Hasn't this been obvious for years? Like, centuries? No major power allows other nations, especially nations which are not close military allies, to dominate its economy. China acts in its own self-interest, as does...every other nation in the history of the planet which is able to. The U.K., the U.S., or any other major economic power, will not allow its economy to be dominated by companies from countries that it does not trust as a close military ally. Both the U.K. and the U.S. only became in favor of free trade once they were the dominant economic power of the world, and prior to that was protectionist. Japan and South Korea protected their economies as they grew, to the extent (given their size) that made sense to. If you're the size of Singapore or the Netherlands, of course, things are different, as you simply cannot do everything, however developed your economy. Also, the U.S. allows someone like the U.K. to have a much bigger presence, because of many cultural and military ties.

But the idea that China ever intended to continue to allow western companies to dominate their economy, once they were developed enough to do something about it, is naive. No nation, that can avoid that, allows it.

Schneider Electric has a fairly large presence in the US...to what I can imagine is a huge benefit to both Europe and the US. Bosch, VW (let’s forget the scandal for a minute)...

This goes beyond so much more than this particular article. The ‘western’ world is building a global civilization, and it seems like anyone is invited if you play by the rules. All of the China doves over the last 3 decades probably thought China would open up in that way and join the ‘developed’ world.

I mean, fuck, Samsung is a huge compnent of the US economy, isn’t it?

No, fuck China, and protectionism in general. They had (still have?) an invitation into the global civilization. It’s based on rules, that you have to follow. Of course there are criminals (hsbc, Libor, etc...) but overall it’s based on rules.

This ‘realpolitik’ that has taken over, where ‘yeah of course nations act in their own best interest’ is not the complete picture, because at some point, a nation’s self interest is in cooperation.

Well, there are certainly German companies operating in the US market, but: 1) Germany is a NATO ally, and the US has military bases in Germany, which is very different than the relations between China and the US 2) Germany does not have any possibility of dominating the US economy in the way that US companies could (if allowed) dominate the Chinese economy

South Korea, like Germany, has a military alliance with the US, and the US has military bases in South Korea. Again, there is also no real danger of South Korea dominating the US economy on the scale that the US could (if allowed) dominate the Chinese one.

Lastly, there are rules in the "global" economy, but those rules have mostly worked to the benefit of the countries that made them (see results in Latin America and Africa for what happens if you follow IMF and World Bank advice on opening up your economy). South Korea, Japan, and other "Asian tigers" mostly did NOT follow IMF/World Bank advice, and that's why it worked for them. China is basically doing the same thing Japan, South Korea, etc. did a couple decades ago.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't care, or even respond, but we shouldn't be surprised, or expect something different in the future.

Yeah, you play by rules, as long as it benefits you. Why does US so strongly advocate banning of Huawei devices, in the whole world? You say Huawei may have backdoors, but who don't? And Huawei may be the cleanest as it just "may", while the other competitors have a history of "do".

The slogan "America First" doesn't sound so globalistic. And playing by rules is definitely not before America, which is first.

>> Huawei may have backdoors, but who don't?

Apple doesn't. The American company.

They sell terminal, personal devices, which is not the same thing as building the 5G network. I think the Snowden revelations have made it perfectly clear that the western governments have been extensively monitoring network traffic/infrastructure since forever.

If the chinese government demands it, they will.

You still fail to see it, do you? Or maybe you're just too blinded by western mainstream propaganda, or even deliberately trumpeting the propaganda. I'm not sure.

The whole precondition and reason of all those other countries being allowed to join this so-called "global civilization" and play by the so-called "rules" is because America remains the undisputed No.1 in this set of rules. America pretty much controls every aspect of the social fabric of its allies and they can't live without their big brother and protector.

If you actually talk to some Japanese and Germans, or even French, you'd find out how much apathy and even antipathy towards this American hegemony they harbor. Particularly those who don't stand to benefit a lot from this situation. I recall particularly vividly a survey where the perceptions of Germans towards America are substantially worse than the perceptions the other way round.

For CCP, the national independence and sovereignty is always the top priority, not least due to the humiliations and pain suffered in the hands of the former colonial power.

Naturally, the consequence of the rise of of an independent China is that the American hegemony is under threat. And this is the reason why America has been so keen to act against China. This is understandable, as power transitions/struggles between two great powers have rarely occurred peacefully throughout the history.

But at least you should recognize this reality instead of trumpeting the "global civilization", "democracy" propaganda nonsense. If the US actually cared the least bit about civilization and democracy, would it have sent agents to topple so many democratically elected regimes around the world, just to install their own dictator puppets and let the people suffer in eternal poverty? Would it have fought so many senseless wars and killed so many civilians?

The aim of the US is to keep its hegemony and try to keep all the other nations in their "allocated" positions. It doesn't give a damn about whether the actual population of those nations improve their living conditions or anything like that.

Similarly, the so-called "doves" are not really concerned about China's growth, but rather have expected China to occupy a preallocated place, where it would perform the roles that benefit the West, but not threaten their dominance in key industries and sectors at all. "How nice it would have been for China to remain a cheap manufacturing hub instead of trying to become a technological superpower." Too bad. China is not willing to play the ball and harbors greater ambitions than that, which it has every right to do.

This is just how politics works. But at least see it and acknowledge it. If you can't even do that, you're not seeing through even the most simplistic mainstream propaganda, and that's tragic.

Well said. The mainstream propaganda is just way too prevalent. If people actually read a bit of history of their own countries they'd immediately find out how brutal the struggles between the western countries have been and how incredibly "protectionist" and hostile their own governments have been.

> Chinese culture of copy-catting freely doesn't help.

