U.S. President Joe Biden told Chinese President Xi Jinping following his meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to “be careful” because Beijing relies on Western investment.
I thought I’d read something recently that China is in danger of defaulting on like a trillion dollars of debt, to a bunch of US bondholders. Dunno what that means here, but
The former Chinese government (now kmt in taiwan) took a loan like 80 years ago. after the war, the PRC and the USA both just kinda assumed China wasn’t ever going to pay.
For a while there USA maintained that the KMT was the government in exile, but with normalization with the PRC, that all kinda got swept under the carpet.
The US debt held by China today, is the same as other countries are holding. People need to believe this will be one day repaid and profitable.
Xi will be remembered in the same breath of those like Mussolini. Not quite as bad as Hitler, but evil nonetheless. Ally to Putin, who will be remembered much higher on the Hitler scale.
You can abandon your moral compass and fail to see that, but at the end of the day it remains true.
i am curious how obama, churchill , Bush will be remembered.
edit:i hate xi and fuck putin, you said "bad guys " means you think there are good guys as world leaders on other side . i know what they did and doing but check your moral campass before pointing fingers at others .
in public comment chain i was talking to other guy
bruh 💀 you said you wont take polticle advise from me i was not giving advise and even if i were not to you you came in thread without any reason acting like grammer police.
Most allies are helping, because while they may not trust the US, their interests are the same. China is moving towards war with Taiwan, which the rest of us don't want. China is also moving away from freedom which again the rest of us don't want.
And the West relies on Chinese manufacturing. All the scare mongering surrounding China, the US already would have pulled investment if they actually were the ones in control. The West has hitched its wagon to China at this point. They have no real alternative to turn towards.
There’s a very simple way to measure the migration of manufacturing out of China.
get a list of the top ten cargo ports in the world. count how many are mainland China?
7 or 8 right?
okay let’s go down the list until we get Vietnam or India or someplace where’d you’d expect the manufacturing to go to.
aight… now compare all the cargo capacity for that entire country to one of the eight ports in China? tell you what, let’s include India, and Rotterdam, and LA… just add them all together. How many of 8 does it take to keep up with that 2 or 3 ?
so, cargo shipping capacity… big difference right? day light.
Vietnam wants to make iPhones. you gotta ship 110% of the various bits into Vietnam and then ship out 99% of the finished goods.
all those ports come with piles and piles of back end infrastructure. roads. trucking. rail. skilled workers…
there are infinite alternatives to China. but it will take 40 years to develop any of them to that level.
There are huge differences between China and countries like Vietnam and Mexico.
Vietnam is significantly poorer with poor infrastructure. They don’t have the capacity to move enough finished products onto modern container ships today. Their electricity infrastructure is unreliable, their local freight rail is poor, and their roads are awful. Chinese wages are much higher than Vietnam now, but because of economies of scale, China can invest in the best industrial infrastructure in the world to help keep prices down for manufactures in every other part of the business process. Vietnam could catch up one day, but they are far behind. India is also in this same position.
Mexico has wages that are just as high as China, but also has terrible infrastructure and and a failing government. No one in China is worried their products will be held hostage by drug gangs, or that their engineers inspecting their factories will get kidnapped.
China is doing so well because they have planned ahead. They created world class manufacturing infrastructure around Shanghai and Shenzhen that have laid the groundwork for modernizing the entire country. They have done a very good job building their “moat” to discourage manufacturers from moving elsewhere, there are just too many potential savings to keep manufacturing in China rather than take a risk moving elsewhere. Despite the US pushing “derisking” so hard, it will have only a slow impact on pushing companies to leave, because the US cannot actually offer them a better deal to move somewhere else.
Are there alternatives though? Apple moved some production to Vietnam, for example. Do you know who’s their partner in Vietnam? Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., better known as Foxconn. Yeah, China, again.
The U.S. has been taking steps to change this, particularly in light of the supply chain issues that have popped up along with everything Taiwan. The process is slow, however, and possibly even slower than economic growth.
Wouldn’t this be more of a double implication though? Without China to manufacture goods, the West is out of goods, but without the West to purchase said goods, China just gets stuck with a huge amount of goods it can only sell at a discount to other nations, thereby reducing their profit margins. Surely if other places were willing to pay just as much as the West for goods, they would be sold there as well, to not have all eggs in the same basket.
Sort of like what I read on a lunch place - “Eat here, or we both starve”.
Not trying to start a pro-/anti-anything discussion, genuinely curious about the mechanics at play here, global economics, game theory and all that.
Absolutely! Doesn’t change the fact that Biden’s warning is toothless bluster. If he actually tried to end US investment in China it would collapse the world economy. It’s a M.A.D. world
That’s exactly his point though. It’s more a reminder, less a threat. It actually sort of touched on it in the article, China’s relationship to Putin vs the West.
It’s sort of going "we see you eyeing off Taiwan, and chumming up to Russia… Please remember that there IS in fact a red line. We’ve told you where it is and if you cross it, you’ll likely destroy us both. Please don’t go thinking that you’ll be fine, because your economy relies heavily on ours, the same as ours does yours. "
Escorts our of south was Asia were over 70% from China a few years ago and we’re only 50% from China last year. These numbers are from my memory so probably not exact but close enough.
Decoupling/derisking is happening quickly with all major players moving to a china +1 policy for manufacturing.
Hopefully they're not run by autocoratic dinosaurs that dream about restoring an ancient empire for ego reasons while oppressing and lying to billions of people.
Historically industrialisation led to wealth long term. Maybe we're in too nice of a position to judge those who strive for a better life in a globalised world.
About 22% of Taiwan’s imports last year came from mainland China and Hong Kong, versus 10% from the U.S. That doesn’t quite match up with most people use Chinese products every day. Current relations with China are so bad that most of that trade has dried up.
Listen, I literally lived there for years, I have family there, and I visit all the time. People buy and use Chinese goods every day. Xiaomi smart phones and gadgets are super popular. Chinese phone brands like realme and oppo outcompete local brands. People buy Chinese groceries all the time, especially flavorings and hot sauces. People import Chinese books, watch Tencent TV, and listen to Chinese music. They speak the same language so of course people will buy goods and media content from China.
Even though virtually everyone hates the Chinese government, most people still interact with Chinese people, media, or goods on a daily basis. And this isn’t even getting into business supply chains; Taiwan’s dirty secret is that most Taiwanese businesses are very pro-China, even though your average person is worried about China having too much influence.
Where do you think TSMC buys the concrete for their facilities comes from? The copper wiring? What about the rare earth minerals that are used in the production process to make chips? Where do they source their steel from? There are thousands and thousands of components that go into building the capital that makes chips, or just into making the buildings that make up their facilities, or even just the materials for the dormitories for their workers. There is inevitably a ton of Chinese products being used at different points in the TSMC supply chain. The most advanced components are from the US, Europe, and Japan, but numerous other components will be made in China.
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