Kind of an interesting read. They’re essentially describing current trade pressures between the US and China. Over the years,I’ve come to the opinion that these pressures were foreseen by the US administrations. But they chose this outcome as preferable to any other option. Essentially, I hypothisize this as their mindset: that the over 1 billion citizens of China were going to grow their per capita GDP to levels elsewhere. That’s enough for them to be 3x the size of the US. So the US chose to keep trade as near to free with China as possible. If business in the US was effectively at the level of business in China then the US wouldn’t be pushed too far below historical GDP.
> That’s enough for them to be 3x the size of the US.
Your math doesn't work and it assumes an outcome that is more likely wildly unrealistic.
At $20,000 GDP per capita (they're at half that now), which would be a tremendous outcome for a nation as large as China, their national GDP will be $28-$29 trillion. The US economy will be that large in about 12 years.
If we're talking that sort of timeline: 3x US GDP would be $84-87 trillion in 2030. ~80%+ of the entire global economy at that point. Even if you shift the figures out another decade, it remains equally silly and impossible.
You might as well say instead that the US will soon push its GDP per capita up to $120,000 magically and more than offset China's population benefit difference with a continued per capita superiority. That scenario is about equally fantasy driven to the notion of China somehow magically having ~80% of all global economic output.
The US exports more annually than China does. Few people realize that. For China to keep growing like they did in the past, they're going to need to find another planet earth to export the next $2+ trillion in goods to, and fast. Those markets for consumption don't exist. They're already over-producing on a lot of industrial goods by 50% to 100% - such as steel - to artificially prop up their economy. That can't continue. Service economies grow dramatically slower than low-wage industrial economies that are filling in extreme slack, which again points to China having a far lower growth rate in the near future.
Put another way, China's easy growth is long since over. That's why they shifted to massive debt binging to keep the fake growth going, taking on $30 to $40 trillion in new debt in just eight or nine years after the great recession. That's a classic signal an economy is running out of easy growth. Their growth return on debt plunged off a cliff many years ago at this point. And their debt is very expensive compared to developed nations, so much so that for every $500 billion in new GDP they've been creating, they're paying $150 to $200 billion just in new debt interest. In short, their economy is being swamped by interest costs, another classic drag-you-down on growth.
It's so bad, China's central bank has begun talking about muni bankruptcies in the style of Detroit:
"China needs Detroit-style bankruptcy as debt problems remain: central bank official"
Now does that sound like a country still in its prime on growth, or more likely near the end of an over-extended growth boom?
And all of that recent growth came at a high political cost: their mercantilist one-sided trade approach has alienated all of their biggest customers, so now the US and EU are locking down China's access (including to acquisitions), further dampening China's future growth potential.
China is just as likely to get stuck in a middle income trap, particularly as their demographics rapidly age and we enter the era of AI + robotics + higher automation (ie their population increasingly becomes a liability). And given what's going on there politically with their new dictatorship, vast re-education camps, the erosion of what little speech & expression they had, becoming the world's most indebted nation, etc - these things point more to a negative outcome than a positive one. They look a lot more like Japan economically right before Japan hit stagnation, than anything else.
Historical question: name all the economically very successful dictatorships of the last 200 years.
The only thing I could think to add was that so much of the urban infrastructure is horrendously poor, and it will need to be ripped apart pretty much wholesale within the next 30-50 years. I’m thinking of all the awful quality apartments, road networks, pavements, sewer and water systems, terrible electricity grids, commercial spaces.
They managed to do all of that the last 30 years with cheap labor, the whole export fueled boom, and a population that will pretty much tolerate anything because it’s still better than the chaos of the past.
Now project that forward with the same disruption and cost, but now you’ve got higher wages, no Mao-baby-boom generation, higher standards and much less credit. It won’t be easy to do.
> China is just as likely to get stuck in a middle income trap
Japan wasn't a middle income country. They didn't get stuck in the middle income trap. In the next sentence you say that china is like japan right before they crashed and here you claim china is going to get stuck in the middle income trap. Those are contradictory assertions.
> They look a lot more like Japan economically right before Japan hit stagnation, than anything else.
How? Japan's urbanization rate in 1980s was over 90%. Japan's GDP was near parity with the US with half the population. China is at 50% urbanization. Their GDP is near parity with the US with 4X the US population. China today and Japan in the 80s are nothing alike. Not even close.
> Historical question: name all the economically very successful dictatorships of the last 200 years.
Every european country ( colonial power ). Saudi arabia, UAE, kuwait, etc. South korea, Taiwan, Chile, etc.
Also, you conveniently ignore the fact that there are far more economically poor democracies in the world.
At the same time, US asked China not to stop importing American garbage for recycling.
This seems so _free_ trade to me - make your competitor's products more difficult to sell in your country while making your garbage & pollution easier to be shifted to your competitor's home.
I think this is good news. Advanced technologies like chip production must not be the domain of only part of the world. Also, I hope the EU would also take a similar stance so it would be possible to buy European chips.
That the US sees this technology as a matter of national security is all the more a reason to push for more independence to stay sovereign.
Lol... Ugh the EU in itself was an exercise in becoming a non-independent, non-sivereign state for all parties involved. It's why the U.K. peaced out.
Not saying, it wouldn't be good to have chip production there. On the contrary, I support the idea. However, I don't really think the EU is about independence.
If one can let go of nationalism, one can see that the EU is about independence. It's not about your governments Independence, though, but of the Bloc as a whole. After all, national governments are just a tool in a big machinery. Tools can be enhanced or replaced, if there is something better. So far, I like a lot of what the EU is doing.
There's another way to look at freedom: freedom from, rather than freedom to. Governments are generally instituted to ensure the former rather than the latter. They put restraints on some freedoms to increase other freedoms.
