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Comment by howmayiannoyyou | Hacker News Reader

10% of the 30% is China's GDP, and another 10% relies on Chinese inputs for their GDP outputs. So, the title might just as accurately read: 10% of global GDP accepted Chinese hegemony. Don't believe me?

Ask yourself how free "free" is a "free trade" agreement when one side:

- Has a per capita fraction of the environmental regulations/costs.

- Has a per capita fraction of the social program costs.

- Has a per capita fraction of the labor/union costs.

- Has a per capita fraction of the regulatory/I.P. costs.

- Provides tax incentives for export.

- Manipulates its currency to undercut global pricing.

- Has no foreign bribe prohibitions.

The world's one and only attempt to check Chinese economic domination died when Trump lost his reelection bid. It is now a race to curry favor with Beijing.

This post will be downvoted into oblivion because it says thing people don't want said and that others don't want to believe.

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Your mental model of China as a pure producer who undercuts everyone else just isn't accurate. Many of the countries in this deal actually have a trade surplus with China, meaning that they're exporting to China more than China is exporting to them.

America has a bigger economy than China, and the EU was (pre-Brexit) roughly equal to China.

To the extent that I expect China to dominate the global economy for the next century or so, it is because I expect others to choose to fight amongst themselves instead of choosing to build and grow, and not because of China itself.

Nah, China will dominate because we the western world have at least some scruples and decided that economic growth must not come with complete disregard for worker safety or environmental concerns. But for some reason, if we just pay China to slave drive their people and pollute on our behalf, then it’s ok.

Please tell me why you think I’m wrong.

The Western world was happy to make its workers slave away until workers violently resisted with strikes and riots.

The Western world established dictatorships abroad to palliates this, whose workers have no safety and where the environment is an afterthought to compensate.

It has nothing to do with scruples. It's just that we pretty much force poor countries to act this way.

FWIW, working conditions and environmental concerns seem to be improving in China as GDP per capita rises and they can afford not to compete with other low income countries on price.

Yes I mistakenly tried to make the west out to be righteous, but it’s not. My main point should have been not that we are better than China, but that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are better by outsourcing everything that would get our hands dirty. The only way to correct this, I think, would be to in-globalize a bit. This is the problem with free trade. We have to dis-incentivize products that were made in conditions that don’t meet our supposed ethical standards. Even if they were made in a different country. Otherwise products that were made ethically cannot compete in the market.

I agree with you on all points, then. I think another overlooked benefit of your proposition is that, as it is, democratically elected government only barely have control over the economy, as it is so global. If we de-globalized a bit then people would have more sovereignty over their economy.

I have a contrarian view on this. I believe that China is heading to an economic collapse during this decade.

The Chinese economy is effectively a huge bubble fed by monetary stimulus, and it doesn't seem to be sustaining its historical growth since the 2010's -- although nobody really knows what's going on there, given that the CCP discloses information that favors whatever narrative they want. In any case, it may quite well happen that Covid has been accelerating the Chinese economy's demise.

The CCP is very aware that the country is in trouble, and this is evidenced on how bellicose they're getting in the last few years, as a matter of desperation.

On the top of that, the Chinese population is increasingly becoming aware of the corruption in its government. The number of conflicts between the population and the CCP has progressively been escalating.

> I believe that China is heading to an economic collapse during this decade.

This has been said during the last 30 years at the very least. It's not going to happen, white Americans must accept that they will not longer be rulers of this planet.

You do realize that some people have been saying almost exactly what you said since the late 1990's, right? Sort of like some folks have been predicting the collapse of the US economy due to Federal Reserve policy for the last half century. Either way, the economy of china is structurally quite different from the US or EU. The role of public (and some "private") debt there is different. Which is not to say that they don't have problems -- they have lots of problems. But saying "the Chinese economy is effectively a huge bubble fed by monetary stimulus" is just wrong.

As for "increasingly becoming aware of the corruption in its government"... that's not really true simply because everyone has been aware of it for literally a thousand years. The corruption is sort of background noise there, it is essentially expected. The question most people ask is instead more like, "is there more or less corruption now?" "is the corruption more or less harmful?"

Finally, I don't know where you're getting the idea that the "the number of conflicts between the population and the PCC has progressively been escalating". If anything, the gov of china is more respected inside China now than ever before. I suspect it's mostly because of their aggressive response to covid. Which they never tire of letting everyone in China know about. Short term, at least, the CCP's power inside China is quite secure. Long term, who knows.

The opportunity to check Chinese economic domination was lost when the US pulled out of the TPP. The RCEP grew out it's ashes. The TPP would have institutionalized standards favorable to the US and unfavorable to China.

How would the TPP be favorable for US citizens long term?

Trump had a lot of rhetoric over China but was weak on action.

Pulling out of TPP was a massive geo-political and economic win for China. And nothing was done about widespread IP theft, trade imbalances, data sovereignty concerns or the use of trade to influence other country's policies.

Sad to see that this point being ignored.

Getting down voted because rump only made things worse. Those soybean contracts he was touting as part of a phase 1 deal with china, Chain went to Brazil and I doubt they'll come back and buy from America in any where near their pretrade-war-that-is-easy-to-win state. https://en.mercopress.com/2020/10/28/china-takes-51-4-more-s....

rump fucked the farmers in favor of the agribusinesses.

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