Yes, all that the USA is doing is not solving its own problems, just posturing, threatening, erecting trade barriers, sanctioning countries, forming alliances to counter China and trying to make sure China does not rise to overtake it. All the wrong priorities but taken from the same old playbook that is outdated and obsolete.
I think China decoupling from the USA is a good thing as far as China is concerned, not something that China should in reality fear about. The whole Global South market is all for China to exploit. Africa alone has more than 1.4 billion population, far larger than the USA and Europe combined. Which is why there is no more threat by the USA using the decoupling mantra against China, thinking that China will shiver in its pants. Now, even the de-risking narrative holds no water. The USA depends on China more than the other way round as in the past.
Anonymous
Chinese factories are mostly fully automated. China just needs to keep on producing cheaper energy to run them, which together with more adoption of AI is able to produce even cheaper goods for the Global South going forward.
ReplyDeleteThe West was worried about China's adoption of technology in most sectors and outcompeting against the USA and Europe. Now they are terrified and raising another fear-mongering narrative about China's trade surplus every year as unsustainable and wants China to stop producing and allow the USA and the Europeans to catch up. What are they worrying about whether China's trade surplus is sustainable or not? Are they not hoping that China should collapse now, so that they can continue to lord over everyone else?
China's energy production from nuclear, hydropower, wind and solar is being compensated by cheap oil from Russia is the reason it is able to make things so much cheaper than the USA or Europe. China's energy production is now double the USA, which is suffering energy shortages due to mass setting up of AI and data centers competing with domestic users.
Running factories 24/7 works so well in China that they even mentioned 'dark factories' in China with robots working without lights on. Accusing China of paying slave wages to produce goods cheaply is barking up the wrong tree. Even in Xinjiang, agriculture is carried out using largely machineries hooked up to satellites that enables the machines to run automatically by itself, no such thing as slave labor as imagined by the West.
Scott Bessent demands China curb its exports. Might as well demand that China dismantles all its factories, take down all its high-speed rails, bridges, shipyards and move back to the stone age.
ReplyDeleteWhen a country cannot compete, it must find ways to be competitive, not pull others down to its level. That is regression, defeatist and hitting below the belt.