04/dongguans-industrial-woes-ch..., that I don't know why you're attempting to lie outright.
Land sales down 20% YoY is why growth is 4-5% instead of 8% - the effects of 3RL / crushing RE is built into cost of CCP targetting modest growth. Western reporting getting useful idiots to think PRC RE collapse is going to crush PRC growth to 0% is retarded, RE maybe large it's but not even close to plurarlity of economy - many other sectors, increasingly intermediate / high value like auto exports outperforming and making up lost RE in economic rebalancing.
Increasing youth unemployment last few years also has little NET growth impact because PRC is graduating MORE every year, 12m this year vs 8m from ~5 years AGO. What's happening is is MORE youth in absolute numbers are entering work force, even if relative youth unemployment is higher. And net unemployment is 5%, meanning youth get work eventually. They just have flexbility of chilling at home to find job they want, or fuck around and realize they have to do something - side affect of PRC having high youth live at home + high house hold savings rate + low student debt.
Industry has been closing in coastal due to land price for years. Low value/light has been moving abroad due to labour price. New (high value) industries are being shifted to interior industrial clusters. PRC export value grew by 1T in the last 4 years, more than the previous 10 combined. West might be trying to decouple, but PRC has been coupling more than ever, especially with global south.
Truth of the matter is PRC has just undergone the most intensive phase in globalization in human history, and exports down only due to weak global economy, but it's still a 5 steps forward, 1 step back situation. The lie is motivated useful idiots who pick a few indicators to rationalize dampening growth to 4-5%, aka nearly HALF, is still not enough, and real growth must be near 0 because PRC is collapsing due to exogenous crisis when in reality PRC proactively triggered 3RL and other policies in a MANAGED unwinding because they could do so and still have room to hit 4-5% growth.
Why do I need to waste effort to reference 101 material. If you don't possess basic subject matter knowledge, that can be done by trivial research, i.e. PRC export value by year, or graduation rates relative to urban youth unemployment rate, all of which has been referenced in western media, and apply figures to basic analysis that PRC % of global exports is increasing, or PRC net high skill workforce increasing faster than youth unemployment, then you're the kind of "useful idiot" (not pejorative, just term for people who fall for / or go beyond propaganda narratives) not worth effortful engagement and I leave my comment/analysis/rebuttle as service for benefit of other readers.
> When all's said and done, Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising (by more than American GDP) which tells you that the "decoupling" has to be in some respect illusory.
Can we really know that anymore? China has stopped publishing a majority of economic indicators.
If you don't believe Chinese statistics, you can check that US import from China is back to pre-COVID volumes and rising.
Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit.
> Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit.
I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.”
I don’t think the US is perfect, but economic indicators that they put out are probably as good as they get, all things considered.
> I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.”
I understand this sentiment when it's applied to shithole countries where statistics cannot be verified in meaningful ways. But China is too big and too integrated into the world economics to fake or dismiss Chinese data. You can independently prove a lot of Chinese data by comparing it with their western trade counterparts.
I don’t see how you can trust numbers from a government which fairly openly treats truth as malleable. Also, cadres are evaluated to a certain extent on their economic metrics, and of course a metric ceases to be reliable when your evaluation depends on it. But the real kicker is that the outgoing prime minister, Li Keqiang, did not trust the official numbers and developed his own calculation using other numbers. [1]
> China is too big and too integrated into the world economics to fake or dismiss Chinese data
Chinese statistics are notoriously biased. There is a cottage industry of hedge funds using satellite imagery to correct their figures and trade on it.
Right, in this case I like using the counterparty and US imports from China in place of what we want.
But I think the complaint was more to say why they weren’t looking at other data they would like, and other countries provide reliably, and instead must limit to what the US and other countries report.
Yeah the US leadership is smart enough to almost never lie outright. There are lots of more nuanced ways to technically tell the truth but still significantly warp the information to your benefit. I’m kind of surprised that China seems to be less savvy to this approach.
> There are lots of more nuanced ways to technically tell the truth but still significantly warp the information to your benefit. I’m kind of surprised that China seems to be less savvy to this approach.
That is the national government's approach, for the most part: tweak the basket of goods you use for inflation here, pick the best looking among several measures there, and so on. The overt manipulation occurs at the subnational level: Chinese statistical work is heavily decentralized and officials are promoted (or not) partially on the basis of meeting growth targets. The national government corrects for this to some degree - but estimating just how manipulated the data is is hard, and provides another lever you can pull to push it one way or another.
Federal statistical agencies in the US conduct more and better direct research and report through fewer (though not zero) layers of politically motivated actors.
One need only compare the official Beijing air quality number against what you see on the ground to know that you simply cannot trust official Chinese reports.
US import could be clearing out stock at firesale since lots of Chinese manufacturing is liquidating. China imports are declining and IMO (I could be wrong) more telling for long-term producer health (china is not exactly resource independent):
Can’t respond to this other user but their source confirms that there is a consistent drop in imports from China since late last year (goes down each month.). Saying “we’re back to pre-Covid levels” is a strange thing to say when Covid clearly saw a huge spike in imports, which are now decreasing. Their framing of this entire conversation seems incredibly dishonest.
Honestly did you even read the article? "Yes, there are cases of Southeast Asian nations slapping their labels on Chinese goods and then sending them to America to allow Chinese manufacturers to get around tariffs. But look at the graph of U.S. import shares above, and you’ll see that if 7% of imports from Asia ex-China are due to re-exporting, that would only shave 1.7 percentage points off of Asia ex-China’s share — only a fraction of the 4 percentage point increase in U.S. imports from that region since 2019." It refutes this point like 2 minutes in.
The article does nothing to refute the case, because Noah Smith has engaged in a little bit of sleight of hand in that section you quoted.
The 7% number is from 2018 data (!) -- yet Noah is talking about "since 2019." And, looking at the graph again, the major shift occurs in 2019.
So Noah's "7%" (again, from 2018, largely before the "decoupling") is totally irrelevant, and he handwaves away the possibility that China has since done an increasing amount of exporting to SE Asia for re-export to the USA.
I'm in China, and I think you're wrong. The situation is absolutely catastrophic and we're slowly falling down the cliff. Those GDP numbers are BS, in the US, France or China, since they count public spending. Anyone can build ghost cities for billions, add it to GDP and show a growth of GDP: meant nothing more than a big dick number.
