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Comment by nullnilvoid | Hacker News Reader

China is by far the largest aviation market in the world. They don't need other markets to succeed. If they can replace Boeing and Airbus with their home-made airplanes, that is a huge success. According to research, China needs more than $1 trillion worth of airplanes in the coming decade. That is HUGE.

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Expect the Chinese state to create a very friendly environment for those domestic planes.

Did it in other markets, currently under way against the iPhone.

Airbus and Boeing are toast in China.

They did it against Google, Facebook, and Youtube as well.

As a 3rd party observer with no stake in either the US or China, I wonder how the USA would react if China was the #1 in the world economically, and exporting Facebook, Boeing, etc. I imagine we'd see some American protectionism.

The WTO was created to prevent these shenanigans. Europe and US play ball, mostly. EU/NAFTA/CETA/TTIP all part of that leveling of the playing field.

China does not play ball, at all. Literally don't give a shit about the Wests opinions or approaches to deals. Perceived in the West as cheating, but that is just a cultural viewpoint.

China is #1 in the world economically, and exports Baidu [1], WeChat [2], etc. Baidu has had a Silicon Valley presence for years, and Tencent, WeChat's parent, opened one last week.

WeChat could be a real threat to Google and Facebook. It's comprehensive; you can do messaging, banking, shopping, and taxi calling from inside WeChat. It has sub-applications for other services. It's a post-desktop world. Google and Facebook came from desktops and crammed down to phones; WeChat was born mobile.

[1] http://www.baidu.com/ [2] http://www.wechat.com/en/

I think it's possible that the culture barrier during the initial days of social networks might have been the cause here. Cultures/aesthetics/languages are different and so platforms that serve as "one size fits all" (not localizing their layout and options) might not be able to compete with more local options at this scale.

What about Huawei? Huawei was banned from entering US telecom infrastructure market [0].

[0] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/22/huawei-well-re-enter-us-marke...

Euhm. Not to blow your bubble, but the US is extremely flexible and open economically. Far more so than any other country on the planet.

Europe is pretty inflexible, compared to the US. E.g. there is no free market for most agricultural products in the EU. And before you say it, no this is not due to US meats having hormones in them. Firstly, those taxes and rules apply to everything, whether or not produced with EU rule compliance, and secondly, there isn't even a free market within the EU for many products (e.g. wine in France. Olive oil (or other oils) in Southern Europe, ...). And of course, the EU is certainly not neutral when it comes to other products as well, e.g. Boeing vs Airbus.

China is extremely INflexible and hostile to free trade, even today. VERY few commodities trade freely with China, even just taking the published import tariffs and conditions.

Add to that that the Chinese state famously owns pretty much every large Chinese corporation (state owned enterprises) and it's influence and restrictions over what products are welcome in China goes above and beyond the officially published rules.

So I believe a fair assumption would be that no, the US would not object too much to large Chinese companies being successful in the US. In fact, I do believe there's large scale examples of that if you search just a little bit.

For a practical example of the US allowing large non-US businesses to operate freely in the US, even where it hurts local industry, you only need to look at the steel industry.

To me, that fact used to seem simply protectionism, but honestly it's very reasonable.

Google and Facebook in particular are a security agencies dream - people volunteering to share messages, location, what they're reading, who they're friends with, etc - that a rational country would be afraid of from even friendly nations.

Airbus and Boeing will do just fine in China selling widebodies (and probably continue to sell A320/737s in somewhat smaller numbers too unless the C919 turns out to be an exceptional aircraft as opposed to a half-decent aircraft with subsidised purchase cost)

I think you can add Furniture and Solar Panel markets too... really India should be large enough to make some of the same plays fostering domestic industry too, but they either don't do it as much or you don't hear about it as much in US media.

They don't need other markets to succeed.

They don't "need" those markets but they want them. It will help to solidify China's position as the third superpower.

There are incentives for those African nations to help this happen as well. Beyond the local benefits of increased commerce, they are thinking about negotiating better rates for their natural resources than they currently receive from the west.

Boeing and Airbus want those markets as well. They don't want them any less than China does.

They want them just as much but don't have nearly as much to offer in return.

Boeing and Airbus have higher costs, though. They can't pay Chinese wages.

Serious question. What is the second superpower? EU?

The USSR was the second superpower. The USSR no longer exists and there isn't currently a second superpower but I think of it like spouses.

If you're married and divorced twice, when you marry again you may have only one spouse but that is your third spouse.

So does that make England the 0th superpower and maybe France the -1st? ;)

China led the world for a long time way before the superpower concept was even a thing. It fell behind only recently since the 1st Industrial Revolution started.

It really depends on how you define "superpower". There isn't any country that can project force the way the US can.

The EU certainly has the technology to be a military superpower, and a few member countries have relatively powerful land and air forces, but the Europeans don't have the logistics capability they'd need to fight a major war outside Europe, and their collective navy isn't very strong.

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