Washington is playing a losing game with China | Hacker News Reader

Washington is playing a losing game with China

responsiblestatecraft.org

34 points1cvmask28 comments

Questionable source:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/quincy-trit...

It tries to paint China as an economic rival, which of course it is, but the danger was and still is its political and military ambitions.

Dubious indeed

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Institute_for_Respons...

Am I missing something here? They’re outside the Overton Window, as any non-interventionist would be in America. But their funding and their membership are legit; it’s certainly not a front for China or some such.

I was at a printing trade conference back in the day, there was a session titled "how to beat China".

We were all tricked as the real topic was "how to offshore to China, because anything else is impossible" no doubt the talk was sponsored by the Chinese. Of course we can compete.

This article leaves me with the same feeling.

Short of outright banning Chinese products like the US did with Huawei I don't see how you can compete with the Chinese when they make things faster, cheaper, and with minimal quality loss. The last point about quality is even debatable.

Tarrifs to compensate for when China uses underpaid labor, slave labor, or ignores environmental regulations. Lots of way to level the playing field with policy that gates access to a market.

If you can still make products faster and cheaper while adhering to the rules businesses in the developed world have to, congrats! You’ll succeed.

Problem is those human rights violations permit slimmer production costs. More to that China has the supply chains and skilled labor necessary to build world class high tech manufacturing that further reduces costs. Sanctions are the only real way to incentivize China to improve its workers' rights such that the rest of the world doesn't have to lower its own to compete.

Lol. Above message sponsored? Might have written "resistance is futile" Just give up? No way man.

They're not exactly wrong. Even if tariffs increase enough for manufacturing capability to be restored in the US, factories will struggle to find the labor (Americans seem disinterested in such work), and the parts and maintenance supply chains will still be dependent on China.

In the short term, but no reason we couldn’t in the long-term.

Right now, we have some manufacturing for N95 masks that started in 2020 and predictably they’re struggling.

We’re still in the midst of a pandemic and hospitals are not securing locally manufactured supplies.

Culprit? Dumping of masks into the local supply chain by China.

It’s insane what we’re allowing to happen.

I thought Americans liked manufacturing labor. As I understand it, it's mostly farm labor that's accused of being "don't want to do". Farm labor is dirty, dangerous, and uncomfortable. Manufacturing isn't exactly fun but it used to be the dream job for low-skilled employees who wanted a lifetime occupation.

That problem, I've heard, is the rest of it: labor was cheaper elsewhere, and now that we've outsourced so much, we lack the infrastructure. I suspect we could do it, if we chose, and the labor would be there. But it would require a ton of money up front, setting up not just one factory but an entire ecosystem.

And even then it wouldn't be any cheaper; shipping advantages are more than outweighed by labor costs. (The labor is there, but there's a minimum wage, and they want it to be higher.) Maybe if there's a cycle time advantage, being able to get to market weeks earlier. But that's an entirely different kind of manufacturing.

> As I understand it, it's mostly farm labor that's accused of being "don't want to do".

It's probably more anecdotal at this stage. I have someone building a factory in my Twitter feed, and he's saying a lot of people in his networks are struggling to find willing workers, but he blames that on welfare payments for Covid (which could be just a temporary thing)

The US should try to export its social justice to China: that's the only thing that can delay the inevitable.

China is rapidly aging. As long as developed countries “hold the line” against China, they’ll sputter out before achieving superpower status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_China

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/how-chinas-populatio...

CCP is also the kind of government that would send the old people to far away farms to grow rice for the "young builders of the new society" and China has 1.5 billions people, so it can keep doing this for a few generations. Bluntly speaking, CCP won't carry the dead weight around.

The issue is the fertility rate is permanently stunted. Even if they go soylent green on the elderly, they’re on a downward population trajectory that is likely locked in by cultural shifts. The longer the fertility rate is held down (China’s was 1.3 for 2020), the harder it is to reverse the trend due to momentum.

Good for the planet and individuals making the choice, bad for the CCP.

https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility+rate

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/china-birthrat...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51145251

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3135342/chi...

That's a made up problem. CCP can just "spend" a bulk of young males in a small war, tell the rest to multiply and in 25 years the populace will double.