The problem with that, is that it's a vicious circle. Innovation is the foundation for future innovations. It builds on itself. It lays the groundwork and foundation for what comes next. By leapfrogging and cheating its way to the top (or near the top) they are sacrificing that crucial infrastructure for future discoveries and innovations.

China has to copy & steal IPs because it simply doesn't have the culture to compete. They're one of the least innovative countries on Earth, year after year. And the only way to change that is by allowing its citizens to think creatively, outside the box -- to be able to challenge authority. But China doesn't want that; they want conforming little worker bees who follow the party line.

> China has to copy & steal IPs because it simply doesn't have the culture to compete. They're one of the least innovative countries on Earth, year after year.

Funny thing, that's exactly what people used to say about Japan, and then about South Korea. (And the typical work environments in both countries do not exactly encourage creativity or challenging the status quo, either. So I'm not sure what difference that might make.)

I wonder if this comment is racist. China never was and is not the least innovative countries on Earth. The Chinese internet companies are micro-innovating at a speed no country in the world can compete.

Let's say this, the counterparts of Facebook and Twitter has already fallen or on its way to fall out of favor in China because people found more interesting ways to waste their time and find useless information. Soon, you will find Facebook and Twitter doing the same, and in that order.

Sites and apps surviving the Chinese market are the real winners, and those who cannot will fail in other countries too. That is the power of a large enough testbed.

This is just wrong. By many measures, China is one of the most innovative countries on earth. Take scientific citations for example: https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/chinas-citations-catch...

How much of those are legitimate though? There have been cases of fraud and falsifying information.

"Since 2012, the country has retracted more scientific papers because of faked peer reviews than all other countries and territories put together,..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-...

Given that the Nature Index only measures top quality publications, China's contribution to science is second only to the US's.

https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2018/country/all

Scientific citations seem like a very poor metric for a country that is plagued by scientific fraud.

Do you have any other benchmark apart from citations?

Bloomberg Innovation index: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/3hi4O/2/?abcnewsembedheight=55... China is 16, ahead of the UK and Canada

Global Innovation Index: https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii-2018-report China is 17

That's just such a simplistic and naive view of the matters. You've probably just read too much stereotyping propaganda, unfortunately.

A simple example is how Facebook and co. have recently expressed they're looking at WeChat as an example to learn from. There are many more.

Act how? What precisely could be done outside of protectionist policies that seem to be regarded as outmoded, inefficient, and taboo.

Are we going to war? Isolationism? React in kind? Simply wait?

It seems the parent is suggesting that we block Chinese companies from operating in the USA, basically tit-for-tat retribution. Based on "...while their own companies operate freely in those foreign countries"

This might be applicable for hardware sales, but for service companies (including ecommerce, search, ride hailing, all the big USA tech company niches) it's kind of a moot point. None of the big Chinese companies put any effort into working outside of China. In fact my biggest complaint is they don't do any internationalization at all, so if you don't read Chinese you basically can't use anything. To the extend that services even work outside of China they are mainly only used by Chinese people, see for example WeChat or Taobao or Baidu. So I'm not sure this line of action would have any effect.

If the parent instead meant blocking Americans from doing any business with China (as a manufacturer of smartphones, for example), that's likely to have much more downside to American companies and consumers than to China, so we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot.

But all these points are debatable, see all the back-and-forth about the tariffs/trade war. Some great economic write-ups on all sides.

Well it's a difficult problem, and tit-for-tat retribution could be the optimal action based on my little knowledge on game theory (https://ncase.me/trust/). Yet if things would go badly and the global economy go into turmoil, I think it would be notably worse for both.

Another problem I've noted is also the Chinese companies buying up Western companies and seemingly operating as Western, but actually being fully owned by the Chinese companies which might be even indirectly owned by the Chinese government. Volvo, Supercell, Nokia phones (HMD Global) comes to my mind. From what I learned Western companies can not similarly buy Chinese companies at least fully, and part-Chinese ownership is almost required for a company to become highly successful in China.

So my conclusion is that if foreign companies can't operate freely in China, why should Chinese companies be able to operate with much less restriction in those same countries. Especially if it yields a monetary benefit for the Chinese doing so. Doesn't seem smart. Would love to see some actual research on this.

That corporate ownership aspect is actually a good point. I'm not well-versed on the legal complexities of international ownership or the pros and cons of corporate governance in that situation, but it's definitely something worth looking into further.

On a related note, I find it frustrating how so much residential property in San Francisco is owned by Chinese investors/real estate moguls. I have no idea what the fallout would be to limiting the ability of international entities to own so much property here, but I imagine it would help with the sky-high rents. It's not a line of reasoning I've ever seen a good write-up on, so I would be curious to understand it better.

Individual actions to enforce norms often costs more than the individual infringements. Arresting, prosecuting and rehabilitating someone who commits property crime could cost many tens of thousands of dollars. It's worth it in the long-run, though, despite game-theoretic oversimplifications, because it reduces crime in the long run.

(Almost) everyone agrees that protectionist policies are directly harmful to America's economy. I wonder if people might be more willing to accept them as tools to encourage change in other countries behaviour if they were sold better, though, or sold by someone else.

Rethink fashions and taboos and check whether these policies have merit?

A market works well when it's not distorted.

Well that's exactly what Trump is doing with his trade war [1].

The goals are: 1) removing trade/current-account imbalance (which has improved on its own due to the massive spike in Chinese tourism [2]), 2) allowing more Western companies enter China without forced technology transfer or other "unfair" practices, 3) reducing the rampant intellectual property violations in China.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...

[2] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/03/14/c...