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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmLekaO4LMc

from an economics professor who examines the evidence about what is causing the trade war between china and the west.

The main thesis is that car manufacturing (and associated manufacturing such as batteries, electronics etc) is "strategic" enough that the west doesn't want to build a dependence on china for it.

In the event of a war, china can cripple the west by cutting off the exports, and/or potentially install backdoors into the devices and shut them down to disrupt etc.

Not to mention that by allowing china to own the manufacturing, they will have built up the massive industrial capacity for which it is easy to convert to a war time factory. The west's dwindling manufacturing capacity would mean that china will out-produce and win - lessons that is learnt from WW2.

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>In the event of a war, china can cripple the west by cutting off the exports

Isn't that a good thing? This makes the all-out war between China and the US much less likely.

It’s a bad thing if it increases China’s confidence that it can win. Wars are often launched as soon as one side thinks it has a winning strategy that might slip away over time.

Win what?

Taiwan, control over the pacific…

Taiwan is part of China and both ROC and PRC have claims on the whole China.

As for the Pacific ocean, it's not an American gulf, it's literally half a planet. Nobody can control it, even the US with all their military bases on Pacific islands.

no, under the proposed dependency scenario, it makes china hold an outsized bargaining position because china _can_ withstand a war while the west wouldn't. It's not a symmetrical relationship - china can survive their stopping of exports, as they are an autocracy, which means the citizens cannot complain (much). The west's citizens would not want to make sacrifices or suffer as imports get stopped, and thus will acquiesce policies on china when it is actually not advantageous to do so otherwise. For example, reneging on the sort of defacto protection being offered for a lot of the east asian countries (japan, korea etc).

The war that russia is waging against ukraine is clear evidence used to support this point - that being dependent on russian gas/oil was a mistake and europe is paying dearly for it.

>as they are an autocracy, which means the citizens cannot complain

You mean like in the Middle East during the Arab spring?

>The west's citizens would not want to make sacrifices

That's how democracy works, right?

>europe is paying dearly for it

Some would say that Europe is paying for American "Fuck the EU"[0] policy.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

There are very significant budget/capability differences between any of the Arab Spring states and China. Also internal religious and ideological differences - there is no large armed faction in China.

I don't think that 1.5 billion people can be a monolithic society.

No, more likely. (Assuming China recognized how weak the US would be if it had no large machine manufacturing at home).

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