Thus, for example, the specific standards that goods are produced to and services are provided at may be set centrally, removing freedom to vary at a local level, but adding freedom to sell across the whole union with very low barriers to trade (i.e. freedom from variance in standards). Since freedom to vary on standards at the local level frequently ends up with beggar-thy-neighbour policies, or anti-competitive regulations, it's not a bad trade.
EU officials are appointed either by the democratically elected governments of the member states of by the democratically elected European Parliament. Unless you reject all kinds of representative democracy, the EU seems pretty democratic to me. And most EU states are only democratic in the representative sense anyway.
In theory, but the reality of the issue is very different.
The European Parliament is all powerful except for the important things. The real power is in the hands of the commission, which, in practice, it's not more than an international forum, where, as in all the international forums, the will of the stronger states is the law.
The state members are bond by treaties that, in practice, are impossible to change by the population and that, in fact, are used to limit what the population could choose.
In theory, the EU could be a democratic institution, but there is not the will for that, quite the opposite, in my opinion.
The population is slowing awaking to those realities and the relevant institutions would do well addressing all those problems before is too late.
While the commission is not directly elected by the people, it is indirectly. That is in accordance to how many governments are formed.
Every country can send just one member of the commission. Decisions are made by majority vote. Every member has the same weight, except the president, which is a tie-breaker. How again does the stronger country impose rules on the weaker?
The EU binds countries just like countries bind regions and cities. Why don't you complain about that? Well, because it is helpful if the government acts in the interest of the population.
A required part of understanding the EU is letting go of irrational attachment to notions of nationalism.
It is good that we have several governments working in our collective interest on many levels. Be it the city mayor, the regional government, the countrywide government or the European Commission.
Tell that to the Greeks, where the "independent" Central European Bank, theoretically also the central bank of the Greeks, was used as a weapon against then.
Tell that to the countries in the south that are financing the exports of the north and that have to implement crazy pro-cyclical economic policies.
A part of understanding the European Union (and even more so the Eurozone) is letting go of fairy tales about how Realpolitik and national interest is dead.
If you want a real union just create a fiscal union controlled by the European parliament, but that, it's not going to happen.
It's removal to a higher level. Compromise of sovereignty is necessary for all cooperation. More and more cooperation requires extracting sovereignty to higher and higher levels.
One of the many goals of the EU was to provide a unified economy that had the ability to compete on a level playing field with other large powers. That is a form of independence, in the sense that member states can trade some of their individual independence for a greater ability to be independent from other global competitors as a union.
For what it’s worth, The UK’s departure will either result in a country that’s either an EU member in all but name, or a shining example of why leaving was bad.
The European Commission is actually trying to address that problem right now, at least for high-performance computing (which includes autonomous cars):
Speaking of Europe not producing certain things, Estonia will force a 20% tax on every foreign shipment (not sure if it's an EU directive) to "protect local businesses", ugh, no European business sells these components without asking huge amounts (and aren't the same Chinese components with 10x markup) of money.
People see a cold war as a rivalry between equals. That's not the case. The Chinese are more adept at adopting existing tech and adding scale than creating it. This cold war is mostly one way. Their tech champions' strengths come from a potent mix of state-funded and support with local business acumen.
The attempts by the government to shift growth away from low-level manufacturing towards tech requires tech and innovation. Things that require the sort of the people the rigid propoganda infused education system is ill-equipped to produce.
The shortcut is to simply to let others develop tech, then copy. That's the essence of the forced technology transfers.
20 years ago, companies and governments believed them that the forced transfers is purely for the Chinese market and a fair deal. After that turned not to be true (read: forced tech transfers for the bullet train that China now uses to undercut the original in foreign markets), but that's not the case today.
If Trump, who I detest, can get the key European tech countries + Japan on board, they can dramatically increase the time and cost for the Chinese to pivot their economy. Delay enough and China's demographic time bomb of rapidly ageing people plus Xi Jinping's Maoist madness could well result in the Chinese economy stalling similar to the Japanese circa 1980s or worse. We'll have to wait and see it all turns out
It's the zero-sum thinking of a totalitarian dictatorship that's a problem. For example, simply letting the Taiwanese live their own free and happy lives is too much of "a problem" to let go without threatening invasion on a weekly basis :)
Also, there is geopolitics at play. The Thucydides Trap is real.
The US isn't seeking to annex Cuba, and Cuba is entirely free to trade with the rest of the world.
China threatens and throws tantrums if Taiwan so much as gets any recognition from other nations. China doesn't even want Taiwan's leader to be able to directly speak to the US, or for their politicians to be able to visit the US.
If Raul Castro gets on a plane and goes to France or South Africa, the US doesn't threaten unspecified severe consequences for just talking to or meeting with Casto.
Yeah, this is dumb. From China's perspective Taiwan is as much a part of China as Florida is part of the US. How would the US react if Florida declared itself independent and began negotiating treaties with foreign governments?
In fact we have good precedent for how the US deals with breakaway states. From that point of view China has shown remarkable constraint when dealing with what most people, including the Tawainese themselves, agree is a part of China.
If it was true that "most people, including the Tawainese themselves, agree is a part of
China", then mainland China would/should have no problem whatsoever
with a binding Taiwanese independence referendum.
It is precisely because mainland China knows very well that the
majority of Taiwanese want independence, that the mainland objects to
free and fair independence referendum. The mainland assumes they would
loose.
* * *
The secession of US states is clarified in the US constitution
[1], and
the US Supreme Court, in Texas v. White [2], ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional, while commenting that revolution or consent of the States could lead to a successful secession. Note that Texas v. White happened over a century ago.
independence referendum? such as the recent Catalan independence referendum in Spain? Why EU/US both rejected its outcome when the people of Catalan clearly made the case with a successful & peaceful independence referendum?
