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Comment by thecleaner | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why this is written in a complaining or condescending tone. I think it is true for any state that manufacturing be provided protection especially in its infancy. One great thing which China did was to protect their infant industry while simultaneously weeding out non-performers based on global competitiveness. This kind of discipline is really important to build up the skills required to become globally competitive. I think it is better to have regulated free trade first and then open markets once you are competitive. This IMF doctrine on open your freaking markets it is awesome is very stupid. Africa has completely open textile markets, that didn't really work out very well for them.

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China did exactly what they should have done for their own self interest. However that self interest is not in the best interest of the US and western democracy.

This!!!

Every advanced economy in the world (UK,US,Germany,Japan, NorthEast Asian Countries etc) at one point or the other protected and supported it's industry at infancy till they became globally competitive.

Economic historian Paul Bairoch dubbed the United States ‘the mother country and bastion of modern protectionism’

Why shouldn't China support and protect it's industries?

As a Nigerian living in Nigeria. It's sad to see how a lot of sub-sahara africa countries take certain actions that hurts them in the name of free trade.

> I don't understand why this is written in a complaining or condescending tone. As per liberal understanding of history and progress, China was supposed to 'open up'(the silent part: to be open for exploitation by West). China was not supposed to become global techno-military challenger against Trans-Atlantic alliance. Oops, they did.

That was a white lie to justify the strategic necessity and short term macroeconomic benefit of opening China.

The West didn’t have a choice. A chaotic, desperately poor, nuclear armed Chinese state was a wildcard that wasn’t sustainable, which is why Nixon and Kissinger opened the door.

Everything since then has been a great money grab. The price of peace has been selling off everything and shifting the “axis” of power east.

"exploitation"... I guess you consider trade and mutual investment "exploitation". China's integration into the global system was both for their benefit and our benefit.

"China's integration into the global system was both for their benefit and our benefit."

American manufacturing unavailable for reply.

American consumers with limited purchasing power benefiting immensely from low cost goods say hello.

Trading the integrity of military supply chain and infrastructure development for little hedonistic comfort is what'd I'd expect from end-stage liberalism. Just call it what it is, surrendering.

Except nobody did that. Defense manufacturing and procurement is still heavily based in the US and the West. Consumer goods manufacturing, not so much.

> "Hickey told a story of how the United States is even losing its submarine fleet. He had a conversation with an admiral in charge of the U.S. sub fleet at the commissioning of the USS Illinois, a Virginia-class attack submarine, who complained that the United States was retiring three worn-out boats a year, but could only build one and a half in that time. The Trump military budget has boosted funding to build two a year, but the United States no longer has the capacity to do high quality castings to build any more than that. The supply chain that could support such surge production should be in the commercial world, but it has been offshored to China." https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americas-mo...

.. and American infrastructure is in a state of serious decay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_blackout

Compare this to Chinese infrastructure and engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_island#China

I completely agree with you that America's manufacturing is in a deplorable state. My original comment was just pointing out that the intention in opening up China was for mutual benefit rather than exploitation, even though China's ability to undercut us in manufacturing has ravaged us.

American manufacturing output is higher than it ever has been: it's just automated.

Are there any good articles on how they were making the SOE's compete against each other. It seems like every province seems to prop it's own competing SOE in certain industries, but I always wondered if they act together or if they compete against each other.

They compete against each other. It’s a good question as to how they evaluate different SOEs. I would imagine monitoring for discrepancies in metrics is easier with modern technology so you can’t fudge metrics easily but IDK.

Sure, when the company is basically free of government leverage. Or, when the country itself not seeking building entire empire using the economy-based influence. This has to be viewed in wide angle. What a communist party is doing is far from strengthen local company to be competitive globally. It's simulating the soviet model using free market as blanket.

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