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Comment by miguelazo | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps the American/Western version of globalization has failed, but the Chinese version seems to just be getting started. In fact, the decoupling that the US is forcing upon China will be a boon to them in the long run, as they become even less dependent on the US and care less about sanctions on severely underserved markets with huge growth potential.

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I see some instability with China as it has grown a stronger domestic market, which is positive, but they are going to have to more directly deal with their inefficiencies. They are and will continue to struggle to export themselves out of their economic problems. This also relates to their internal inflation. Belt and road is good for importing materials and exporting cheap goods, but it isn't enough. Not sure if the Chinese middle class are going to be able to pick up the slack. The current leadership doesn't seem to care at the moment and expect everyone to sacrifice for the party.

I've seen this decoupling argument used in Canada a lot. It doesn't work very well there. The country is still completely dependent on the US market. They've tried Europe, Asia Pacific, and China, with a minimal budge in its current dependency. The disruption and economic pain are too high to force it in to existence and would be political suicide. Maybe the an authoritarian and central planning model can get over that in China? If the current internal investment inefficiencies are any clue, I would say no.

I can’t figure out why China hasn’t priced themselves out of exports yet. Normally countries move up the value chain as their domestic standard of living improves and their currency strengthens. Then other countries find their exports unaffordable.

I know China has pegged their currency to the USD and only rarely begrudgingly let it float slightly. It seems to me that “the ledger” isn’t balanced and that something is being kept off the books.

There are lots of people from the countryside, where, as far as I can tell, one's options are basically subsistence farming. Until the supply of people from the countryside dries up (and it has, to some extant), there won't be a lot of wage pressure upwards.

I don't think the RMB is pegged to the dollar. Certainly not like Hong Kong, which is an actual peg. The RMB has fluctuated between 6.2 and 7.3 the past few years. China does limit its daily level of change, though.

China ironically follows a purer form of capitalism where they pretty much keep it strictly business. They don't try to push cultural change on countries they are trading with, it's just economics and things that benefit China the most

China will demand, for example, that only Chinese companies can work on a certain infrastructure project, and then that company will migrate workers from China to Africa, which has no shortage of cheap labor, to do the work instead of allowing its companies to hire people locally. There's nothing "capitalistic" about that.

Is that why every technology product has to be modified for the Chinese market and every single movie has to be edited for the Chinese market or edited before being made to be palatable for the Chinese market even globally? China's behavior is the exact opposite of what you state.

Lol, no. Every technology product has to be modified to comply with FCC, not with whatever Chinese equivalent is. Completely reworking TV shows for American viewers is commonplace (Top Gear, The Office). And there is a long history of absolutely wild censorship, eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist.

Ah, I see, so y'all are part of the 50 Cent Army to play up the whataboutism. Nobody here said the US, as the world's largest economy and hegemon, does not influence things. The claim was that China doesn't. This claim is false, period.

The absolute claim may be false, but the degree to which China interferes with its trading partners’ projects and especially internal affairs is orders of magnitude lower than that of the US. That’s not whataboutism, it’s pointing out an important difference that actually has a major influence on how countries perceive the two powers.

"They don't try to push cultural change on countries they are trading with, it's just economics"

Umm, what?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-univer...

among other things...

Is that what their censors keep telling Hollywood?

"Guys, we want to keep this strictly business, that's why you have to change your movie the way Chinese state insists - puuuuuuure business."

Can you give an example where a Western player explicitly pushed a culture change and its Chinese counterpart didn't?

Apple tried but just gave in to the government surveillance.

Go read the USAID and NED websites— their entire premise is around realignment of target countries’ cultures in exchange for “aid”.

China is more accurately described as mercantilist. But in any case Xi Jinping has achieved absolute power, surrounded himself with yes-men and is busy dismantling China's economic success with his draconian zero-Covid policies that have done what no amount of US government pressure could: force Apple to move production to India and Vietnam instead because unreliable supply-chains is one thing it cannot abide, unlike human-rights abuses.

It’s naive to think that the US demands for cultural change are anything other than another tool to dominate. The US only does so when it serves its interests— favoring one political faction over another. It is happy to partner with plenty of the most oppressive regimes in the world, like the Gulf States.

The majority of progressive liberals when faced with mainstream Han Chinese ethno-nationalism would go into epileptic seizures. It's not as prevalent in the Tier 1 cities metros and the Tier 2 city cores, but wander outside of those areas (roughly 50% of the population), and the ethno-centrism is...not what the average HN reader is used to.

To be fair, much of the rest of the world is fairly similar, only differing in detail and degree. What makes it notable in China is the CCP's surveillance infrastructure makes it impossible for the CCP to not know about this, and their tacit condoning of the sentiments reveals the cultural dominance narrative they subscribe to.

You don't need to "push" cultural change when you are the 800-pound gorilla at the negotiating table. You only need to assume your world view is right, proper, due by merit and a birthright conveyed by thousands of years of "unbroken" culture, and the rest "falls into place".

CCP coercion does not look like US coercion does not look like EU coercion, etc., but it exists and is powerful all the same.

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