That referendum is an interesting edge case, as I wrote in my post above. Spain could have handled the Catalan issue much better, that is certainly true. One crucial difference is that neither the EU nor the Spanish government threaten violence and military invasion. This contrasts very favourably with Xi Jinping and his cronys incessant bullying of Taiwan.
The Florida comparison isn’t really apt - indeed a lot of the comparisons/equivalents being drawn in this thread conveniently ignore key elements.
* PRC (the CCP) considers Taiwan to be part of the PRC (and part of ‘China’ the country). At best it’s referred to as a breakaway province.
* The ROC considers themselves to be ‘China’, and part of ‘China’, but not subject to CCP rule or a province of the PRC.
* The CCP has no actual direct rule over Taiwan in practice. Taiwanese people vote for their leaders, have their own laws, don’t follow PRC laws in any sense, hold separate Taiwanese currency and passports, require mainland visitors to acquire a visa, have independent trade deals and defense treaties with other sovereign nations etc etc.
Regardless of what you think should happen, anyone suggesting comparisons with Cuba/USA, Scotland/UK, Florida/USA etc is either ignorant, or deliberately muddying the waters to score an ideological point.
Why is a comparison with Scotland/UK ignorant, or deliberately muddying the waters? I'd say it would demonstrate great political maturity, if the PRC were to allow Taiwan to conduct a binding vote about independence, and accept the outcome.
It would greatly increase the PRC's standing in the world, and its soft power. Right now, basically nobody trusts the PRC, and their increasing influence is simply a consequence of their spreading money around.
It’s a bad comparison because the actual, legal and historical situations are vastly different.
eg.
> if the PRC were to allow Taiwan to conduct...
Taiwan is de facto an independent country. The only extent to which the PRC can ‘allow’ or not allow something to happen in Taiwan is with the threat of invasion, which is vastly different to how the UK parliament ‘allowed’ Scotland to conduct an independence referendum.
I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be desirable for the PRC to remove the threat of military action and recognize a fair and binding referendum, but comparisons with Scotland tend to imply that Taiwan/China situation is just like UK/Scotland. Which is isn’t even slightly.
I agree that the actual, legal and historical situations ROC/PRC vs
UK/Scotland are quite different. I was pointing towards the
similarity of a (potential) positive, peaceful resolution, --
indeed one where secession was ultimately rejected. Who knows,
maybe a peaceful, gentle PRC can tempt the ROC into a peaceful
union?
I should have expressed myself more clearly.
> Taiwan is de facto an independent country.
Taiwan should formally be an independent country in a just world,
but de facto every political decision in Taiwan in made in the
shadow of the immediate threat of PRC violence. Ultimately
political power comes "from the barrel of a gun" and the PRC has a
lot more barrels than the ROC.
> what most people, including the Tawainese themselves, agree is a part of China.
I truly cannot distinguish if you're trolling or serious. You continue repeating the same points throughout this thread and they are not true. Taiwan has never been part of the PRC. Before the KMT invaded, Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire. Claiming the PRC gets all territory once owned by the Qing Dynasty is roughly equivalent to Germany claiming all territory once owned by Prussia. It doesn't lead anywhere pleasant.
Your comments are reprehensible and I wish for you never have the experience of your home being under constant threat from an increasingly wealthy and aggressive neighbor.
While I agree that their attitudes towards Taiwan are inappropriate, it's a stretch to suggest that this is an issue of totalitarian government. There's not a major government on earth (and probably not a minor one), of any political persuasion, which hasn't faced and rejected an attempt at secession.
Please. Taiwan is not a part of the PRC. What would they be seceding from? They're a sovereign State founded by the losers of China's civil war. (That the Nationalists lost is one of China's great tragedies given the horrors that Mao and the ruling party inflicted on the Chinese people and their traditions).
Anyway, take Japan and the Senkaku islands as another example of Chinese bellicose jingoism fueled by a policy of nationalism designed to detract from threats to its legitimacy.
This is pure nonsense. It's remarkable how such ignorance propagates through the Western media. I wonder is it deliberate?
Talk to the Taiwanese themselves. Both the ROC and the PRC view Taiwan as part of China and view themselves as the legitimate government of all of China.
Anecdata: I have spent a great deal of time in Taiwan, and have not met a Taiwanese person who wanted to unify with the mainland, especially as long as the mainland was governed by the communist party. Let's not forget that a great deal of Taiwanese fled from the communists.
What is true is that many Taiwanese fear the mainland and think peaceful surrender is preferable to a military invasation by the mainland. Many Taiwanese fear that nobody will defend them if/when the Mainland invades.
Note also that the Taiwanese look to Hong Kong, and observe the slow erosion of the vestiges of democracy there.
> Note also that the Taiwanese look to Hong Kong, and observe the slow erosion of the vestiges of democracy there.
Did UK allowed residence of HK to elect their own governor or at least its local legislative entity? Sorry to hurt your feeling but the truth is that all Governors of HK under the British HK era were WHITE colonists directly appointed by the Queen. People of HK was never allowed to directly elect their local legislative entity or top officials. In fact, you have to be WHITE to become a high level police officer there by the 1970s. You got to be completely brainwashed to call that democracy.
Oh, let's have a quick look at a full list of all WHITE governors of HK "democratically" appointed by the Queens -
I'm quite aware of HK's status under British rule. I'm also aware that it was dramatically better than Mao's rule.
What I was referring to was the erosion of rights since the takeover of HK by the PRC. Looking at your commenting history here on HN, I see quite a bit of love for dictatorships, and hatred for democracy. For this reason, I assume that you knew very well that I was referring to the erosion of rights since the takeover of HK, but decided to derail the thread, so as to avoid discussing the anti-democratic nature of the current PRC government, and the threat this poses to Taiwan.
