It always seemed to me that the country buying all the stuff holds the real power. It just feels far more possible to find alternative manufacturers than it is to find alternative markets.
If US-China trade were to stop tomorrow, US would suffer 100x more than China due to lack of critical goods. China would have a dearth of greenbacks.
China June 2023: Massive reverse migration by laborers back to countryside, Shanghai population down 135k compared to 2021 https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3215126/s.... Physical retail closures up to 80%. Entirely empty malls in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Real estate prices dropping 30-50% in tier 1 cities. Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing having 50k+ used homes for sale in span of 2 months. Shipping containers pile up 7 stories in every port https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3210870/c....
US June 2023: not much.
They've always been spectacularly wrong because they don't understand China and don't want to.
Sure, let's talk about broader context and macro trends. unless something big changes, these macro trends won't go away:
- alignment of dictatorship vs free countries. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran vs US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Australia, Philippines, Canada.
- dictatorship is losing. China is propping up all the dictators around the world, and its losing that power
- China demographics collapse
- China's rising and insolvent local government debts, which can no longer generate income by selling land. because China has too many buildings - 6 billion by last count. and demographics collapse. and lack of jobs
- Tech sanctions on China. China's inability to catch up on tech.
which indicates China's stagnation and decline for the next 10-20 years.
I'm sure most of us are aware of the gulags that China ran in 2022, in the most prosperous city like Shanghai, with welded doors, lack of food, arbitrary killing of pets, moving their own citizens against their wills to camps or cells with no running water and unsanitary conditions. with cries in tall buildings from families in the middle of night for food. If. you haven't seen these things, go watch it online. Imagine if somehow China succeeded, and that's all of humanity's fate.