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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

Economic decoupling only makes conflict more likely. Is that obvious to everyone in government and everyone just wants conflict? Or are there voices trying to de-escalate?

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There’s trade, and then there’s investing in strategic initiatives designed to have China overtake the world. China is willing to decouple where it makes sense for them - eg make Facebook, Google, etc inaccessible so that local alternatives can flourish. This is very asymmetric… it’s a bit like “you’re in a monogamous relationship but I can be open if I want”

China has more population than us, of course they will overtake us in overall GDP eventually.

Saying that our goal is to need to keep the average citizen of China much, much poorer than us is basically saying you want a conflict.

Everything is 'investing in strategic initiatives designed to have China overtake the world' if you squint hard enough.

I think there is quite a lot of skepticism about Ostpolitik and the benefits of close economic integration given it did little to prevent Russia entering a war with Ukraine.

The West and Russia have been decoupling economically since the 2010s.

People are too easily swayed by 'current thing'. Russia's invasion is in the context of centuries of declining conflict globally - and even in Europe an unprecedented level of peace for the past 70 years.

Does it? That's certainly a theory, though events such as World War 1 and, more recently, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, seem to indicate otherwise.

WW1 coupling is a blip compared to today.

I'm not sure how a singular war somehow disproves centuries of declining conflict levels and overall still the most peaceful period in modern memory post-1960s.

Your claim was that economic decoupling increases conflict (which has not been fully bourne out by the evidence), not that conflict levels overall have been declining over time.

Is there a good book or blog post on what a good approach is for US-China relations, based on historical analogies and other frameworks? I'm curious because at first glance, it seemed bad that US VC firms are investing in these PRC companies, but then reading your comment, that makes sense too. So, I'm wondering if someone smart has already woven together a nice book that makes sense of it all - either China specific or generally for avoiding global conflict amongst superpowers.

It's like being "tough on crime", nuanced takes can't compete with slogans.

There's "We trade liberally, loss of trade would cripple our mutual economies"

and there's "We made a fast buck off war profiteering by investing directly in both (or one) side's military pipelines"

I think we'd like to avoid the latter, while preserving the former. I think VC is a good example of the latter.

> The lawmakers found that these firms invested at least $3 billion in, and provided expertise and other benefits to, People's Republic of China (PRC) critical technology companies, including many aiding the Chinese military, surveillance state, or the CCP's genocide in Xinjiang.

That's quite different than solar panels, healtcare tech, or electric cars, which might spur beneficial trade relationships. PRC is not going to export the sponsored kinds of tech to USA, which does nothing for trade. It's profit-motive.

The things being discussed here are literally stuff like the basic technology you are describing. They are only 'investing directly in both side's military pipelines' in the way that investing in Amazon might be because they have the DoD as a customer.

I don't think China should ban people from investing in Amazon because it helps the US military.

And this particular thing is silly.

China's investment into the US is much larger than the US's investment into China.

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