> WHITE governors of HK
I'm a bit unhappy about your blatant racism. Please ponder the following question: how many non-Chinese General Secretaries of the Communist Party of China can you point me towards?
Note that UK governors did a much better job of ruling HK than did Mao and his cronies in China.
Note that it was only when Deng Xiaoping decided to copy the UK model that was trialled in HK and Singapore, that Mainland China stopped being a basket case.
I have to ask, have you actually done this? From a random 2017 poll[1]:
>> Three quarters of Taiwanese people think Taiwan and China are two separate countries, while only about 14 per cent believe they are both part of one nation
Or[2]:
>> For Taiwanese younger than 40, pro-independence support reaches 84 percent. Perhaps most startling, 43 percent of the under-40 generation would support independence even if it meant China would attack Taiwan under the risk of war.
Polls conducted by pro-China and pro-Taiwan media typically have slightly different numbers, but the trend across polls is crystal clear, and matches my experience from living there for ~4 years.
It's true that the ROC constitution claims all of the mainland for historical reasons. The thing is, if Taiwan were to give up that claim, they'd probably trigger the PRC's anti-secession law and get sucked into a war. Holding up this territorial claim as a proof that the Taiwanese see themselves as a part of China is extremely cynical.
To your point I think attitudes have recently shifted a lot. As little as 10 years ago my experience was that many Taiwanese regarded themselves as Chinese even though they regarded the PRC as wholly illegitimate. It's still the case, I believe, that no major political party has declared independence as part of their platform. Whether this is because such a position would be wholly unconstitutional or because China would invade is debatable. As you point out, the Taiwanese government from the very beginning, and as recorded in the constitution, has regarded themselves as the true rulers of China and not viewed themselves as a separate nation state. Given this the PRC position that Taiwan is a breakaway province and is part of China is understandable.
> As you point out, the Taiwanese government from the very beginning, and as recorded in the constitution, has regarded themselves as the true rulers of China and not viewed themselves as a separate nation state.
When the ROC was established in 1912, Taiwan was not a part of China. It's misleading to refer to that as the very beginning of the Taiwanese government.
The ROC government has only been indicative of the will of the Taiwanese people since democratization in the 1990s.
> It's still the case, I believe, that no major political party has declared independence as part of their platform. Whether this is because such a position would be wholly unconstitutional or because China would invade is debatable.
It's a bit of a tautology that declaring independence would be unconstitutional, because the constitution is the key piece of what needs to be updated.
IANAL, but I think it's even possible to achieve independence within the framework of the current constitution since it guarantees the right to referendums. The government would need to change the scope of referendums by passing a law (see [1]), and then the referendum would have to succeed.
> Both the ROC and the PRC view Taiwan as part of China and view themselves as the legitimate government of all of China.
Right, that's not what we're talking about though. The point is that Taiwan is not a part of the PRC and so the idea of 'seceding' from anything is absurd.
According to Taiwan. How does this theory play with the American civil war? The confederate states didn't consider themselves part of the union. Was the North therefore imposing sovereignty on a foreign nation?
They were both fighting for sovereignty of all of China. After the war they both continued to consider themselves to be sovereign to all China. Indeed, to this day they both make that claim.
For what it's worth, I agree that to all practical intents they are separate nations and should be such. I think both nations should drop their claims on each other. But only due to the fact that it's been the de facto situation for seventy years. I see no reason why the losing side of a civil war is instantly granted nationhood on cessation of fighting.
The ROC is doing itself no favours by sticking to its interpretation of the One China Policy which entails that the ROC leadership is the solve legitimate ruler of the mainland, too!
When the PRC was weak, there was probably an opening where the ROC could have dropped its pretensions towards ruling the mainland, in exchange for PRC acceptance of ROC nationhood.
But I suspect its too late now, since the PRC is so powerful now.
I also think the real reason why the PRC leadership is bullying the ROC is that the ROC is a clear example that democracy, wealth and Chinese culture are perfectly compatible -- thus falsifying the communist's party's justification of its claim to power.
I agree, I really don't see what they get out of it. It seems only to legitimise the PRC's claim on Taiwan by making it a mutual disagreement.
I don't know about the concerns re democracy, the Chinese people I hear speaking about it don't seem to have much interest in Western democracy whether or not they could live under it, but I don't have a strong enough understanding of the issue to really claim to understand.
And I suppose the fact that their people don't care wouldn't necessarily assuage a sufficiently paranoid government.
My interpretation is that the ROC sees this as a bargaining chip,
to be given up in exchange for something else, at an opportune
moment. The ROC doesn't have much else to offer to the mainland at the
moment
Taiwan did not seceed (or has been trying to seceed) from the mainland in any meaningful sense. It is
questionable if Taiwan was ever legitimately governed by the mainland.
Moreover, there are plenty of examples of a peaceful handling of
secession, the most famous recent example being Page move-protected
the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 [1]. Here are some other
examples:
- Saar Statute referendum 1955 [2]
- Gibraltar sovereignty referenda in 1967 [3] and 2002 [4]
- Velvet Divorce of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia [6]
- Brexit vote [7]
- The Catalan independence referendum of 2017 [8] is an interesting edge case: it was conducted peacefully, albeit
without active support from the Spanish government.
In the 21 century, China should be leading by example, and demonstrate the ability for peaceful conflict resolution, rather than fall back into 19th century power politics.
Historically speaking, the only significant peaceful comparison would be the British -> US circa 1950s.
To be fair, people asked the same question in the 1900s. With the world getting so interconnected thanks to steamships and telegraphs, perhaps the age of major conflict had passed (this was right before ww1).
