Hacker News Reader

Comment by helloooooooo | Hacker News Reader

This is the wrong take. Economic dependence on China is a massive national security threat. Exporting your manufacturing base to a nation that opposes the fundamental values of a nation is completely suicidal, and if war ever occurs, you’re toast. China is increasingly belligerent with their excess industrial capacity, engaging in dumping and overproducing to cut out competing non-Chinese manufacturers. They engage heavily in IP theft.

Allowing critical manufacturing supply chains to move to China is stupid.

View on HN

> Exporting your manufacturing base to a nation that opposes the fundamental values of a nation is completely suicidal

How do you feel about integrating your manufacturing base with a nation that opposes the fundamental values of our nation, and constantly fantasizes about annexing our nation?

Unless you're arguing for Canada to make its own EV manufacturing industry independently from both China and America?

The problem is that as of now, the dependence on USA is more destabilizing. It is a country that has fundamental values difference against Canada, threatened Canada just recently and if war occurs, it is huge issue for Canada.

What's the alternative to Canada? To be depended on the states who, very openly, threaten them on every possible occasion?

Unfortunately, it's not 2000s/2010s anymore, and rules of the game have changed. Most countries realize that there is a future that's not purely Pax-Americana (including USA as well). Sovereign nations will choose what's best for them and their future, especially in the cases of a neighbouring bully.

Palmer Lucky touched on this last week - how China would love to slowly winnow away American automobile manufacturing capacity, because that capacity would be converted to wartime production in the event of a large scale war.

The Chinese have already achieved this in shipbuilding. Chinese shipyards build most container ships while the US shipyards decay.

yeah, pretty dire on that front

Serious question: hasn't the western world largely exporting their manufacturing base to China for everything, just not EVs/batteries? There is a major conflict here between corporate profits vs national security. Consumers generally don't care about vague concepts like national security if it makes things cheaper.

It’s a tragedy of the horizon (if I may use the term coined by the Prime Minister). Basically, corporations and democratic countries are more focussed on the short term, such that long term concerns like national security, climate change etc… are not appropriately integrated into risk models.

China has been a stable and reliable trading partner with Canada for a long time. Canada is far too small a country to produce everything it needs within it's own borders. If anyone ever declares war on Canada then we're toast, so we're best not going out of our way to make enemies with the world's dominant superpowers –one of which is actively threatening our sovereignty.

China is always willing to dump, tariff and subversively coerce its way into hollowing industries. This is not stable nor reliable. It is aggressive and a national security threat.

They infiltrate civil society through their networks of “police stations” and the Confucius Institute with the aim of placing sycophants in positions of power.

They aren’t our friends, and Canadian civil society needs to recognize that.

They especially aren't our friends if we go out of our way to make enemies with them. Why would we do that? It doesn't make any sense. It's a small world, China isn't going anywhere, we're stuck living on the same planet as them. They aren't going to have less of an influence on our affairs in the future going forward.

Canada has a long standing problem. The only thing we've ever been good at is natural resource extraction. Ironically we have several world class universities producing very talented people and IP, and the vast majority of it goes to the states to make money. Then here in Canada we carry on digging stuff out of the ground.

> China is always willing to dump, tariff and subversively coerce its way into hollowing industries.

So, you are saying they arw like USA right now, except more predictable?

It's been 20 years, what cheap Chinese goods have raised in prices? The china dump accusation is retarded at this point, the reality is PRC is manufacturing superpower who permanently reduces costs for the simple reason they need affordable prices for domestic market that incidentally makes them stupid competitive. Now if your argument is we should erect protectionist walls to protect industrial base, that makes sense. But Canadian auto base is tied to US and US doesn't want to share anymore which means dead Canadian auto. The option left is to take cheap Chinese EVs, do some sort of Canadian JV where we capture some value vs potentially losing car manufacturing completely. PRC probably fine with that, their "dumping" is selling cars abroad for 2x domestic MSRP, they can feasibly live with splitting that 2x while US wants it all.

> This is the wrong take. Economic dependence on China is a massive national security threat.

and instead dependence on the U.S.?

First, dependence on the US hasn’t exactly worked out very well for us the past year. As a smaller nation, Canada has to be dependent on its trade with more powerful nations, and that comes with risks regardless of what nation we’re dependent on.

Second, I don’t buy your fear mongering about China. There’s not much fundamentally different about China and western nations in 2025. They’re a capitalist society prioritizing growth at all costs, same as every other western nation. China is not interested in war, and has stated that consistently over the years.

Third, as far as “critical manufacturing supply chains” go, extremely inefficient luxury personal vehicles don’t fit that definition.

Canada already isn’t economically independent. Diversification is fine, especially if it saves costs that can then be deliberately redirected towards improving sovereign capabilities. Right now we have the worst of both worlds, we pay top much for stuff or can’t get it, and remain completely dependent on the US and China.

We could and should further diversify by removing whatever barriers are keeping European cars out.

Europe has barriers keeping Chinese cars out because otherwise they couldn’t compete.

Why should Canada rely on an inferior manufacturer?

Because their are no Canadian car companies.

How is that related to allowing European car manufacturers in but not Chinese ones?

Europeans want to protect their local car companies but Canadians don't have any. The best they can hope for is a branch from a foreign country setting up a local factory to make cars for the local population.

Ok, so why should we allow the inferior European product that needs protection to compete with the superior Chinese product?

The neoliberals didn't care about national security when they shifted the manufacturing and jobs to China for profit. They were outplayed by the Chinese.

My anger lies with the neoliberal elites not the Chinese. The elites can go die on the battlefield. Its their mess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com