China intends to crush the trade war
newstatesman.com
newstatesman.com
You would think the author of "the art of the deal" would understand when the best option is to give your opponent the appearance of a victory to sell to their community. You would think they would recognize when you also needed the same outcome.
(since we know he didn't write the book, this is a rhetorical device)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43617956 (citations)
But I think you underplay how much damage the US could do to the Chinese economy, if (for instance) they repudiated the debt. Or, if they heavy trading partners to drop favourable trade terms to gain back US markets. I think people would be insane to give in but from time to time this kind of thing happens for a short term win. We recently pumped a shitload-and-a-half of money back into the pacrim island economies, to displace China as a trade and security partner having taken our eye off the "backyard" as it is disparagingly called.
As Xi would say, "Eat bitterness" (a Chinese idiom signifying enduring hardship and suffering without complaint, often seen as a virtue of perseverance and resilience). Can Americans endure hardship incurred by a brutal global trade war? If so, for how long? Such a natural experiment is about to occur, which is interesting, exciting, and terrifying simultaneously.
Xi Jinping calls on young Chinese to embrace hardship - https://www.thinkchina.sg/society/xi-jinping-calls-young-chi... - June 16th, 2023
"We don't care. China has been here for 5,000 years. Most of the time there was no United States, and we survived. And we expect to survive for another 5,000 years."
The risk of losing their profit is what I meant by repudiating the debt.
Chinese investor interests hold ~ $800b of debt. Thats not the state, but it is doubtful the state would bail them out: They pick and chose how to fix problems like this and I think the message "You invested in America not us, you wear the risk" would be beneficial to them.
But China used that coal in their coal fired power stations. It was their winter. They were literally freezing in the dark. It went on for months.
FWIW, the usual take is Australia won that war. Australia didn't do anything in retaliation. We keep buying from China when they were cheapest, and busied ourselves by seeking out new markets for our products elsewhere. We would have been better off if it hadn't happened, but there was an upside - we developed new markets.
The trigger for all this was our then Prime Minister sided with Trump, in blaming China engineering COVID. True or not, poking the Pooh Bear like that was pure insanity. We got rid of that prime minister as soon at the next election.
Xi does take stands on principle, and he is willing to bear a lot of pain while doing so. If you doubt that, look at how he handled COVID. I don't think there can be much doubt that in a fight about principles between Trump and Xi, who is the most principled man. It isn't even close.
Initially in the public sphere he was forcefully calling for an independant body with "powers equivalent to those of a weapons inspector to avoid another catastrophic pandemic" while rumoured (ie leaked gossip) to be channelling the worst US Trump first term sinophobia in phone calls to world leaders drumming up support.
I separated Australia from the then PM Scott Morrison delibrately, in a number of ways he acted as a law unto himself not as a representative of the nation as a whole.
I accept that his off the record attacks on China are hearsay, but to those that followed the people and attitudes they make sense and account for the reactions of China that shortly followed when the off public record discussions made the diplomatic rounds and got back to Xi.
Even the Chinese got on board with an international investigation:
Last night the World Health Assembly (WHA) passed a European Union motion calling for a "comprehensive, independent and impartial" investigation into how the pandemic started and the international health response.
A record 137 countries — including both Australia and China — ended up co-sponsoring the motion, giving it overwhelming international endorsement.
that wasn't the cause of Australia - China falling out.
That was the public insinuation that COVID was an engineered weapon and the behind the scenes name calling and accusations from the Australian PM.