China quietly sets new 'buy Chinese' targets for state companies

We have some advantages, like our lead in technology, but few of them are natural advantages. So I actually think we're the long term losers of the second cold war. Especially if we try to ignore it as it starts.

The ban on Huawei was a good 1st step, which should be followed with an protectionist approach to trade with China. (as long as it refuses to act in good faith with the US.)

It will affect the US economy in the short term, but the US has felt like a frog being slow boiled for the last 30 years. The CCP is now accelerating because they finally have the leverage to twist the US's arm in economic retaliation. Globalist trade is based around bi-directional open channels. The way the west has resigned multiple industrial disciplines to China, cannot be defended under any economic school of thought.

Post WW2 America knew what was up. They knew to export low-margin industries to nations they could tie up in stringent trade rules and had the militaristic asymmetry to enforce said rules. (They weren't necessarily unfair either)

With Africa, India and SEA being at the point of 1980s China, now is the time to pump some money and get large-scale low-cost manufacturing setup in these nations. It would be a win-win arrangement of monumental proportions. It helps that some of these countries are either deeply suspicious or are already in an exploitative neo-colonialist arrangement with China, making them willing to look at alternatives. (I do not mean doing stupid things like Belt-and-road though)

Now like all tug-of-wars of power, this is going to appear quite 'unethical'. But, I can't think of a single instance in history where an 'ethical' player beat a motivated 'hook-or-by-crook' player in a competitive setup. Also, as far as war goes, this is the most peaceful way to engage in it.

Genuine question: doesn't Chinese crackdown on its tech industry and private education industry have a greater impact on Chinese people (who are also investors) than it does Americans?

Your post seems to imply that both actions were designed almost specifically to harm American pension and hedge funds. I would think that is just a side effect of the real goal (whatever that exactly is).

I am in China currently, but I am as ignorant of the underlying motives behind the crackdowns. I just know some Chinese friends involved in after school education (which is a huge market here) who are worried right now. I do believe it is possible, however, that the crackdown on private education is because of the pressure that kids are put on over here. But maybe it's naive of me to think that.

Here's the data to back it up: https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/t...

Surprise. Meanwhile the U.S. has no will to change anything.

The current global mercantilist scheme is not a good thing.

This is the result of at least fifty years of incompetence from US political "leadership". This isn't about democrats or republicans. They have all been ignored their duty to look after national interests. Instead, they continue to play dumb-as-can be political games for self and party as opposed to acting with people and nation as objectives.

The most current example of this is the, again, dumb-as-can-be infrastructure spending proposal.

I dare anyone to make a list of ten companies who have chosen to locate their operations somewhere other than the US due to issues with our roads and bridges. Just ten. That's not much to ask, is it?

One would not spend this kind of money to "bring back" one company. No. You would want dozens. Well, name ten. Just ten.

You can't. You can't because the entire premise is dumb-as-can-be false. NOBODY is going to relocate or make a massive investments in the US because we spend trillions of dollars on redoing perfectly good roads, bridges and government buildings. Nobody.

This is unbelievably dumb at a time when we need to be incredibly smart.

Here's a list of 397 cities in the US:

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

I dare anyone to find ten companies who chose not to operate in the US because they could not find good roads and bridges in any one of these cities.

Frankly, I can't even think of a single company, much less ten. We are being told we need to spend unimaginable amounts of money on roads and bridges. Put simply, it's complete bullshit and it is the kind of decision someone makes to lose, not to win.

What do we need to spend money on?

My guess is that #1 has got to be education. The problem with this is that it is a long term investment. This decision should have been made twenty years ago. It takes that long for results to produce economic returns.

The Chinese were sending their kids to US universities twenty years ago. They are all running companies in China right now. While this was going on our educators focused on race, class and ideological warfare. While China is trying to be as entrepreneurial as possible our educators focused on producing brain-dead socialists, a great example of which is representative Ocasio-Cortez, probably the best example of just how far off the mark US education has gone. As someone who actually lived in the kind of thing this moron is pushing I cannot believe she was not laughed off the stage within microseconds of coming to the scene, much less reach the level she has.