Truth is when they ask a random dude on TV if he's ok with drinking Japanese radioactive water (the trendy distraction these days), he replies that he didn't intend to make children so he doesn't care if he loses fertility due to contaminated water...
Nobody gives a fuck about shit, we all pretend to work while they pretend to pay us, we get jailed for months in our own homes when there's a stupid sneeze in the city and get all released under the "it's just a fever, wait a few days" admonitions of the same doctors who captured us when we all get it at the same time, we're either completely ignoring the communist bullshit and doing nothing they expect us to do, or totally believing in it and doing only the BS they expect us to do, which produces nothing.
Kids are unemployed, elderlies are fascists, politicians are spineless and factories impotent. The GDP growth is as real as the president's official salary.
This is the same as in England, the leasehold vs freehold system is difficult to differentiate in practice, a bit like common law vs civil law.
You buy a house, there are expectations it's yours. Each time it's been tested the government had a choice between murdering desperate owners or accepting to just renew on the same terms. They chose to renew.
Freehold offer no more security: I come from a civil law, freehold country, well, the government can seize houses it wants at low cost any time anyway. Sometimes to build a highway, sometimes to rent to immigrants.
Isn't Vietnam labor cheaper? also even if these countries are just giant warehouse of Chinese crap wouldn't that mean if Chinese supply did go down there's more stuff in the pipeline which helps buffer shortages and price spikes etc.
> This is already happening with more than ~80% of products that are "Made in Vietnam" and at least ~40% of products that are "Made in Korea."
I wonder how long they are willing to do that. Those countries aren’t on the best terms with China either. Doubt they want a dependency on China if they can help it.
Wouldn’t they want to take over the manufacturing (along with it the profit) too instead of just re-exporting for a profit? They are in prime position to do so given they are the gateway for China’s goods - and can cut China’s goods out and substitute their own.
If they were able to build a toaster (or whatever) profitably than they would have already done it. Doing last stage assembly most likely requires very little capital investment and much less labor.
I feel like that position is similar to being a middleman - in which case its clear the skillset to be the producer is not the same.
How is this suddenly possible against the "physics" of free market forces, that were unable to move when it was about wages, workers rights or the environment? Almost as if it's all made up..
That’s step one. Then the other developing companies will need to climb the dependency tree to make more and more of the materials locally. It’s what India did with car manufacturing, eventually building the entire vehicle in country. They are now the biggest exporter of tractors in the world. Same thing with pharmaceutical manufacturing as well. The space industry was the same way with imported tech from the Soviet Union but now it’s all built indigenously along with local advancements.
It seems like in 2021 Germany was the biggest exporter of Tractors in the world, with 16.2% of the total https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/tractors But maybe you have more up-to-date or different data showing India ahead.
GM traces all their dependency trees down to the mines or other sources of raw materials. This is often 6-7 levels deep. However they know what to watch for in the news and so when something happens they can jump to find an alternate, which often gives them 3 months before the production lines stop.
They also do this so that they know nobody is using slave labor.
> Yeah, I'm not convinced, given GM's (and most automakers) reaction to Covid and the continuing chip shortage.
Automakers (and everybody else) reacted very quickly and shut down/decreased staff almost immediately.
Where they got caught out was in assuming that the semiconductor industry would return to normal quickly. That was a huge mistake.
Everything in business is so hyper-optimized to hold no inventory that nobody can absorb demand increase shocks of any amount, anymore. In addition, the fact the companies actively downsized during Covid meant that things couldn't even go back to pre-Covid levels quickly.
GM miscalculated what COVID would do and made mistakes. Having information isn't always enough to make the right decisions. All we know from COVID is GM isn't perfectly able to mitigate issues, but they still try.
> But we all know of Wall Street's long history of hatred towards physical inventory.
Accounting and taxes on physical inventory are pretty stupid and cause a lot of Wall Street's hate for inventory. The more costs there are to storing inventory the less desirable or even viable it is to store inventory.
When all countries shut down, it does matter? There is no alternate or backup. What could you have reasonably expected GM to do, even if they had perfect information?
Answering your technical question: Some companies let you deploy their "building blocks" onto multiple clouds (you typically choose the exact region/availability zone), and then also allow you to build proper multi-cloud deployments. There is usually no switch to flip, but these deployments (if properly setup) should tolerate if one region/cloud goes down.
For higher level services, I can't think of an example. For the examples above, you're still thinking at VM level, whereas you typically don't do that if you purchase a higher level service.
Every new level of dependency is an opportunity to refactor and swap deeper dependency out. There is a big diff between using library A and using your own frontend B that now depends on A but can swap it out easily for X.
Let's say you have a dependency A from China. But all the software developers that work and specialize in A, live in China. If you ban dependency A, what you'll have is a dependency B from Mexico that is calling dependency A.
In order to really replace A, you'll need to hire, train and form software developers specializing in A. This is both time consuming and expensive.
This falls in the same line of some people (economists) who think that printing money will generate wealth. Sounds familiar?
In the 90s the U.S., EU and Japan were the champions of free trade for industrial products and services.
However, when it would come to agricultural goods they were the champions of tariffs and protectionism. Why? Easy: because 3rd world countries were very competitive on agriculture. Egypt had better cotton, Argentina had beef, Brazil had orange juice, Cuba had sugar, etc, etc.
3rd world countries would complain about the hypocrisy and the rich would reply that they should just shut up and give up on protectionism.
Now the whole Southeast Asia is competing with rich countries in industrial goods and protectionism is not protectionism anymore, is "decoupling".
"decoupling" tends to be how it's described in media, but every day people know exactly what it is which is "protectionism" (as if that's necessarily a bad word).
I'm also unsure about your comment about Southeast Asia competing with rich countries on industrial goods. It seems to me it's more specifically about China and not so much other countries in Southeast Asia.
I wouldn't disagree with your offhand comment about the 90s and such and the US, EU, and Japan. But I'm not really sure what the point of it is given that countries such as China (not the only one) have maintained protectionist policies. Since many didn't go along with the idea of free trade and the theory that free trade would open up global markets and raise everyone's living standard (which was probably just marketing from those who stood to profit) you can't then blame the US, EU, Japan, or others for reverting back to more protectionist policies to be in line with how most other countries tend to operate.
Hey we should all do this thing that stands to benefit everyone, but we all have to do it
It's not protectionism. Most of that manufacturing is not moving back to the U.S., it's moving to U.S. allies like Vietnam or Mexico, that would also be called third world countries.
