Exports are a little under 20% of China’s GDP. For reference, they are a bit over 10% of US GDP.

China’s current government quite literally killed 30 million people under the cultural revolution and Great Leap Forward, and until 2015, killed all children past the first.

China is not motivated by what makes economic sense. The party openly says this - the very fact corporations exist is a concession to not having achieved pure communism yet. The party openly hates the fact they need an economy, after having failed for the first few decades to operate without one.

All it takes, quite literally, is one hardcore communist after Xi who isn’t afraid of a second cultural revolution. Maybe a chance to fix all their consumption, housing, and youth issues once and for all in one painful societal restructuring? The very economic and social issues we point to as why they would never do it, I fear, might actually become reasons they will do it.

I swear, “Chinese collapse” has been on the news headlines since 2000s. At some point people need to give up on the idea that their system doesn’t work. Yes, it sucks from our perspective, because we would have less rights and freedom. But quality of life of an average Chinese has been increasing YoY, despite some hiccups. They obviously screw up big time (pandemic lockdowns, current above average youth unemployment), but they don’t mind pivoting hard. Baseless hate when a country fails to compete is just sad to watch as an outsider who has no skin in the game.

It's a coping mechanism that needs to be parroted to keep the people in the west from questioning the status quo. "Look china/russia/iran/india bad ! Sure, we're not doing well and your quality of life is eroding year on year but hey ! In china you can't question tienanmen square so there's that"

It's sad, but as long as people continue to believe in this mythology of "absolute freedom", it will continue to work.

I don't know anyone trying to move to china/russia/iran/india. The outflows however continue to be extensive.

A lot of people are moving to Russia China and India from non western nations that use to send their top talents to the EU/US.

A lot of people are moving to Russia, now? China also has seen their ex-pat communities reduced by 90% since Covid.

ex-pat meaning westerners right ? You do know the world doesn't revolve around the west ?

I did, but those numbers include all foreigners. Where are you getting your data from?

I do think there's some mutually-assured destruction here. If trade truly ends, I suspect it might end in a hot war, and no one knows how that would go. (Though to support some of the comments here, and the implied point of the original essay -- China's manufacturing base becomes much more strategically important in a hot war scenario.)

I mean, we've sort of long assumed that increasing trade ties led to peace, and the detente between the US and China was long taken as proof of that axiom. But morons with half-formed ideas about trade policy can blow up detente in less than 100 days, as it turns out.

> If trade truly ends, I suspect it might end in a hot war

Have two nuclear powers ever gone to war directly?

I'm pretty sure it isn't going to happen because ultimately the leadership on both sides would be assured of being vaporized, and no leader on either side has the guts to actually die in a conflict (especially where there could very likely be no real winner, and no glory, at all).

As long as that holds, we're actually pretty fortunate in that we avoid these stupid types of wars, and we're forced into these frustrating (for chest-beating tough guys) economic rivalries instead.