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Comment by hylaride | Hacker News Reader

China's got its own set of economic problems that they're masking. Their domestic economy is stagnant and they're trying to keep factories pumping out stuff. Since their domestic economy isn't biting, they're flooding the world with exports. This isn't sustainable, especially if and probably when the rest of the world decides that they're done with government backed Chinese companies killing theirs (and you're starting to see that).

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> This isn't sustainable, especially if and probably when the rest of the world decides that they're done with government backed Chinese companies killing theirs (and you're starting to see that).

Well... China's foreign currency reserves are practically infinite and the rest of the world knows they can't push back on China too hard or lose a lot of important imports. For Europe for example, India and China together make 80% of the foundational ingredients for medicine [1]. Our supply chains are gone, even if we wanted to, it would take years to have fabs ready that could produce the domestic demand for stuff as simple but vital such as painkillers and antibiotics.

[1] https://www.diepresse.com/17552998/80-prozent-der-wirkstoffe...

I don't subscribe to the "China is just to big and important to fight" arguments. Countries that peg their currencies distort markets, mask problems, and eventually that comes crashing down (see also Asian financial crisis, the Bank of England pegging in the early 1990s, etc).

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