Western countries: "OK."
China: applies protectionism, obtains unprecedented growth, steamrolls markets
US, Western countries: "Free market is obviously much better, protectionism and planned economies are inefficient and can't work, but... but... they're cheating!"
At least the US acts in their own interest (anarchy, i.e. the free market, makes sense if you're the strongest). What's pathetic is that European countries believe all the neoliberal dogmatic BS when we don't even benefit from it.
If every country plays by these rules except one, which uses mercantilist tactics to win zero sum games, that one country will have an advantage.
If every country plays by mercantilist rules, that advantage will not be there for everyone, since now the game has changed.
China's "unprecedented" growth was achieved by Japan and Korea during their peak growth period. Britain was the original champion of liberalization while the US was protectionist for much of its history. The EU is still quite a bit richer than China and has done well during this liberal period since nearly destroying itself in WW2. There are so many details you are choosing to ignore.
I actually don't fault China for executing their strategy, it certainly made logical sense and has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. I also don't fault Europe for executing their strategy and they have benefited from it - Europe was ravaged by wars over its history and one of the ways to avoid that was tight economic integration. Different circumstances require different strategies.
China doesn't have the domestic market they could have if they hadn't weakened their currency by transferring wealth from savers to the exporters.
I used to see the Ericsson guys once a year and they seemed to be pretty busy bragging about all the new 5G patents they have.
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/us-eyes-nokia-erics...
Granted, I would think some market protections would also make sense.
The west complains about China stealing IP, but the west were doing the same long before the Chinese - the difference is the scale and brazenness of China's tactics, and indeed the vast success of those tactics.
Currently, the above is not even a policy choice considered openly by Western governments, not that I know of. We are forfeiting technological lead in this domain despite US making the first big steps in same domain in WW II and later with state backing, history plays jokes like that I guess.
Too many people are brain wormed by ideas stemming from liberal philosophies. China is not benevolent, they're rising power. They don't share same ideas of society as we do. Free markets haven't existed in hundreds of years. Yet all are influential ideas that stop us from addressing China realistically. Talk of bringing democracy to China for example is not realistic. The Communist Party has 90%+ acceptance rate by the populace.
That statement comes with so many questions. What is meant by “acceptance”? It definitely sounds like a weaker word than say “support” or “approval”. The least favorable interpretation would be that “acceptance” simply means “I don’t currently intend to overthrow the current government ”. If we’re using that definition, trump probably would have a 90%+ “acceptance” rating as well. Definitions aside, getting accurate polls on political topics in totalitarian countries is tricky because the respondents are incentivized/pressured to answer in support of the current regime.
"accurate polls on political topics in totalitarian countries is tricky because the respondents are incentivized/pressured to answer in support of the current regime.
Are we describing China or Brexit/Trump polls from 2016.
Snark aside, there's a huge difference between the two. In the case of brexit/trump, even if there was social pressure to not reveal your real preferences to the pollsters, everyone's real preferences are accurately represented at the polls. Moreover, nobody is risking getting sent to reeducation camps or getting their social credit scores ruined by saying they support trump or brexit. This is as opposed to China where the only measure you have are opinion polls, and the only cross-check mechanism is whether the CCP is still in power or not.
What the Chinese have is a formal system, and I can't quite tell if the informal liberal system isn't worse. This was a point of contemplation for Andrei Navrozov as an emigrant from USSR to US in the 1970s in his book "The Gingerbread Race" [1]
> [1] https://archive.org/details/NavrozovAndreiTheGingerbreadRace...
Nobody can, that's why US imposing sanctions.
I would believe much more into pollution talk by my dear leaders if 1. We were springing up nuclear reactors 2. Stopping third world immigration into Europe 3. Had concrete trade moratoriums against India and China. This would probably cause issues with US defense and military industries though, the situation is rather fragile [1]
> [1] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americas-mo...
A lot of the execs in various companies downplay this concern, say "it's not going to happen this time" and then dip out with 7 figure bonuses before it happens again, this time. The majority of the people doing actually work seem to see right through it.