It really is what it says on the tin. It's a risk for the U.S. to be economically dependent on a state whose government does not share American values, and that is threatening its neighbors with invasion.
What definition are you using of ally? Normally countries are considered allies when they have formal agreements (treaties) between each other to cooperate for mutual benefit. By this measure, the US and Mexico are definitely allies.
Mexico is the USA's second largest trading partner worldwide. Exports of goods and services to Mexico support an estimated 1.1 million jobs (Department of Commerce). Mexico is also the second largest source of foreign crude oil to the USA, and the top export destination for US petroleum & natural gas. The US-Mexico-Canada agreement (USMCA) entered force in 2020, replacing NAFTA. The countries have a variety of complex ties. There are other treaties and areas of cooperation too, such as the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). A security cooperation agreement called the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities went into effect in 2021.
As for Vietnam, the US and Vietnam established a bilateral trade agreement in 2001. The US provides maritime security assistance to the country through the Maritime Security Initiative, Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, and through foreign military financing. US transferred Coast Guard cutters to Vietnam in 2017 and 2020 to bolster its law enforcement capabilities.
Those sound like alliances to me, but I'm interested to hear what other definition you're using.
Ally derives from "alliance". US is not part of any alliance with Vietnam nor Mexico.
If you want to redefine ally to mean something closer to "partner", then Vietnam is also a "China ally" because it has a good partnership with China. Mexico could also be called a China ally by this loose definition.
But if you follow Vietnamese IR, you would know they take geopolitical neutrality very seriously, due to drama of 20th century. Both US and China separately invaded Vietnam because they thought it a Soviet proxy. No chance of Vietnam becoming an actual ally of either in the short term.
Similar for Mexico. US-Mexico relationship is extremely complicated right now. Right-wing US calling for invasion of Mexico on "drug war" grounds. Mexico purchasing and nationalizing Texas oil company, etc.
You're right that I'm using "ally" informally, to mean that the country would be in the U.S. camp if there is a direct confrontation between the U.S. and China in the future. The U.S. doesn't have mutual defense treaties with either. I'm basing that claim on public opinion - the publics Vietnam loves America and distrusts China. The public of Mexico like both nations, though geography means manufacturing in Mexico can be relied on.
> You're right that I'm using "ally" informally, to mean that the country would be in the U.S. camp if there is a direct confrontation between the U.S. and China in the future.
The government of Vietnam has emphasized that it will not "choose" between US or China. ASEAN nations in general feel this way. They oppose war itself, and can't be tricked into taking sides in one instigated by Washington (or Beijing).
> Vietnam: 84% have a favorable opinion of the U.S., 11% have a favorable opinion of China
Please actually read the articles you link. This is for Vietnamese American citizens, not citizens of Vietnam. It is utterly unsurprising that immigrants have a overwhelmingly favorable opinion of their new home country, and reveals next to nothing about the PRC-SRV relations .
We've gotten a bit far from the original point - for the purposes of the U.S. supply chain, Vietnamese government neutrality and strong public support is plenty to negate the risk that the country suddenly cuts off the supply chain. My original point is that de-coupling from China is a national security decision, not protectionism, and production is moving to Vietnam because it's a friendlier country than
Informally, I do think Vietnam can be considered a U.S. ally. China is signaling a desire to expand, and most of its neighbors consider it the biggest threat to their security. There's a reason that Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all among the countries that have the highest opinion of the U.S. It's not a trick - they are acting in their own security interests.
Vietnamese neutrality makes perfect sense, and I don't think they'd get involved in a war that didn't involve them. But the country is certainly friendly enough to rely on for the U.S. supply chain.
Your just using the word alliance to define your reality.
Think about it. It's the other way around. Reality is not defined by the word alliance, clearly there exists a gradient of countries who are more friendly than others.
Stick with the intention of the word by the person using it not the absolutist pedantic definition.
I actually mostly agree with you! Ally has a formal meaning and usually means a mutual defense pact. I was using "ally" informally, to refer to countries that are roughly in the U.S. camp.
I can think of few places that embrace less "American values" than Vietnam. I say that as someone that lived there and now lives in Thailand, ie I'm aware of the tradeoffs of such places.
More correctly be economically controlled by the US. See the Plaza accord and the subsequent Louvre accord. Japan never would have signed either if US wasn't able to strong arm them into sinking their own economy. Guns are a hell of a thing, especially when you ban other parties from having them.
Having better beef doesn't translate to building weapons or global communication networks. Spinning up a new cattle ranch if supply is cut off is trivial. They are not on the same level. The movements we are seeing now are matters of national security.
Having access to food is most definitely a matter of national security. If you get your ports cut off you can't increase local food production before mass starvation.
I think decoupling is the right word. These south East Asian countries were unindustrialized nations before the hundreds of billions of foreign direct investment and hundreds of billions of intellectual property that transferred from the West to the East.
America exported its manufacturing know how for decades, and now it is taking it back as the trade is no longer as favorable. Seems rational to me. SE Asia came out a huge winner in the process, and now the time has come to stand up their tech and manufacturing in their own.
"Decoupling" mostly involves increasing investment in South and Southeast Asia to set up alternatives to Chinese suppliers. America is hardly going to take back much of the low-skill, low-wage, long-hours manufacturing of cheap consumer products that was offshored decades ago.
It doesn't have to be for cheap stuff aka textiles and other plasticky things. But for tech, modern electronics and so on it could go in another directions.
And maybe we stop using these cheap things anyway since they're garbage anyway. Perhaps it's time to re-start building things to last, or at least that's my wish...
Not only that, but the US made a trap for themselves: Theres no know how and capable people to replicate the tech. This take decades, 2 or even 3 to build.
I have the impression that the China today is the result of the planning made in the 90s, implemented in the 00s. What planning the west did last 20 years? I think the west already lost and this is the tantrum. :(
If you had ever lived and worked in the countries that are the public boogeymen for world domination, or even just with people and companies from those countries, you wouldn't be quite so down.
I think it's quite telling that the "workshop of the world" does not export high precision CNC equipment made by domestic companies in any meaningful amounts. Similarly, even before any export controls and sanctions really kicked in, their domestic chip makers had huge problems with yield and quality even though they bought tried and tested machines (and sometimes whole departments) from established chipmakers.
