That’s one thing most people don’t understand about China… they import most of their food and energy. They’re stuck playing the nice(ish) neighbor because of where their nation spawned on earth.
The geographic bind for China is the China Sea - they are a trading super power with no bulk overland routes and all sea trade funneled through the one body of water (unlike the US with two large coasts).
[1] https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/countries/43
[2] https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=43&queryLevel=...
1. China relies on chemical and oil imports to create the fertilizer that feeds the country. Cut off these imports and China won't be able to feed itself.
2. Much of China's top exports are processed imports: e.g. China is the world's largest exporter of steel but imports most of its pig iron. The country isn't really "resource rich" in the way the USSR or USA is.
3. In most sectors of manufactured goods, China is only capable of mass-producing low quality goods and so the country is reliant on other countries to provide higher quality goods. Steel is a good example again, China is not only the world's largest exporter of (low quality) steel, it's the world's largest importer of steel, mostly medium and high quality.
> China has been transformed from being a significant importer of all nutrients in the mid-1990s to a major exporter today.
> A program to develop China’s domestic resources was implemented, and China rapidly invested in nitrogen, phosphate and more recently potash capacity.
(Nitrogen)
> China has relatively limited natural gas resources, so gas based plants account only for a quarter of total urea capacity. Instead, it has turned to its relatively abundant resources of coal, which make up three quarters of urea capacity.
etc.
( Also, China has been overusing fertilizer and has recently cut back and still increased yeild [2] )
2. Yes. China has a strong GDP growth (for what that's worth as a metric) on the back of importing, processing, and exporting to the benefit of China - as a country it is still able to survive well enough on its own (perhaps to the chagrin of the the growing Chinese middle class who demand more and more 'luxury' items).
3. China is quite capable of producing high quality steel - they have some of the highest grade iron ore imports available about the globe and they do produce plenty of high grade steel. Where we agree is that China makes an awful lot of money selling an awful lot of low grade steel.
IIRC China imports 16x the tonnage of US iron ore annual production capacity from Western Australia alone - the Chinese high grade steel production can easily dwarf the capacity of US high grade steel production capacity .. and still lose that total tonnage in the magnitude higher production of low grade steel.
It's a chicken and egg story - are we blaming the Chinese for selling low quality goods, or the world for being satisfied to hand over substantial amounts of money for low grade goods? (If they'll pay for crap, why export better?)
[1] https://gpca.org.ae/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/China-Fertili...
[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/03/this-is-how-china-cut...
Also people should be aware this is exactly the sort of thing they're preparing for, while many other countries aren't. The Chinese leadership isn't just massively increasing military spending year by year but also preparing the economy and especially vital industries like agriculture to be more independent and resilient. One could say it's a precautionary measure, in case war were declared.
My guess is democratic nations meanwhile are going to drag their feet and deny the changes right in front of their eyes. This happened with Russia and it doesn't seem like most have learned their lesson from it. Especially certain European nations.
This is a big part of the reason they want to invade Taiwan. Taiwan is strategically located to make it a liability to PRC shipping, should neighboring powers / America ever decide to blockade the PRC. If the PRC takes Taiwan, they gain more breathing room to act aggressively against their other neighbors too.