Despite the manifold sins of imperialism, the US remains the true vanguard of the revolution of the past two centuries - of the liberation of common folk from the twin yolks of tradition and absolutism. We should continue trying to export our social justice there, and the moral argument for confronting China remains, to me, the most compelling.

I wonder if this article is making this too complicated. It seems to argue for a cooperation and relinquishing of economic power as a way to retain influence, for example by letting the dollar lose its reserve status. That sounds like a disaster, giving up a primary advantage the US has in global influence and authority. The other primary advantage, military strength, seems like it may also diminish if the US doesn’t step up (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/2050-chinas-militar...).

> Washington developed some well-founded complaints about Chinese economic behaviour — and launched a trade war.

The trade war started by China with the basis for those "well-founded complaints". But it was only called a trade war when the US realized it and openly retaliated - after much of their industry and know-how got outsourced.

The US outspent the USSR. China is outspending the US.

The USSR went broke and collapsed. The US is broke and will collapse.

Who will make the Chinese broke?

You and I will both be pushing up daisies before then,so don't worry about it.

If you really want an answer, I'd guess that India in the short term, or maybe Nigeria in the long trem.

Do you find no place for ideology? Perestroika and the collapse of Soviet pieties as hypocrisies - these are mere effects of economic exhaustion, and America will experience precisely the same? What about the inefficiency of centrally planned economies? Could that be why the Soviets went “broke”? In what way do you predict the United States will go “broke” and what do you imagine of its collapse? A geopolitical collapse? Do you imagine Texas will become Belarus?

I believe you analysis is simple to the point of ineffectiveness - with respect.

Ideology?

Nope, I see the problem as financial and economic. You can't embezzle a country of billions (trillions!) and expect that it still has enough money to function properly. A country is really just analogous to a very large Corporation.

In what way do you predict the United States will go “broke”?

The US is already "broke". It has no chance in Hell of ever repaying its debt. The world has lost its confidence in the US economy. The use of the US Dollar as a Reserve Currency is now down to about half of what it used to be, and declining steadily.

Going back to the Cold War 1.0, BOTH the US and the Soviets ran out of money at the end of the 1980s. The US was unfortunate(!) in having the Reserve Currency Credit Card which allowed them to keep spending as though nothing had changed. So now, 30 years later, and 30-odd trillion in debt, the US has no hope at all of recovering - it's just in too deep. The Zimbabwe scenario is close at hand.

On the other hand, because the Soviets/Russians didn't have the Reserve Currency Credit Card, they had to to pull in their belts and try to pay off their own massive (but still manageable at that time) debt. That took them about 15 years, but now they are 'back in the black' and now have quite commendable foreign reserves. Their financial prospects are good.

Do I imagine that Texas will become Belarus? Good question. It's certainly possible that, as a previously independent Republic, when the SHTF that the Texans will refuse to subsidise the other very destitute states with their oil money, so that they can sort out their own Texas financial problems. I'd guess that maybe it's a 50-50 chance that Texas will 'de-merge' to prevent their going down with the rest of the US.

I'll eat my hat, Simon Black, if "the Zimbabwe scenario occurs" or Texas attempts to secede because we're all desperate for their oil to sell to - well, who? I asked the Texas question because it is a bad question - because a positive answer indicates to me a distorted sense of the composition of American society.

America's wealth isn't the dollar's reserve currency status, it isn't its GDP (or conversely the debt-to-GDP measure), it is ~400 million humans and the natural wealth of the richest part of North America, combined with the easy geopolitical security of two vast oceans and two good friends. Our debt is made easier because of the strength of the dollar, just as the British debt was before the Suez crisis. But it is secured by our vast real estate, our technologically sophisticated economy, and, like all national debts, by the easy assumption of future growth in population and economy (this growth being the main reason the national debt is not analogous to household debt).

Our debt is made easier because of the strength of the dollar, just as the British debt was before the Suez crisis.

The Dollar is only strong because there hasn't been an event like Britain's Suez Crisis YET. But the US Dollar is a 'dead man walking' just like the British Pound was a 'dead man walking' before Suez.

Both the Pound then and the Dollar now, had and have only 'belief' holding them up. The economic fundamentals behind both of them being horrifically bad.

But keep believing what you believe. It won't change the outcome.

> But keep believing what you believe. It won't change the outcome.

I'm happily considering your argument - holding up a "The End is Nigh" sign does not improve it.

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