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Originally Posted by Steel_Tomb
I think its possible to get the western powers away from china. we just need to build up our own manufacturing base over the next decade or two, then just slap china in the face and stop all trade with them. their economy depends on exports so much it would just crash. chinese goods are crap anyway, the place is so corrupt. I mean all the cases of lead in kids toys must have done some damage.
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Oh?
There is no cheat code for "just" rebuilding the manufacturing basis. It needs to be financed, and that process is a complex thing with billions of intricacies. The current crisis at stockmarkets is not all for nothing, and once national industries today are acting as global, indepednant actors and no longer necessarily obey the ruling of national governments - it's more the other way around these years. - "Just" slap china in the face? Fact is that chinse economy is self-supplying and autark in all reghards that dirctly affect the survivability of the Chinese people, which of course especially means the agricultural sector. Their one problem is oil, like for us, but they have far moire money reserves to pay for it, plus they have close ties to many oil-producing countries inclduing the OPEC, and china can use the anti-Wetsern ressentiments in many Muslim oil-producing countries and Venezuela to work to their advantage. - Stopping all trade with them? The huge corporations do not ask for your permission to do so, you know. They have made many investem,ents, and want to see profit for that. sooner or later the Chinese will freeze many of them out and take possession of what they left behind, they already have established this as common practice, since many years. - Finally, quality, I have to say chinese goods slightly but surely imporve their quality, and in some fields they are already competing with international standards. The toys you mentioned: to a considerable ammount they were like they were due to design plans given to them from - their American orderer, Mattel. anyhow, these problems may have triggered some hyped attention, but in no way they are of the ammount that it does any damage to China'S trade and economical interests.
In other words: you understimate them, and you overestimate our own options.
The major problems they have: overaging of society due to the one-child-policy. Massive environmental pollution and poisened food. the major advanatge they have: unlimited quantities of low-wage workers, autarky regarding essential supplies for daily living of population. Monumental dollar reserves to be used as a weapon. Rapid decreasing of gap between their technological standard, and ours. An authoritative government that is not really challenged by the population. An understanding that their state-controlled economy model can profit from implementing certain principles of market economy. A rapidly increasing power of their military, of which some analysts say it already has the capacity to deny foreign navies entrance into China's local maritime sphere of interest. a massive alliance of small nations that in the UN and other bodies could be told to rally with China, and against the West.
I think we missed the time window to mess with the Chinese. We can't get them econo0mically, but they can get us. We cannot get them militarily. We cannot get them fincially, but they can get us. And they can strike the international stockmarket whenever they want - or let the mere unspoken threat of this work in their favour.
So what is left that "just" needs to be done to teach them...? - With one hint you are right, though. We cannot start by confronting them. We must start by bringing our own house in order and storm-prove. But that is a problem for Europe. And an even greater problem for America, which is depending on living on tick beyond all reason and sanity. This is not the 40s and 50s, and they will not come back