I strongly recommend that you read CDR Salamander’s post on why we cannot go to war with China. The title is “You Can’t go to War With Your Factory” and the graphics tell the story.
I’ve have been saying this for years. I have very strong feelings about the people who put us in this situation but I will just repeat: read the post.
An interesting site is, Inside China Business, on YouTube. The publisher does business in China, and he produces short (10 min) videos on one subject or another about business in China.
China has a policy of establishing itself at the center of almost every conceivable supply chain, and it seeks control of every material critical for modern economies. Moreover, the CPC runs a command economy, and they are not bound by profit and loss considerations. Their dominant considerate is state power, especially against competitors. So while Intel’s and TSMC’s chip fab projects in the US falter (because they look like money losers), China just builds chip fabs regardless of cost.
The sheer scale of China’s economy beggars the imagination. Nowadays they have about one-third of the world’s manufacturing capacity, 75% of the world’s ship-building capacity. They have something likw two-thirds of all the industrial robots in the world, buy most of the ones manufactured every year, and optimize their robot factories using AI running on 5G. By the way, they have 80% of all the 5G base stations in the world, the good Huawei ones.
Our own government has repudiated the One China agreement Nixon signed in 1972. And our overt attempts to make Taiwan independent have increased the likelihood of a Chinese invasion. The CPC once thought economics would lure Taiwan into voluntary reunion, but now a war is a real option.
Our elites have also managed to create an alliance or sorts between Russia and China, the fourth and first biggest economies in the world. Together, Russia’s and China’s economies exceed the US/EU economy.
We have also thoroughly scrambled international relations everywhere, and the now 10-member BRICS has received applications from another 20 to 30 countries. Turkey may become a member. The economies of the current BRICS countries exceeds the G7.
Our elites are suicidal.
To underscore this consider auto production only. China doesn’t just have enough productive capacity to satisfy its own needs it has enough productive capacity to satisfy global needs for the foreseeable future. That sort of over-capacity is only possible in a command economy like China’s.
That also has implications for developing countries. They cannot follow the path that China has. China’s over-capacity precludes that.
President Biden, possibly unknowingly, has done that. That the political leadership wished it is corroborated by Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taipei.
@BobSykes:
Sounds like you have given a full throated endorsement of the Chinese Communist model. Is that what you mean to do?
I’m aware that the U.S. is not the same country it was 100 or more years ago, with monopolies headquartered out of country, politicians owned by corporations, are you suggesting that a command economy is better?
Sounds like that.
I’m certain that you are aware China cannot supply the world with any manufactured products at all without the U.S. guarantees that shipping is safe in the South China Sea and Pacific.
I do agree that war is the last thing we need with China, let them break their teeth and economy on Taiwan, although I must add, with another Democratic administration, we’ll break ours with them.