Also, global connectivity doesn't mean much when the great firewall creates 2 distinctly different internets. If you take Chinese state media as a barometer of public opinion, you clearly see there is very little affinity towards the rest of the world. The xenophobia and nationalism, if anything, is more likely to lead to conflict because nationalism is a double edged sword.
Best case scenario is the status quo. Even though China wants a bigger say in global affairs, they realize they have benefited from a peaceful international system over the last half-century and it's in their interest to preserve it largely intact. They have some long-term plays like "one belt" infrastructure, but that's something to supplement the existing system rather than to replace.
Personally I think the most likely risk is economic. No country can escape the laws of economics forever. At some point, the economy will have a downturn. Like with Putins Russia, when things are bad domestically, there is pressure to create conflict abroad (aka Ukraine) to distract their people which if managed badly, could turn out quite ugly
Geopolitically U.S. sees China as a potential challenger but that is not the main problem, an emerging China will make Japan militarize. While the world is focused on Xi's power grab, Abe is taking steps for militarizing Japan.
Its too early to say they are in collision course, but lets put it this way, if the balance of power tilts too fast .. some one will "push the button" of war.
What? America's been trying to get Japan to militarise for years. Their reticence thus far is generally described as free-riding, not some move for the common good.
I see this 'Chinese people are to indoctrinated to be innovate' nonsense bandied on quite often. Huawei's technology is simply superior to American or any else's, and they developed that themselves. Yes of course they have no regard for imaginary property, the resolution to that is trivial: have no regard for theirs. This way humanity is propelled forward as the species benefits from all innovation.
"The move is fuelling claims that consumers will pay a higher cost for the 5G services if Australian companies are forced to turn away Chinese equipment suppliers such as Huawei, given estimates the company is a step ahead of its US and European rivals on price and performance.
Fairfax Media can reveal that US President Donald Trump raised the US concerns about Huawei directly with Mr Turnbull and other officials, but those aware of the talks said this did not mean Australia had decided to ban the company.
The Turnbull government’s message to the US was that the Trump administration must do more to prevent Chinese companies leapfrogging their American competitors and offering cheaper and better technology."
If we're talking about 1980s Japan, all of the talk about trade war could be a greater risk to Chinese stability. As with Japan back then, China's growth has been breathtaking, but it's also awash with bad debt from a banking environment where social relationships are more important than economic discipline. The weak links in their economy just haven't been culled.
If growth slows, reduced cash flow could put some immense pressure on their banking system as loans fail. Their bad debt rate was already thought to exceed Japan's at its worst years ago.
Then again, people have been predicting Chinese growth can't continue for years.
I believe you underestimate the Chinese. The biggest advantage the US, Europe, and Japan have is the long lead time to develop and refine existing technologies. However, the landscape of advanced technologies is changing more rapidly than ever.
For example, the Chinese lags in traditional car manufacturing techniques because they only have a few decades to accumulate experience on that front, but they are spearheading mass manufacturing electric vehicles at scale with efficiency rivalling anyone in the world.
DJI is the leading drone company globally. Chinese carmakers manufactured 47% of all plug-in EVs sold worldwide in 2017. [1] (Yes, with solid government support, but they are part of the system we're considering.)
They developed the first (and only, so far) AI to pass a medical licensing exam human doctors need to take. (If you thought it's just rote learning, it's not. Analysis is required.) [2]
Regarding creativity, please see the replies to this comment by people with first-hand experience in China. [3]
Blocking tech transfer will prompt China to intensify their efforts to develop their own technologies. With their scale, ambition, and work culture, it's not clear at all that technologies they develop in new fields, where no one has a head start, will be inferior to those created elsewhere in the world. The evidence so far largely refutes this hypothesis.
Your last paragraph "blocking tech will prompt China to intensify their efforts to develop their own technologies" is exactly my point. It's much easier and less time consuming to have someone give it to you than to develop it from scratch :)
I can tell you are Chinese and extremely proud of her achievements. Saying as a whole, the education system in China produces less on creativity should not be viewed as an insult to national honor. There's nothing wrong with admitting that things are not the best. Otherwise, how can you improve?
The Gaokao reference you make is interesting. One of the biggest complains about standardized testing in the States is that it pushes teachers to "teach to the test". The Gaokao takes that to the extreme. It's much harder than the SAT quant, but the way my cousin and her class prepped for years is literally prepping for the test.
Imagine the SAT quant prep book with its "These are they types of questions you will encounter in the test" and take that a few steps further. Wayy higher level maths and more, but not infinite, models of questions on which they prep for every day and night for years.
By extension of your statement, would solving International Math Olympiad questions only require intensive preparation and not creativity as well? (IMO topics are limited by design.)
How about writing programs to solve problems someone else has solved elsewhere (and you are not privy to the solution)?
China is already the world's largest economy by PPP. It is also #1 trade partner for many nations. On top of that it has its own processors, and is building fabs as well to compete with Taiwan and SK. It is also leading in solar panels, electric cars, trains etc. At this stage, there is little it needs from the rest of the world in terms of tech that it can't acquire.
So thinking that Chinese economy will stall similar to Japan is wishfull thinking and denial at this stage. And China's large population and huge effective territory allows it to handle both low-value and high value manufacturing. Which means that there is no pivot that someone can stop.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadPity about all those pesky environmental and human rights concerns getting in the way /s
Your math doesn't work and it assumes an outcome that is more likely wildly unrealistic.
At $20,000 GDP per capita (they're at half that now), which would be a tremendous outcome for a nation as large as China, their national GDP will be $28-$29 trillion. The US economy will be that large in about 12 years.
If we're talking that sort of timeline: 3x US GDP would be $84-87 trillion in 2030. ~80%+ of the entire global economy at that point. Even if you shift the figures out another decade, it remains equally silly and impossible.
