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Comment by holydude | Hacker News Reader

The scary part is china's protectionism. Small nations and businesses have so little possibilities to operate in china without getting robbed of IP or being outcompeted by state supported domestic ventures.

I fear the future of China being stronger superpower than the USA.

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pretty sure the world doesn't want an authoritarian dictatorship like China, who acts like a retarded bully with Taiwan and Dali Lama, who oppresses its own people in hong kong and xinjiang, who is belligerent with most of its neighbors like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, India.

The world isn't exactly thrilled with the US, who has acted like a retarded bully across the world.

so the world should only allow USA bully other countries and regions?

Protectionism has never made a country strong.

This is demonstrably false, and actually the opposite of most countries that have successfully developed. I was searching for "South Korea protectionism history" to find articles for a great example (as SK practiced heavily protectionist policies in the immediate post-war decades), and this came up: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/sep/09/eu.glo...

Protectionism can be very successful for countries with underdeveloped economies.

Hell the icon of "free trade and capitalism" developed under protectionism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...

Every nation needs protectionism to help its industries. It's only when you have strong stable industries/companies that you become anti-protectionism because you want your native companies to have access to foreign markets.

There aren't any countries which haven't done it in one way or another - from Singapore and Hong Kong loading up on US treasuries, to Japan's eye wateringly high car subsidies in the 50s to America (from 1800s-1945).

"Free trade" is simply the philosophy of pulling up the development ladder after your country has already ascended and "the theory of comparative advantage" is the dogma that presumes that comparative advantage is both immutable and static.

Worked pretty well for the US in the 1800s.

Seems to be working pretty well for China so far.

Pretty much every "Introduction to Economics" class will feature the Infant Industry Argument in its syllabus. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_industry_argument)

Every "strong" country today became strong via theft, protectionism and mercantilism. And once a country became strong, they expanded/colonized/etc and then supported "free" trade.

There isn't a greater example of this than the US. We stole all kinds of tech from the british/europe and then protected our industries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...

It's how our nascent industries developed in the US. Without protectionism, all our industries would have been dominated by european companies.

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