Good thing you mentioned Japan. It was a huge competitor to the US in 80s and 90s in industrial products, yet nobody considered restricting the trade with it.
Trade issues with Japan dominated relationships, especially the threat that American automobile and high tech industries would be overwhelmed. Japan's economic miracle emerged from a systematic program of subsidized investment in strategic industries—steel, machinery, electronics, chemicals, autos, shipbuilding, and aircraft.[118][119] During Reagan's first term Japanese government and private investors held a third of the debt sold by the US Treasury, providing Americans with hard currency used to buy Japanese goods.[120] In March 1985 the Senate voted 92–0 in favor of a Republican resolution that condemned Japan's trade practices as "unfair" and called on President Reagan curb Japanese imports.[121]
The Japanese real estate bubble was directly caused by the former and the latter put the nail in the coffin by massively tightening the Japanese economy, bursting the huge debt bubble and robbing the BOJ of any and all tools to try contain the explosion.
US architected Japan's downfall and there was nothing Japan could do because they weren't allowed to have their own guns anymore so couldn't stand up for themselves and refuse to sign/implement aforementioned accords.
Those of us in the 3rd world have always known this.
US mandates on removing protectionism were never for them; they are for others. Their recommendations on how to run our economies are always like this; they are never for them, it's always for us.
They sometimes use fancy speak like "decoupling" in hopes we won't be able to tell.
From the article, wrt how the economist claims that decoupling is phoney because the underlying export by china in the process remains the same:
> Startlingly, however, The Economist provides no actual data to support this claim.
Ha! This was a reason I unsubscribed from the economist. A lot of times it makes broad claims and then leaves out the details to support said claim. Almost like it expects the reader to treat the economist like a first hand source and therefore no citation needed.
Good on the author for calling this out and then rebutting with details of their own (not necessarily supporting author’s claims though since I haven’t had time to really think about it just yet).
> This was a reason I unsubscribed from the economist. A lot of times it makes broad claims and then leaves out the details to support said claim. Almost like it expects the reader to treat the economist like a first hand source and therefore no citation needed.
This is kind of the point of The Economist; its intended audience is busy executives who are on board with its ideological bias and don’t care much about footnotes and citations. Sounds like it wasn’t the publication for you.
That’s really sad. And also logical especially when thinking of it from the perspective of it being a magazine. So definitely not the publication for me. I still want to be caught up on global news on a slow basis like reading an edition once a week. Any recommendations?
Of course the publication was founded to be an advocate for liberalism, and on a global level it still is - in a lot of countries it's one of the only independent English language publications that has any distribution at all.
But as an American, when it comes to anything relevant to my country, I've noticed that in the past few years any remaining social liberal edges have been sanded off and they've become predictably center-right.
My fear is decoupling just sets the stage for a global war. We’ve decoupled Russia, Iran, North Korea. With China we have a legitimate fully integrated axis capable of producing independently with legitimate and perceived global grievances, and the means and will to exercise force.
This was the thinking in the 1980s when the US invited China into their global trade network. The thinking was they would move away from communism and Russia and towards an open Democracy. That happened in some small ways but has since been completely undone. Such as the Democracy movements in the 80s that were ultimately crushed in Tiananmen square. Or more recently, market reforms undone by Xi.
Basically we are back to where we were in the 1980s in many ways.
Despite the hope for a more democratic China in the 80s being mostly dead, contemporary China must still reckon with the immediate economic disaster being an military agressor and being sharply cut off from American trade would entail. By slowly decoupling US-China trade, we remove that economic risk for Chinese strategists, making agression more viable.
I think China also needs to reckon with confronting adversaries with continuous deployment and a seasoned veteran force from the line to the top generals, while Chinas military hasn’t been meaningfully deployed beyond exercises in 60 years. No one - not a single person - has any meaningful warfare experience in China - while the US and it’s allies, for better or worse, is highly skilled and experienced in continuous warfare for the last 60 years.
For real? You think the losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow gave valuable experience that in any way offsets the attrition on the armed forces?
I mean US is aggressor state, so has experience in invading other countries. If they wanted to invade China they would have some experience in doing so. I just hope EU leaders won’t follow them this time.
The US does not have any more experience in defeating near-peer militaries in a defensive position, as the last time it attempted (and failed) to do so was against China.
Iraq and Afghanistan may very well be more detrimental than useful. They made the US military focus on aspects of warfare that aren't relevant to a near peer conflict, and unlearning that is a difficult task that's currently consuming a lot of resources.
USAmerica now only has experience fighting against much weaker opponents. Almost everyone who remembers WW2 is dead.
When confronted with slightly more competent weak opponents (e.g. Taliban), the US military performs far more poorly. This poor performance worsens sharply as enemy
competence scales.
Full-scale war with near-peer or peer adversaries? USA is SOL.
But aside from the loud-mouthed war hawks or perma-doomers on YouTube, I don't think anyone in the US or China (or Russia,
for that matter) with decision-making power really has the appetite for direct open conflict, since it means the end of all things.
> When confronted with slightly more competent weak opponents (e.g. Taliban), the US military performs far more poorly. This poor performance worsens sharply as enemy competence scales.
Russia and America have fought albeit slightly indirectly.
US soldiers engaged Wagner in Syria in the Battle of Khasham.
Rough outcome of this battle.
US / SDF side - 1 wounded
Wagner / Syrian government side - 50 - 100 dead. upto 200 wounded.
> What is your point? That soldiers die if you shell them?
My point is that the following paragraph doesn't exactly hold up if you consider Wagner to be "slight more competent weak opponents" which I would.
> When confronted with slightly more competent weak opponents (e.g. Taliban), the US military performs far more poorly. This poor performance worsens sharply as enemy competence scales.
Is democracy the only acceptable endgame? I worry we're mixing up ends and means. Democracy is a means, and "good government" is the end.
In the last few decades, the overall Chinese population has seen dramatic upticks on all sorts of quality-of-life measurements. It doesn't look like an obvious kleptocracy. The surveys we have, regardless of how much it can be claimed they're cooked, indicate the public is broadly happy with the government. Maybe a single-party system works for them, at least at this point in time. I'd argue if you have multiple diverse functioning government types, that's worth preserving. Ecosystem diversity is valuable, just from a perspective of "when we get the next big crisis, maybe one has better tools available to solve it."
There's nothing wrong with dangling Western style democracy as an option to the Chinese-- "if and when you want to try it, here's a body of experience and we can consult", but treating it as an end-all-be-all for an audience that broadly isn't begging for it is asking for friction.