You might as well say instead that the US will soon push its GDP per capita up to $120,000 magically and more than offset China's population benefit difference with a continued per capita superiority. That scenario is about equally fantasy driven to the notion of China somehow magically having ~80% of all global economic output.
The US exports more annually than China does. Few people realize that. For China to keep growing like they did in the past, they're going to need to find another planet earth to export the next $2+ trillion in goods to, and fast. Those markets for consumption don't exist. They're already over-producing on a lot of industrial goods by 50% to 100% - such as steel - to artificially prop up their economy. That can't continue. Service economies grow dramatically slower than low-wage industrial economies that are filling in extreme slack, which again points to China having a far lower growth rate in the near future.
Put another way, China's easy growth is long since over. That's why they shifted to massive debt binging to keep the fake growth going, taking on $30 to $40 trillion in new debt in just eight or nine years after the great recession. That's a classic signal an economy is running out of easy growth. Their growth return on debt plunged off a cliff many years ago at this point. And their debt is very expensive compared to developed nations, so much so that for every $500 billion in new GDP they've been creating, they're paying $150 to $200 billion just in new debt interest. In short, their economy is being swamped by interest costs, another classic drag-you-down on growth.
It's so bad, China's central bank has begun talking about muni bankruptcies in the style of Detroit:
"China needs Detroit-style bankruptcy as debt problems remain: central bank official"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-debt/china-...
Now does that sound like a country still in its prime on growth, or more likely near the end of an over-extended growth boom?
And all of that recent growth came at a high political cost: their mercantilist one-sided trade approach has alienated all of their biggest customers, so now the US and EU are locking down China's access (including to acquisitions), further dampening China's future growth potential.
China is just as likely to get stuck in a middle income trap, particularly as their demographics rapidly age and we enter the era of AI + robotics + higher automation (ie their population increasingly becomes a liability). And given what's going on there politically with their new dictatorship, vast re-education camps, the erosion of what little speech & expression they had, becoming the world's most indebted nation, etc - these things point more to a negative outcome than a positive one. They look a lot more like Japan economically right before Japan hit stagnation, than anything else.
Historical question: name all the economically very successful dictatorships of the last 200 years.
The only thing I could think to add was that so much of the urban infrastructure is horrendously poor, and it will need to be ripped apart pretty much wholesale within the next 30-50 years. I’m thinking of all the awful quality apartments, road networks, pavements, sewer and water systems, terrible electricity grids, commercial spaces.
They managed to do all of that the last 30 years with cheap labor, the whole export fueled boom, and a population that will pretty much tolerate anything because it’s still better than the chaos of the past.
Now project that forward with the same disruption and cost, but now you’ve got higher wages, no Mao-baby-boom generation, higher standards and much less credit. It won’t be easy to do.
Japan wasn't a middle income country. They didn't get stuck in the middle income trap. In the next sentence you say that china is like japan right before they crashed and here you claim china is going to get stuck in the middle income trap. Those are contradictory assertions.
> They look a lot more like Japan economically right before Japan hit stagnation, than anything else.
How? Japan's urbanization rate in 1980s was over 90%. Japan's GDP was near parity with the US with half the population. China is at 50% urbanization. Their GDP is near parity with the US with 4X the US population. China today and Japan in the 80s are nothing alike. Not even close.
> Historical question: name all the economically very successful dictatorships of the last 200 years.
Every european country ( colonial power ). Saudi arabia, UAE, kuwait, etc. South korea, Taiwan, Chile, etc.
Also, you conveniently ignore the fact that there are far more economically poor democracies in the world.
This seems so _free_ trade to me - make your competitor's products more difficult to sell in your country while making your garbage & pollution easier to be shifted to your competitor's home.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-environment-usa/u-s...
That the US sees this technology as a matter of national security is all the more a reason to push for more independence to stay sovereign.
Not saying, it wouldn't be good to have chip production there. On the contrary, I support the idea. However, I don't really think the EU is about independence.
Too bad along the way they left some behind and broke some... ( Ugh... Humans)
There's another way to look at freedom: freedom from, rather than freedom to. Governments are generally instituted to ensure the former rather than the latter. They put restraints on some freedoms to increase other freedoms.
Thus, for example, the specific standards that goods are produced to and services are provided at may be set centrally, removing freedom to vary at a local level, but adding freedom to sell across the whole union with very low barriers to trade (i.e. freedom from variance in standards). Since freedom to vary on standards at the local level frequently ends up with beggar-thy-neighbour policies, or anti-competitive regulations, it's not a bad trade.
The European Parliament is all powerful except for the important things. The real power is in the hands of the commission, which, in practice, it's not more than an international forum, where, as in all the international forums, the will of the stronger states is the law.
The state members are bond by treaties that, in practice, are impossible to change by the population and that, in fact, are used to limit what the population could choose.
In theory, the EU could be a democratic institution, but there is not the will for that, quite the opposite, in my opinion.
The population is slowing awaking to those realities and the relevant institutions would do well addressing all those problems before is too late.
Every country can send just one member of the commission. Decisions are made by majority vote. Every member has the same weight, except the president, which is a tie-breaker. How again does the stronger country impose rules on the weaker?
The EU binds countries just like countries bind regions and cities. Why don't you complain about that? Well, because it is helpful if the government acts in the interest of the population.
A required part of understanding the EU is letting go of irrational attachment to notions of nationalism.
It is good that we have several governments working in our collective interest on many levels. Be it the city mayor, the regional government, the countrywide government or the European Commission.
Tell that to the countries in the south that are financing the exports of the north and that have to implement crazy pro-cyclical economic policies.
A part of understanding the European Union (and even more so the Eurozone) is letting go of fairy tales about how Realpolitik and national interest is dead.