If you are the product of the kind of brainwashing the US educational system has delivered over the last couple of decades you will disagree with this. Of course. However, that does not make the fantasies you believe true. Anyone who has lived and has been educated outside of this distortion field cannot believe the nonsense US some young adults actually believe. Things like supporting socialism and wearing a t-shirt with Che Guevara (a mass murderer) as a sign of who-knows-what, are baffling to anyone who was not subject to ideological elements in US education.

This is the first time I have, in the decades I have lived in the US, heard a major leader on the left (in this case, Biden) finally speak the truth on communism and socialism:

https://youtu.be/eL2ThTOaHXg?t=18

Will our educators now stop with the nonsense?

Instead of burning cash on roads we need to put businesses on those roads. Industry. We need to dump billions into industries such as electronics and semiconductors. Heck, we need to dump billions into ever single industry, because they are ALL GONE.

Try to buy US-made wire, screws or connectors for example. Some, sure, however, the overwhelming majority of everything that goes into consumer, commercial, industrial and military products is made in China.

How is that a formula for success? At all? We are setting up to spend trillions rebuilding roads and bridges. This will not attract or compel even a single company to bring a non-trivial amount of jobs to the US. And, while we are busy spending money we don't have on absolute bullshit, Chine is going to continue to invest money as fast as they can on what really matters. They will invest on and subsidize any business or business segment that can deliver true long term competitive advantages for their nation and people.

We will wake up, ten years later, with a bunch of nice new roads and bridges and twice the unemployment. On top of that, this year, so far, we have let over a MILLION people come through the southern border.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-border-arrests-top...

At this run rate it is likely that this year alone that number will top a couple million. If we continue at this pace you are looking at five to eight million in four years.

BY DEFINITION and as a matter of cold-hard facts, 100% of these people are unemployed.

And, again, as a matter of cold-hard facts, we are NOT magically producing two million additional jobs per year to fully employ them.

And so, we have a situation where China is bound to take even more jobs out of the US while we invest in the wrong things and actively import millions of unemployed.

Despite what this might sound like, this isn't political at all. This is as common sense as things can get. If you give me the opportunity to damage a competitor by taking away business (China taking away jobs), driving them deeper into debt (waste money rebuilding roads and bridges) and increasing their baseline costs (importing millions of unemployed). Well, that's a dream. That's a competitive dream.

If your competitors insist on self destructing you take every possible opportunity to push them over the cliff. That's what China is doing. Not because they are evil. No. It's because we are stupid and we are doing it to ourselves.

Looking at it with detachment, from the perspective of a competitor, it's almost too easy. We have been consistently stupid for fifty years. What did people think would happen? You don't win a basketball game by giving your opponents free turnovers. You win by scoring more than they do and controlling the ball as much as possible. We have been giving it away for fifty years, and, just like in a baseball game, there comes a point beyond which reversing the score is simply impossible. If we don't demand more from our politicians the writing is on the wall, it has been there for all to see for quite some time.

Western governments and corporations underestimate China far too much. Western banking dynasties go back a few hundred years, Chinese history and culture is thousands of years old and they operate in time scales of multiple generations.

Western bankers and corporations are spring chickens compared to China.

China as a country and culture only cares about one thing. Making the entire world an empire for the Han. They see everyone else as inferior, barely human.

They will do anything to accomplish this, no matter how long it takes.

All these western corporations, investment bankers and governments who think China's the future are right and they're helping them along swimmingly, what they don't realize is, they have no place in the Chinese future and will be discarded.

Great way to spell mercantilism.

> doesn’t benefit anyone

Not even China! (At least not Chinese people.)

- medical equipment - ground-based radar equipment - testing machinery - optical instruments - items used for animal husbandry - seismic instruments - marine, geological and geophysical equipment

Free trade is a bit of a joke anyway when talking about China when so many businesses are owned, to varying degrees, by the state. Reciprocal restrictions against China should have been put in place a long time ago, especially around environmental sustainability.

Learning about this now ... appears as though the Berry Amendment is based on a defense policy, China's perhaps is political/economic.

I think the U.S. has everything to lose with this new China policy and little chance of imposing a similar one for the U.S.

Increasing isolation is not good for world security.