This, of course, assumes a level of good faith which I suspect is delusional. The real narrative was always less about democracy and human rights and more about property rights. Saudi Arabia has a terrible human rights record, but the West feels safe enough that they're not going to nationalize their investments, so it all gets swept under the rug, alongside bits of Jamal Khashoggi's corpse.
A problem is that democracy is hard to build and maintain. Even countries that are showcases for it have a hard time with keeping it stable in some situations.
It requires either a lot of good faith by participants (most participants actually striving for the public good, and voters being able to disagree with an opponent, but still respectfully accept defeat) or systemic guardrails to effectively enforce good-faith style behaviour.
Even with those guidelines in place, some countries are going to have a hard time with the nuts and bolts (How do you safely deliver ballots and count votes with an active insurgency? How do you campaign when only 10% of voters can read? How do you avoid a major ethnic/religious schism just being re-processed through the electoral system?)
It's an aspirational goal, to be sure, but we can also respect that other systems are working reasonably well for some audiences, and in some cases might work better than a "more legitimate" democracy.
> If they really knew what was best for everyone it would be obvious and people would vote for them.
I'm not sure most-- or even any-- people really know what's best for everyone. It gets even more complex when it turns into what's best for one group versus another, or what's best for today comes at a cost to be paid in 5-10-20 years.
It's easy to catapult yourself into office by promising people ice cream instead of broccoli. The leader you want has to be persuasive enough to convince voters they want broccoli. An autocrat can just mandate broccoli.
I guess that's the opposite side of the coin I'm looking at. Being able to remove "bad actors" also means it's too easy to remove "good actors" who might brush people the wrong way. Democratic leadership will optimize for easy answers and never saying "no", because the alternative is political suicide.
Imagine if Joe Biden went on TV tomorrow and said "we're taxing gasoline to USD100 per gallon to force private cars off the road. It's gonna be tough for a while, but you'll thank me in 2050 when the public transit is fully fleshed out and we hit a 1.5c climate goal." He'd be driven out of office in favour of someone who ran on a campaign of "let's roast the next generation so you can save a dime at the pump today." OTOH, Xi Jinping could probably get away with it.
Xi isn't enacting enlightened laws to protect the environment. Quite the opposite. He's opening more and more coal fired power stations. He doesn't care if the rivers overflow.
You're saying "but he could do good", he won't. Dictators never do.
> This was the thinking in the 1980s when the US invited China into their global trade network.
The US didn't invite china to anything. The US begged, threatened and cajoled china to open their immense and cheap labor force. China had what the US wanted. It was nixon that went to china, not mao that came to the US.
> The thinking was they would move away from communism and Russia and towards an open Democracy.
That's as stupid as saying we helped saudi arabia, kuwait, qatar, etc develop their oil and gas field so that they will become christian. If your assertion was true, we'd be trading with cuba and north korea today. If your assertion was true, we would have been top trading partners with the soviet union. Instead we isolated the soviet union and sanctioned them. Did we only want china to be a democracy? Not the north koreans, cubans and soviets?
> Such as the Democracy movements in the 80s that were ultimately crushed in Tiananmen square.
'Democracy' movement. Right. And look where china is today? I think china made the right decision to crush the 'democracy' movement. Don't you?
It's the same debunked propaganda I've been hearing from the likes of gordon chang since the early 2000s. Morons actually believed we invaded iraq to bring freedom and democracy. So it shouldn't be surprising that morons believe we exploited their cheap labor to bring democracy to china. It's cringe level propaganda.
No, I don’t think China was right to crush democracy. It doesn’t flow that their economic success was tied exclusively to authoritarianism. One might argue they would have a stronger domestic consumer economy if they hadn’t.
This term is functionally meaningless. Authority is not a coherent ideology (an -ism), it's just the natural outcome of the state maintaining a monopoly on violence.
The real question is: whose authority, and for whom?
For an exercise in how wrong we can be, here's Steve Yegge two years ago telling us to prepare to speak Mandarin because China is going to reign supreme and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Steve deleted the article but the internet remembers.
What, you think he's wrong because China had a bad economic quarter two years after he posted that? You realize China has had unprecedented growth over the past 15 years, with pundits predicting its collapse the entire time. They have 1.4B people, a very good education system, and a huge head of steam.
China misses GDP targets by 1% for a single quarter, every news outlet reports on it, and in five years everyone is going to wonder how China has gotten to the place it has. That's basically happened repeatedly over the past 15-20 years.
Sort of. Honestly though the demographic collapse could be a good thing for them if they play it right as labor becomes less and less important as we automate. Youth unemployment is sky high in China, it's not unreasonable to say they have too many people right now. The biggest issue will be caring for their bloated retired population, but honestly the CCP has a strong enough hold that they might be able to just say "fuck them" and hang em out to dry.
Either way I doubt it will be that much of an economic catastrophe, even if it is a humanitarian one.
I went in fully wanting you to be right, but Yegge has 90% good points there, and idk why he removed it. It’s possible there was a bit too much “running of his mouth” like talking about the CEO annual meetup at BillG house.
China does have serious issues with its real estate economy and fertility. But the US also got through the grave issues of 2008, and China still has 1.4b people who take rigorous education a lot more seriously than many in America. And they will have far more people than us in the foreseeable future too.
Do not count China out, they are a “hurricane,” are dangerously aimed at Taiwan, but with better understanding we can hopefully all defuse the situation amicably.
If there’s one broad consensus in American policymaking circles today, it’s that global supply chains need to become less dependent on China.
I agree, and the other way, in many BRICS and other countries, there is a broad consensus that global economies need to become less dependent on US Dollars.
Both efforts at decentralization and lessening concentration of power are probably going to lead to new good results, as hegemons are forced to compete rather than enjoy a near-monopoly worldwide.
There is no consensus among the BRICS or other countries. All of them would like to have alternatives to the US Dollar for international trade settlement. None of them can agree on what that alternative should be. For example, there's no way that India will agree to widespread use of the Chinese Yuan.
No, that can't be done without some sort of political monetary union. India and China will never agree to join the same monetary union. Their interests aren't aligned. Russia has to maintain good relations with both India and China, and can't afford to piss off either one. And South Africa is rapidly collapsing into a failed state with a dysfunctional economy; lately they can't even keep the lights on. It's all just talk, a total joke.