If you want a real union just create a fiscal union controlled by the European parliament, but that, it's not going to happen.
One of the many goals of the EU was to provide a unified economy that had the ability to compete on a level playing field with other large powers. That is a form of independence, in the sense that member states can trade some of their individual independence for a greater ability to be independent from other global competitors as a union.
For what it’s worth, The UK’s departure will either result in a country that’s either an EU member in all but name, or a shining example of why leaving was bad.
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/european-...
A budget of 120 million euros is quite low though.
> Guarantee that a significant part of that technology is European
I wish they instead wrote "Guarantee that no significant part of that technology is not European".
The attempts by the government to shift growth away from low-level manufacturing towards tech requires tech and innovation. Things that require the sort of the people the rigid propoganda infused education system is ill-equipped to produce.
The shortcut is to simply to let others develop tech, then copy. That's the essence of the forced technology transfers.
20 years ago, companies and governments believed them that the forced transfers is purely for the Chinese market and a fair deal. After that turned not to be true (read: forced tech transfers for the bullet train that China now uses to undercut the original in foreign markets), but that's not the case today.
If Trump, who I detest, can get the key European tech countries + Japan on board, they can dramatically increase the time and cost for the Chinese to pivot their economy. Delay enough and China's demographic time bomb of rapidly ageing people plus Xi Jinping's Maoist madness could well result in the Chinese economy stalling similar to the Japanese circa 1980s or worse. We'll have to wait and see it all turns out
It's the zero-sum thinking of a totalitarian dictatorship that's a problem. For example, simply letting the Taiwanese live their own free and happy lives is too much of "a problem" to let go without threatening invasion on a weekly basis :)
Also, there is geopolitics at play. The Thucydides Trap is real.
The US isn't seeking to annex Cuba, and Cuba is entirely free to trade with the rest of the world.
China threatens and throws tantrums if Taiwan so much as gets any recognition from other nations. China doesn't even want Taiwan's leader to be able to directly speak to the US, or for their politicians to be able to visit the US.
If Raul Castro gets on a plane and goes to France or South Africa, the US doesn't threaten unspecified severe consequences for just talking to or meeting with Casto.
In fact we have good precedent for how the US deals with breakaway states. From that point of view China has shown remarkable constraint when dealing with what most people, including the Tawainese themselves, agree is a part of China.
It is precisely because mainland China knows very well that the majority of Taiwanese want independence, that the mainland objects to free and fair independence referendum. The mainland assumes they would loose.
The secession of US states is clarified in the US constitution [1], and the US Supreme Court, in Texas v. White [2], ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional, while commenting that revolution or consent of the States could lead to a successful secession. Note that Texas v. White happened over a century ago.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White
* PRC (the CCP) considers Taiwan to be part of the PRC (and part of ‘China’ the country). At best it’s referred to as a breakaway province.
* The ROC considers themselves to be ‘China’, and part of ‘China’, but not subject to CCP rule or a province of the PRC.
* The CCP has no actual direct rule over Taiwan in practice. Taiwanese people vote for their leaders, have their own laws, don’t follow PRC laws in any sense, hold separate Taiwanese currency and passports, require mainland visitors to acquire a visa, have independent trade deals and defense treaties with other sovereign nations etc etc.
Regardless of what you think should happen, anyone suggesting comparisons with Cuba/USA, Scotland/UK, Florida/USA etc is either ignorant, or deliberately muddying the waters to score an ideological point.
It would greatly increase the PRC's standing in the world, and its soft power. Right now, basically nobody trusts the PRC, and their increasing influence is simply a consequence of their spreading money around.
eg.
> if the PRC were to allow Taiwan to conduct...
Taiwan is de facto an independent country. The only extent to which the PRC can ‘allow’ or not allow something to happen in Taiwan is with the threat of invasion, which is vastly different to how the UK parliament ‘allowed’ Scotland to conduct an independence referendum.
I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be desirable for the PRC to remove the threat of military action and recognize a fair and binding referendum, but comparisons with Scotland tend to imply that Taiwan/China situation is just like UK/Scotland. Which is isn’t even slightly.
I should have expressed myself more clearly.
> Taiwan is de facto an independent country.
Taiwan should formally be an independent country in a just world, but de facto every political decision in Taiwan in made in the shadow of the immediate threat of PRC violence. Ultimately political power comes "from the barrel of a gun" and the PRC has a lot more barrels than the ROC.
I truly cannot distinguish if you're trolling or serious. You continue repeating the same points throughout this thread and they are not true. Taiwan has never been part of the PRC. Before the KMT invaded, Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire. Claiming the PRC gets all territory once owned by the Qing Dynasty is roughly equivalent to Germany claiming all territory once owned by Prussia. It doesn't lead anywhere pleasant.
Your comments are reprehensible and I wish for you never have the experience of your home being under constant threat from an increasingly wealthy and aggressive neighbor.
Please. Taiwan is not a part of the PRC. What would they be seceding from? They're a sovereign State founded by the losers of China's civil war. (That the Nationalists lost is one of China's great tragedies given the horrors that Mao and the ruling party inflicted on the Chinese people and their traditions).
Anyway, take Japan and the Senkaku islands as another example of Chinese bellicose jingoism fueled by a policy of nationalism designed to detract from threats to its legitimacy.
Talk to the Taiwanese themselves. Both the ROC and the PRC view Taiwan as part of China and view themselves as the legitimate government of all of China.
What is true is that many Taiwanese fear the mainland and think peaceful surrender is preferable to a military invasation by the mainland. Many Taiwanese fear that nobody will defend them if/when the Mainland invades.
Note also that the Taiwanese look to Hong Kong, and observe the slow erosion of the vestiges of democracy there.
