In the end what’s the point of having cheaper products if no one has a job to buy them.
Nonsense. The US could obtain the core competencies themselves and indeed will as globalization winds down.
People will never stop coming to the US for opportunity.
Is true _as long as the US continues to understand this_ and doesn't change its stance on immigration and business and open markets. The US will win as long as it's the country where the best of this world are invited and able to come and do their best work.
On the other hand, I don't see China having any chance at beating the US on that front anytime soon. Mandarin is too hard to learn for immigrants, and the racism and lack of freedom is entirely unpalatable to most immigrants. Aside from finance types moving to Shanghai, I'm not sure who would want to move to China if they have the opportunity to move to the US instead. (well, I know many do, but let's just say the quantities are incomparable)
Current trends suggest otherwise, see PRC rapidly catching up and leading R&D and innovation indexes controlled by citations or quality in the last few years.
> quantities are incomparable
If anything US is at an substantial quantity disadvantage and slight to modest quality advantage.
While US does absorb _some_ of the best global talent, those are also subsect of best with resources to go to US, and capped by immigration to around 700k, not all whom are relevant STEM talent for high tech industrial competition. Meanwhile rate of PRC domestic STEM talent generation is about 4-5x (rough estimate generously assuming all US immigration is STEM) of US domestic highereducation + immigration is pulling talent even accounting for outbound PRC brain drain. Yes, US has a bigger pool to draw from but their bucket is also smaller. US was projected to have like 3+ million STEM job gap in coming years, while PRC is generating so much talent that there's record unemploment. Which is obviously not good but puts the numbers in perspective - PRC is producing roughly as much STEM grads as all OECD nations combined, while geopolitical tensions is helping PRC retain more of that talent.
Other considerations is that recent trend of PRC R&D and tech catchup is result of highered reforms set decades ago. PRC is still in process of building talent and institution base compared to relative mature western R&D system. IMO trends last few years show it's entirely possible for PRC to be competitive or overtake US in strategic high tech/talent industries in medium/long term, if not the entire US aligned block who are small subsect of OECD countries. But they I think state of geoeconomics will limit their market access and each will end up leading different blocs.
But what I'm saying is about immigration. I really doubt that the PRC will attract much STEM immigration in the future, at least in comparison to the US. As far as I can tell, the few dedicated folks who choose to emigrate to China do so despite an uphill battle and end up with limited job opportunities. The PRC will have a large internal talent pool to draw from, but will not attract foreign and diverse talent... at least that's my hunch, and mostly because of (1) hostile policies to foreigners (2) language barrier - Mandarin is much harder to learn than English (3) cultural barrier - Chinese culture is old and more self-centered than US's young, outward facing and constantly reinventing culture, and (4) having a bad reputation for personal freedoms and judicial fairness.
So sure, PRC isn't near its final state in term of STEM talent. But I think despite its domestic talent pool, it will not benefit from the diversity of talent that the US will continue to benefit from. And ultimately, 1.3B people is a large pool to draw talent from, but it's not as large as the other 6.4B people.
I do find this topic fascinating. I'm reading a book interview with Lee Kuan Yew which I find is making me reevaluate my prior beliefs. I'm more bullish on China than US on the long term, but LKY's insight were convincing and making a bull case for the US.
> count of publications
Refer to nature science index which collates from prominent western journals with contribution quality assessed by western experts. Or share of PRC science papers filtered/accepted through prestigious western academic conferences in variety of (STEM) domains. Or number of researchers in US/western R&D of PRC origin. There are many indicators that comport with dramatic increase in PRC science competence in recent years that shouldn't be dismissed as pressure to publich / gaming the system but PRC highered reforms finally paying off.
>immigration ... attract talent
I understand, my point is with the population denominator involved, PRC is generating more talent than US can attract. Quantity has a quality of it's own, meanwhile the proportion of quality among mass quantity is constantly being improved. I also think notion that US drawing from global talent is overstated, PRC is drawing from domestic population that accounts for 20% of global population, apart from fringe minorities, everyone in the system speaks Chinese. Meanwhile, US is realistically drawing from 13% of world that speaks English / has english fluency. One stat I recall is by 2030 PRC will have ~3.5/10 of global stem graduates, Indian ~3/10, US ~0.4/10, EU ~0.8/10. Gut guestimate is eligable pool of talent US can actually draw on is not substantially larger than PRC has domestically. That said, intuitively I do feel diversity of talent is important, but I can't really articulate why.
