U.S. Imports from China Continue Cratering | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Imports from China Continue Cratering

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Chinese were celebrating the 2023 spring festival on January, there is little production and of course less exports. Look at the periodic drop in previous years.

Please, look back after more data become available.

It has tripped me up several times, something shipped from china and it ends up in limbo for a couple of weeks, every time it has ended up being lunar new year. My understanding is there are a lot of people traveling and the normal logistical channels suffer accordingly. So late February early March shipping gets very weird from china. Sort of like trying to do business in the US between Christmas and new year, but worse.

RTFA

>Compared with January 2022, the level of U.S. imports from China is down by 20.1%.

I should elaborate a bit more, spring festival is based on a lunar calendar, so it's date in Gregorian calendar will float. Last year it was February 1 and in 2021 it was February 12.

“chief economist for Greater China at ING” as in: China, including the territories it has recently annexed and hopes to annex in the future.

What territories has China “recently annexed”?

One could argue Tibet. Still people alive today it happened to them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_Peo...

The case can certainly be made, but the independence of Tibet only took place because of the collapse of the Qing, both the PRC and the ROC had the intent to retake Tibet once the civil war was concluded.

One may say that Tibet is entitled to independence, but its annexation doesn’t represent some sort of aggressive territorial expansion beyond chinas historical borders.

If you consider the current Chinese state to have continuity of legitimacy with the previous Chinese states, then you might also consider that all of those states expanded by taking chunks out of their neighbors for thousands of years.

To quote from the wikipedia article on Chinese Expansionism[1] "Chinese expansionism over the last four thousand years has been a central feature of the history of East Asia."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_expansionism

You could basically say the same thing about any super power: the US, the UK, the USSR, etc.

None of those has the same longevity of empire as does China however.

Didn't Mao attack Tibet "aggressively"?

>beyond Chinas historical borders.

A civil war tends to be aggressive.

Yes the Russian civil war is rather vigorous at the moment.

You jest but that’s pretty much exactly how Russia sees it.

It’s also a pretty ridiculous comparison at the same time. China suffered a century of invasions from western powers from Britain to Japan, had a several hundred year dynasty collapse, and fought a civil war for over 20 years.

China is becoming more belligerent as it has risen in power, but the ink spilled about its actions/outside threats vastly outstrips reality.

> You jest but that’s pretty much exactly how Russia sees it.

I don't jest, I'm saying that because it's pretty equivalent.

> It’s also a pretty ridiculous comparison at the same time. China suffered a century of invasions from western powers from Britain to Japan, had a several hundred year dynasty collapse, and fought a civil war for over 20 years.

Everyone has suffered centuries of invasions by western and other powers, including the west and including conquest by various Chinese dynasties. Doesn't make imperialism any different or morally justifiable.

I’m not justifying imperialism. There are reasonable arguments to be made against Chinas actions.

The matter of fact here is that all of those regions listed: Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan. There are or were fought over as a direct result of external imperialism. Tibet had been a part of the Chinese empire for over a thousand years, and only emerged as an independent nation after a total collapse and state failure. There was a power vacuum for almost 40 years, and once a new government emerged, it retook Tibet.

Hong Kong and Macau only exist because of western imperialism.

It has been government policy for both the PRC and the ROC that Taiwan is a part of China for the last 70 years, only recently has Taiwan started to break from that.

All that said, I am now here trying to justify actions. Rather I am looking to contextualize. In the west we couch everything into a narrative of good vs evil, with the west being the good and moral force, and our enemies being the evil side. Reality isn’t so clean. And I am personally very disappointed to see the tenor of conversation around US China relations these days. Neither country is perfect and both countries have done things I think are wrong. I would hope that we can engage each other in a productive way rather than a destructive one, but more and more things seem to be going in the opposite direction.

This is pretty laughable really I'm sorry. You can't cherry pick a few actions by a few countries and say "oh this is why things are the way they are and therefore ...". China might be a province of Imperial Japan today if it were not for "the west".

I'm personally very pleased to see more western liberal democracies waking up and recognizing China for the brutal totalitarian communist dictatorship that it is. There's still a lot of western politicians and business people corrupted and twisted by all the money that's to be had sadly, but things are changing slowly.

that would be great, but can't rely on that as long as some cultures consider playing nice as a weakness

The last time China annexed an entire country would be in 1951, however China has been taking little bites out of its neighbors since then[1]. Moreover, there is little dispute that China desires to annex Taiwan, which is at this point a fully independent country and a functioning democracy.

China is building settlements and outposts outside its territory in a number of places including their western[2] and southern[3] borders and eastern outlying islands[4]. In 2020 China recently largely ended democratic self-determination in Hong Kong, which had otherwise been promised 25 more years of independence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_the_Peo...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/25/china-is-building-a-bridge-o...

[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/07/china-bhutan-border-vil...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/china-has-full...

Hong kong has been an under Chinese sovereignty since 1997, it’s regrettable that the PRC has reneged on their promise, but it has never been an independently sovereign state.

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