That's the funny thing about all the BRICS bluster, so many of the countries in (or soon to be in) the "group" either hate each other, are barely functioning or are just direct competitors in general. It's amazing anyone thinks they'll do anything that requires cooperation and mutual trust beyond making empty promises.
There were centuries of organizations that tried to prevent war by trust and cooperation. Before the UN was the League of Nations, before the LoN was the Concert of Europe and there were undoubtedly countless efforts prior. But they all failed completely abysmally. Do you know the one thing that actually worked? Countries having nuclear weapons. Suddenly there was a strong self-interest in avoiding war, and "real" war essentially disappeared - at least between nuclear powers.
And I think that's generally true in everything, everywhere. The reason you can walk down the street safely in most places is not because of an implicit agreement of cooperation, but simply because we're all working in our best interest. You don't even consider messing with other people, because you'd just end up in prison for negligible gains. And indeed as soon as that threat and imminence of harsh consequence disappears, it suddenly becomes much less safe to walk down those streets.
BRICS is not united in some ideological conformity, but instead in self interest. They don't want to be dominated by a single hegemon. And I think this form of cooperation based solely on self interest - is far more likely to persist and yield fruitful results. I also expect this is why agreements will, and should, take much longer. Instead of just bum-rushing some virtue filled "Treaty of Whatever" that'll get scrapped by any participating government when it becomes inconvenient, they want to ensure there are implicit self-interest motivated systems driving cooperation through any foreseeable circumstance.
I disagree, China, Russia and India for instance are not at risk of being dominated by the US. All 3 individually had and even still have the ability to have a similar status as the EU.
Their primary complaint is that they wish they were hegemons, except to them hegemony means being far more of an asshole to those you dominate than the US's terms. Thus their need to try to force the issue rather than naturally ending up in that position. This is also an issue India and China would conflict on, as being neighbors, they seek to be hegemons over the same region.
They're talking about moving past the USD, but none of them have the trust and general guarantees it has had and none of them are going to risk putting their trade in a currency that would be dependent on the whims of their direct competitors.
I also disagree with your premise that this is comparable to nuclear deterrence. While nukes have been a deterrent to conflict between the US and USSR, Europe and USSR and perhaps also between India and China, they haven't really been a large factor at all in Europe and in Africa.
I think they've been comparatively peaceful not because of nukes, but because European countries were forced to come to terms with the futility of trying to be hegemons over each other over both world wars, with the second one having finally been brutal enough to make them give that up. Now as WW2 fades from living memory, they remain peaceful due to deep integration between cultures that makes it difficult for them to "other" another enough to justify war.
Here's a couple of great links I might recommend. This [1] is about US involvement in regime change including "at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000" and "64 covert and six overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War." And here [2] is a list of the countries we've invaded which, depending on how exactly you measure it, starts in the 60+ range.
The world order as you know it today is not even remotely "natural." And this is a fundamental component to try to appreciate the geopolitical relations between countries, as well as how other nations are going to perceive the various threats of the world.
So what? None of that is really relevant to global trade, or the currencies used to settle such trades. Nor does it make Russia, India, and China likely to cooperate. Regardless of what the USA might have done years ago, the interests of the major BRICS members aren't aligned today.
Why do you think it's "years ago"? It's scarcely a year since USA left Afghanistan ending a 20-year occupation. Trump refused to leave Iraq despite its government unaniously voting for USA to leave: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraq-asks-u...
Yes, it's true that USA seems to have stopped overthrowing governments in South America (if you don't count the coup in Honduras, or our upcoming invasion of Haiti). But countries across south America remember the decades of overthrowing governments and installing our puppets there. And countries across Africa are seeing it today.
Collectively, the "global south" and the "middle east" doesn't have a great view of the USA. So it's not surprising that many of them are joining BRICS as a way to have some allies against US aggression and hegemony, or at least counter its financial dominance with the dollar, world bank and IMF. It's not unlike the governments of countries that experienced USSR's aggression and hegemony seeking to join NATO, in order to have some allies against USSR, and now against Russia. It's not necessary for all their interests to align, in order for some of them to align. "The enemy of their enemy is their friend", is very much in play here.
But you can go further, beyond governments and politicians (as I like to do) and look at polls of regular people around the world. It's not very favorable to USA. Not just "years ago", but let's just look at the last 20 years. The public in our allied countries in Europe named USA as the greatest threat to world peace:
So what? India and China aren't going to work together to counter the financial dominance of the US dollar, World Bank, and IMF. They can't agree on anything. The rest of the BRICS are too poor and weak to matter.
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of US interventionist foreign policy, but that is largely irrelevant to the global trading system. Money talks, and most of the countries with money (or goods worth trading) are at zero risk of a US invasion.
They already are. And calling the rest of BRICS poor and weak is just overt trolling, but also a probably an indicator of a more genuine misunderstanding of how trade and 'globalism' more generally actually works. For instance Niger most certainly is not a wealthy country, but the 'West' in general is having a fit about the coup there (and getting ready to start yet another war over it) is because in spite of being a small, deeply impoverished nation - they supply something like 25% of all of the EU's uranium needs, at rock bottom costs - in an echo of colonial times.
The only BRICS members with both large and growing economies and militaries are India and China. Calling the others poor and weak isn't trolling, it's just an objective statement of reality.
As for Niger, it's not a member of that bloc nor has it even been invited to join. Regardless of how much uranium they export, they will never have any influence over the international financial and trade settlement system. So, I don't know why you would even bring that up.
I mention Niger both because of your apparent belief that the things we're talking about only happened in the past, and because they're a perfect example of the goal of BRICS. Right now most countries in the world have limited sovereignty. They can do whatever they feel like, right up to the point that it runs contrary to Western interests. But as soon as they cross that line it's time for the old tired playbook of death and destruction: coups, color revolutions, weaponizing "international" organizations, sanctions, outright invasion, funding/training 'moderate radicals', and so on.
BRICS is not about cooperation, but rather about allowing each independent country to fully pursue their own self interest. Right now that's not really possible when relying on economic systems controlled by the US. So we're seeing a gradual shift on the currencies countries hold, US debt holdings, the development of e.g. SWIFT alternatives like SPFS, and so on. The development of a common currency will be the next logical step.
Also aggregating the entire situation is Wall Streets unhealthy laser focus on each Quarter's profits.