As for hunches on PRC lack of attractiveness for immigration, imo basically true but also misses the point. PRC incentives aren't structured around golden citizenship tickets, but good compensation + access to resources. Look at PRC poaching entire teams of TW and SKR semi engineers by paying them 3x market rate, and building SKR talent churches, basically bribing them with perks knowing full well these are get rich quick limited contract schemes. Or consider PRC thousand talent program with generous perks which work(ed?) pretty well at attracting foreign academic talent, strategically drawing "sea turtles" - Chinese diasphora scientists in premiere western institutions with all the language+culture reprequisits to work in PRC. Pay them lots, give them a well funded lab, it's an easy sell. Work(ed) because it's a tap western policies is attempting to turn off (US China Initiative, TW trying to ban semi talent from working in PRC due to national security). But it's not because PRC is "unattractive", PRC has money, money is very attractive. Ergo PRC geopolitical competitors need to draft literal legistlation to undermine/outlaw strategic talent from working in PRC. In TW's case because they literally can't afford to pay their semi talent well enough to compete with PRC money firehose.
VN and China have been in constant conflict over the sea they share, and their respective commercial and government ships have been in low intensity skirmishes. VN wants to have access to the seas and be able to extract petrol from there. China wants a clear frontyard to be able to protect their economy and trade. VN is too small to do much about China's navy, but with help from the US, it's a different story. In addition, China did try to invade VN right after the US-VN war, and VN remains highly suspicious of China. Hystorically, VN was a vassal state to China (like Korea) and given the trajectory of things and how China talks to their neighbours, it sure sounds like they plan on treating VN (and everyone else) as vassal states once again if and when they come back to world dominance.
From the US side of things, shifting manufacturing to VN is a way to divest from China. And VN workers/trades are quite skilled, so the products themselves are not bad at all.
So while the VN communist party can't just erase their origin story out from one day to the next and remove all the anti-US propaganda, the geopolitics reality is that VN and the US are naturally aligned against China. And similarly, the VN war was a huge cultural shock for the US and you can't just erase that from people's mind. But then pragmatism is that modern day US and VN's interest are a lot more aligned than they're misaligned. In fact aside for the whole history (conflict), political system (capitalist/communist) and governance stuff (freedom & democracy/authoritarian and single party), I think the US and VN don't have much in term of hurdles. The VN population mostly likes US folks (ignoring drunken bravado) and the US has a large VN diaspora and a guilt trip about the VN war.
The offshoring country indeed loses jobs and the jobless need to handle this situation. Some will end up drugged out in the street. I'd argue that these drugged off people aren't that much the fault of corporate leaders who cut costs by offshoring. I'd say the drugged off people are jointly responsible for their fate, along with governmental policies that offer no social net while also not wanting to take any action to prevent spiraling delinquency.
If you look around the world, not every person who loses their job ends up drugged off and homeless. In many places, people are quite poor and don't end up this way. Most people lose their jobs and turn around and figure something out. And then some people can't deal with the hit and don't have what it takes to handle and end up drugged out in the streets. There's some self responsibility going on here that allows this to go down this path. And there's some social policy at play too. In another country, you could only fall so far down before something makes it harder for you to go further down. Either there's strong social nets, or there's just strong anti-drugs laws, or all kinds of debatable policies.. but many of these policies help prevent people getting so low that they can't come back up.
Why is the poor trade worker in VN, living in a metal shed, able to handle abject poverty with dignity, and then get an offshored job and thrive... but the US worker loses their job, has 10x better economical opportunities than the VN worker but ends up drugged out in the street. This isn't a real argument as there are people heading down a self-destructive path everywhere in the world. But I can't help but think that a lot of self-pity has to do with one's own perceived expectations for higher standards and inability to accept loss.
Ultimately, I can't help but think it's an infantilizing argument to say that the hard working factory workers who become junkies, are junkies because someone offshored their job. Because this supposes that they had no agency into doing anything about it, they were doomed to become junkies. This also supposes that a variety of things could have easily knocked them off the good path. That they were fragile and had no recourse or control over their destiny. If it wasn't a CEO offshoring their job, it would have been some other hurdle. And I don't buy this, I don't think the average hard working factory worker is such a fragile person, whose entirely at the mercy and requires the protection of a patronizing CEO.
I can’t tell if this is parody or not
So realistically, there's not a lot of "maturity" on the geopolitical world stage. The US is objectively on the "adult" spectrum.
Led by an octogenarian who replaced a septuagenarian man-child.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080615/china...
https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/debt/...
I think it isn’t really very relevant to think about China holding US government debt because it isn’t like they will call up the bailiffs or otherwise be able to exercise control over the US because of that debt. I think it would be basically equivalent to say that China holds US dollars which doesn’t feel particularly concerning to me.
I’m not sure I’d call it ‘rent seeking’. China needs forex reserves like a lot of countries and China is big so it’s reserves are big. It’s just that it is generally more convenient but basically equivalent to hold treasuries instead of dollars if you have an enormous amount of money. Doesn’t eg Japan also hold a bunch of treasuries for similar reasons?
I think resistance to offshoring is a natural reflex that's entirely futile.