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Comment by bluepizza | Hacker News Reader

The only way that China gets an upper hand economically is by selling products to the US and the Western world.

If they enter into a conflict where they are cordoned off, their export oriented economy would crash immediately.

A war between China and USA is impossible to win for either sides, due to both military size, budgets, interdependence, and nuclear weapons arsenal. And this is why it's a cold war.

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> The only way that China gets an upper hand economically is by selling products to the US and the Western world.

I am not a geopolitician, but this looks like a little too simplistic perspective, doesn’t it? I mean China diversified its wallet, including by helping to create infrastructures in Africa where there is still a largely growing young population (in contrast to the general trend in the occidental countries, or even what the long standing single child policy led to in China).

If western demand goes away, you think African demand can compensate for that? Domestic would be more realistic, and even there China has nowhere near enough domestic consumption to keep the system running, let alone sustain historical growth rates.

Not really. China has so much manufacturing power that if they limited exports and focused on manufacturing for inland it would have major economic shifts for both china and the west. That's the problem with the world putting all of their manufacturing eggs in one basket

Sell domestically to whom? Domestic buyers ain't buying. That's why they are exporting.

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