Because we all know if a company needs to spend 100mill and a year to bring up a new supply source, their stock price will plummet due to analysts negative ratings.
Probably old fashioned Anglo-Saxon feeling of superiority and fear that world order where white Anglo Saxons dominate markets and geopolitical landscape goes away forever
I don't really understand the argument the author makes about Mexico exporting cars to the USA while importing car parts from China, in terms of dollar amounts. Wouldn't it be better to ask what material percentage of a car manufactured in Mexico consists of auto parts made in China?
> The Economist does present one other piece of circumstantial evidence — a working paper by Caroline Freund of the IMF that finds that countries that have been increasing their exports to the U.S. tend to be countries that trade more with China. But this is a very far cry from showing that China’s value-added exports to the U.S. have remained constant.
It is not a "very far cry". It's almost a direct link. Industries don't just "spun out" of nothingness. These countries are not re-industrializing as much as they are re-labeling. Which is cheaper and has much better margins.
> But there are reasons to think that at least part of the drop in U.S. dependence on Chinese imports is real — at least, the recent drop in the last couple of years. First, Chinese exports overall are down substantially from 2021:
This is a really weird timeline to pick given that the pandemic year saw a very high increase in Chinese exports: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports If you look at it from that angle, it looks more like stabilizing to previous growth.
I find it interesting that both articles (The Economist) have the same prognosis, yet the came at two different conclusions: The restrictions did affect China, but only marginally. Some Chinese producers found ways around it by funneling their capacities through other countries. One is calling it a success and just a start. The other is calling it a failure.
These two articles are fantastic examples of The Economist's journalistic style. We have all the facts, and we use them to come to whatever conclusion is most relevant at the moment.
Noah has become a political pundit who tends to straw man the opponents to his preferred political ideology of centrist us democrat. That’s not to say he isn’t worth reading, it’s good to know what kinds of arguments that group is making because they are extremely powerful. But it’s important to keep in mind when reading articles like this where he’s hitting an extremely reputable magazine that isn’t politically aligned to him. It’s worth reading the article he’s attacking, as while it isn’t perfect it goes into much better detail on the facts than he makes it out to be- especially in something like re exporting where by the nature of the business it tends to be disguised from the public and the personal contacts a paper like the Economist has may be close to the truth.
> Noah has become a political pundit who tends to straw man the opponents to his preferred political ideology of centrist us democrat ... But it’s important to keep in mind when reading articles like this where he’s hitting an extremely reputable magazine that isn’t politically aligned to him.
Huh? The Economist is as liberal-centrist as it gets. Whatever the rift forming here is (and I agree there is one), it's happening within the neoliberal bloc.
Economist is undisguisedly neoliberal, which also means it’s anti protectionist. The us centrist democrats haven’t been neoliberal since Obama. They’ve become nationalist and in favor of industrial policy.
China is no more competitive on labour cost for a few years now, textile sector offshoring began in 2014, since 2018 low value added textile work is virtually dead in China. The network effects (true wealth of chinese manufacturing) in other sector less dependent on labour costs got destroyed by draconian, impulsive and nosensical policies from the government, prompting rational actors (most private companies in a competitive framework) to move out, chinese companies on the first line
There is one pro-decoupling argument to be made wrt the Chinese-owned factory outside China. This factory while owned by China is not under Chinese jurisdiction. If China pulls a Putin this factory is much harder for them to switch off as part of sanctions.
What's CRAZY to me is why this hasn't always been the case. Who thought it was a good idea to depend on unfriendly countries like China? Right, I know who thought that. Those who also claimed "if we trade with them enough, they'll like us" did.
Fuck depending on China, or Russia, for that matter. The West should have all its critical dependencies within it. At most we could get non-critical niceties from the outside, no more than that.
It was Bush Senior, Clinton (with PNTR), Bush Junior. The story of why the US thought PNTR was a good move is long, and has to do with the events of 1989.
Also... Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were both very different from who we have today. China was not necessarily friendly, but they thought there was a good chance of them becoming friendly, especially if their market opened up. For several years after Tiananmen, the Democrats in Congress actually wanted sanctions against the PRC, but it kept getting vetoed, so as not to torpedo the chance.
It's both in the sense that politicians are executives whose job it is to meet the demands of Capital. This also means that politicians are beholden to Capital and their personal ideological inclinations are largely irrelevant — the only options are to serve Capital or be ejected from their position.
The individual executives serving Capital are interchangeable.
China was, for a few years, rapidly modernizing and a relatively open society, unless you were notably politically active. That's not exactly "freedom" but it wasn't a pervasive surveillance state run by a president-for-life. Nor were they a serious military threat to anyone, much less Taiwan or Japan. I saw this firsthand interacting with people in tech in China.
The US <cough>Obama</cough> was too optimistic about the effects of trade engagement with China (and Russia) and now we get some whiplash making up for lost time.
The whole existence of EU is to prevent war between countries within the union through making all depend economically on each other. So far it's been quite successful (0 wars so far AFAIK), but of course it's quite early to say.
Many of the countries in EU have quite the war history with each other.
It's easy to forget that countries like Denmark and Sweden, France and Germany, etc etc used to be bitter enemies with so many conflicts and wars between them that it's difficult to keep track.
I think it takes more than money (i.e. culture). There's also a lot less integration between the West and Russia/China than the countries within the EU. In general, I think it takes a lot of time. Actually, the more I think about it the more I think it's quite complex, so too hard to go into all aspects here.
Then of course, as for China VS West, AFAIK there hasn't been any wars for almost a 100 years?
I also think expectations are set too high. Let's not perfect be the enemy of great - some tension is probably inevitable (Greece VS Germany, UK VS rest of the EU). But the trade war between China and the US (as media likes to put it, or at least did for a few years) is a lot (like, infinitely?) better than a real war.
> So in your opinion why is it that it worked the countries in Europe, but not for West vs China/Russia?
It would've absolutely worked for Russia, if the EU was offering it path to EU membership together with Ukraine instead of forcing Ukraine to choose between tighter economic/political integration between its two neighbors. Time for that was early 2000s, but Europe and USA chose otherwise.
After the fall of USSR it was widely assumed that market economy will make China a democracy given enough time. The euphoria on the early ‘90s in the West is hard to imagine now. End of history and everything.
Sure, but it's not like deciding to make china unfriendly wasn't provoked by china. The US was making legitimate attempt at "bringing china into the fold". Since xi jinping came into power, lots of sketchy stuff has happened on their end that made this strategy less tenable.
For example: being invited to rimpac and then sending uninvited ships (2014)
By the the fold I meant a country that generally plays by internationally accepted customs and cordiality, not a "US client state". If a country invites you to their joint military exercise, you don't spy on them during the exercise. This is basic common sense.
It is impossible to have cordial relations with China while they are threatening to invade our ally Taiwan, and building artificial islands as military outposts in the South China Sea. The unfortunate reality is that China is now our enemy. That situation will persist and probably worsen at least until Xi is replaced.
If china declared Puerto Rico to be it's ally and started building military bases there without US permission, the US would do more than threaten to invade Puerto Rico, it'd do it immediately
Dude, this is blatant whataboutism. Puerto Rico is in no way equivalent to Taiwan, and I suspect you know that.
Taiwan is a sovereign, independent, democratic nation. The Chinese Communist Party has never had political control over Taiwan. It just claims the right to overrule the right to self-determination of 23 million people because it feels like it.
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory, but it could leave at any time. The commonwealth has held four referendums, none of which have found a strong majority for either statehood or independence, so the island kinda keeps muddling along with the status quo. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and though they don't have representation in the U.S. federal government, they also don't pay federal taxes and have an elected local government.
The ethics of the situation are not complicated. The CCP can't just decide to subjugate an independent, democratic people.
> Cuba is a much better one, it's not even hypothetical
America doesn't claim Cuba as its territory.
If China requested parity with Taiwan in respect of America's relations with Cuba (recognition of sovereignty, trade restrictions and no American military presence there), it would be a good deal for everyone.
It's a lease, not a claim. US even sends cuba checks for it.
Not even sure how you can equate a lease of one bay to claiming the whole island. Besides, If china stopped claiming Taiwan was it's territory and insisted on leasing one small base, I think we could all go to sleep better at night.
of course, forget the history behind the formation of Taiwan. forget that the US props it up to maintain a military enclave where it has no right to be, in order to threaten China. it's just an innocent independent democratic people that China seeks to assimilate for no legitimate reason!
Even _without_ the historical context it is completely justifiable from a national security perspective to push out the military presence of the most aggressive nation in the past century.
Lastly - the gall for an American to invoke "self-determination" after its track record.. simply incredible. We are what, one week removed from the leaks re: Imran Khan?
> forget the history behind the formation of Taiwan
> where it has no right to be
Would you like to tell us your version of history according to which Taiwan has no right to be? Because in the one I'm familiar with, one of the factions fighting the civil war won almost everywhere but failed to invade that island.
The fact that they've resisted and survived certainly gives them the right to be, by definition.
They weren't unfriendly, but they were always brutal oppressive regimes. By trading with them, we became complicit in that.
Also, I take issue with the idea that we "made" them unfriendly. I'm pretty sure China and Russia can take responsibility for their own foreign policy.
I mean, this is just the inevitable outcome with autocracies/absolute monarchies. I think we should just assume that countries that are not liberal democracies are poor trading partners and not aligned with the interests of oter liberal democracies.
Because Saudi Arabia is actively commiting brutal genocide on Yemeni people and US governemnt is actually supporting and taking part in that due to SA being US ally.
> The United States was told last year that Saudi security forces were shooting, shelling and abusing groups of migrants, but it chose not to raise the issue publicly.
Is it possible that the US continues to interfere in foreign elections but we don’t know about it because we are subject to propaganda? 50 years ago, do you think the US populace was aware of their governments complicity in overthrowing democratically elected governments? Or did they only come to light 20-30 years later?
China's government wants to attack the people of Taiwan and occupy a sovereign, democratic nation. The U.S. didn't "make" Russia and China unfriendly, they decided to be unfriendly by belligerently threatening their neighbors.
China's intention to attack and occupy Taiwan has been known since its founding. If the U.S. thought it could use trade to talk China out of it, it was naïve.
When the USSR was around, especially near the end, China was actually a quasi-ally of the US. We sold military hardware to them until the Tiananmen Square massacre. We wanted them as a way to counter balance the USSR. Investing in China and engaging in free trade with them seemed like a reasonable way of changing them from communism to something closer to capitalism. China was willing to reform their economic system but we were much less successful in nudging them towards a democracy.
Furthermore, until 2008 and our financial meltdown, China was a willing student of the US. After 2008, China saw how we allowed our financial systems spiral out of control, they turned away and started looking for their own path.
That said, in thing in general, the world should diversify its supply lines. It's just good policy in general -- be it for political reasons, wars, natural disasters, or pandemics.
> What's CRAZY to me is why this hasn't always been the case. Who thought it was a good idea to depend on unfriendly countries like China?
This was a complaint from the beginning and it was brushed aside as xenophobia and not understanding modern economics. Its been a legitimate complaint from the beginning that has been completely ignored, even now whike we are trying to move away from China.
What a truly awful "sign up for my newsletter in order to read my blog post" nag modal. All you have to do is scroll down a bit and then scroll back up, and the modal remains off-screen below the bottom.
A determined user can easily get around this wall, while it's JUST annoying enough to make a casual user (such as myself) close the tab after the second paragraph once the modal appears.
I don't think you should criticize others just because you've adapted to what is clearly a dark pattern.
I clearly see the "continue reading" now, but I definitely recall the first time I saw this popup not seeing it and closing out of the window because I thought substack was demanding signup.
I have no doubt they've a/b tested the hell out of this UX and patted themselves on the back when first time readers started subscribing at record rates... never bother to ask what this meant for the actual UX.
No such modal with uBlock Origin and default blocklists :) (Pro-tip: if you use Android, Firefox Mobile also supports uBlock Origin) You can even import anti-paywall filter lists like:
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China.
This reminds me of my day-to-day work so much; especially w.r.t. transitive dependency management. So:
If service A is 100% dependent upon service B which is 100% dependent upon service C, then service A is 100% dependent on service C.
At some point you need redundancy to protect against disruptions, outages, supply chain issues, policy changes, wars (either physical or economic), etc.
My (probably silly) question is: Does anyone know of "building block" or "core" services (such as authentication, authorization, BLOB storage, data storage, queuing) which are multi-cloud by design? Meaning service X offers SLAs for service endpoints hosted in AWS, GCP and Azure? If/when any of these "go down", consumers can (automatically?) flip a switch to route to another cloud service implementation?