Did UK allowed residence of HK to elect their own governor or at least its local legislative entity? Sorry to hurt your feeling but the truth is that all Governors of HK under the British HK era were WHITE colonists directly appointed by the Queen. People of HK was never allowed to directly elect their local legislative entity or top officials. In fact, you have to be WHITE to become a high level police officer there by the 1970s. You got to be completely brainwashed to call that democracy.
Oh, let's have a quick look at a full list of all WHITE governors of HK "democratically" appointed by the Queens -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_Hong_Kong
Now let's have a look at the all WHITE Commissioner of HK police "democratically" forced onto the people of HK -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_of_Police_(Hong_K...
Is this the democracy you were talking about? Get yourself some help.
What I was referring to was the erosion of rights since the takeover of HK by the PRC. Looking at your commenting history here on HN, I see quite a bit of love for dictatorships, and hatred for democracy. For this reason, I assume that you knew very well that I was referring to the erosion of rights since the takeover of HK, but decided to derail the thread, so as to avoid discussing the anti-democratic nature of the current PRC government, and the threat this poses to Taiwan.
> WHITE governors of HK
I'm a bit unhappy about your blatant racism. Please ponder the following question: how many non-Chinese General Secretaries of the Communist Party of China can you point me towards?
Note that UK governors did a much better job of ruling HK than did Mao and his cronies in China.
Note that it was only when Deng Xiaoping decided to copy the UK model that was trialled in HK and Singapore, that Mainland China stopped being a basket case.
I have to ask, have you actually done this? From a random 2017 poll[1]:
>> Three quarters of Taiwanese people think Taiwan and China are two separate countries, while only about 14 per cent believe they are both part of one nation
Or[2]:
>> For Taiwanese younger than 40, pro-independence support reaches 84 percent. Perhaps most startling, 43 percent of the under-40 generation would support independence even if it meant China would attack Taiwan under the risk of war.
Polls conducted by pro-China and pro-Taiwan media typically have slightly different numbers, but the trend across polls is crystal clear, and matches my experience from living there for ~4 years.
It's true that the ROC constitution claims all of the mainland for historical reasons. The thing is, if Taiwan were to give up that claim, they'd probably trigger the PRC's anti-secession law and get sucked into a war. Holding up this territorial claim as a proof that the Taiwanese see themselves as a part of China is extremely cynical.
[1] http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/209...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/01/0...
When the ROC was established in 1912, Taiwan was not a part of China. It's misleading to refer to that as the very beginning of the Taiwanese government.
The ROC government has only been indicative of the will of the Taiwanese people since democratization in the 1990s.
> It's still the case, I believe, that no major political party has declared independence as part of their platform. Whether this is because such a position would be wholly unconstitutional or because China would invade is debatable.
It's a bit of a tautology that declaring independence would be unconstitutional, because the constitution is the key piece of what needs to be updated.
IANAL, but I think it's even possible to achieve independence within the framework of the current constitution since it guarantees the right to referendums. The government would need to change the scope of referendums by passing a law (see [1]), and then the referendum would have to succeed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Republic_o...
Right, that's not what we're talking about though. The point is that Taiwan is not a part of the PRC and so the idea of 'seceding' from anything is absurd.
According to Taiwan. How does this theory play with the American civil war? The confederate states didn't consider themselves part of the union. Was the North therefore imposing sovereignty on a foreign nation?
They were both fighting for sovereignty of all of China. After the war they both continued to consider themselves to be sovereign to all China. Indeed, to this day they both make that claim.
For what it's worth, I agree that to all practical intents they are separate nations and should be such. I think both nations should drop their claims on each other. But only due to the fact that it's been the de facto situation for seventy years. I see no reason why the losing side of a civil war is instantly granted nationhood on cessation of fighting.
I also think the real reason why the PRC leadership is bullying the ROC is that the ROC is a clear example that democracy, wealth and Chinese culture are perfectly compatible -- thus falsifying the communist's party's justification of its claim to power.
I don't know about the concerns re democracy, the Chinese people I hear speaking about it don't seem to have much interest in Western democracy whether or not they could live under it, but I don't have a strong enough understanding of the issue to really claim to understand.
And I suppose the fact that their people don't care wouldn't necessarily assuage a sufficiently paranoid government.
Moreover, there are plenty of examples of a peaceful handling of secession, the most famous recent example being Page move-protected the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 [1]. Here are some other examples:
- Saar Statute referendum 1955 [2]
- Gibraltar sovereignty referenda in 1967 [3] and 2002 [4]
- Falkland Islands sovereignty referendum 2013 [5]
- Velvet Divorce of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia [6]
- Brexit vote [7]
- The Catalan independence referendum of 2017 [8] is an interesting edge case: it was conducted peacefully, albeit without active support from the Spanish government.
In the 21 century, China should be leading by example, and demonstrate the ability for peaceful conflict resolution, rather than fall back into 19th century power politics.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referend...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saar_Statute_referendum,_1955
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_sovereignty_referend...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_sovereignty_referend...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_r...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_referendu...
To be fair, people asked the same question in the 1900s. With the world getting so interconnected thanks to steamships and telegraphs, perhaps the age of major conflict had passed (this was right before ww1).
Also, global connectivity doesn't mean much when the great firewall creates 2 distinctly different internets. If you take Chinese state media as a barometer of public opinion, you clearly see there is very little affinity towards the rest of the world. The xenophobia and nationalism, if anything, is more likely to lead to conflict because nationalism is a double edged sword.
Best case scenario is the status quo. Even though China wants a bigger say in global affairs, they realize they have benefited from a peaceful international system over the last half-century and it's in their interest to preserve it largely intact. They have some long-term plays like "one belt" infrastructure, but that's something to supplement the existing system rather than to replace.
Personally I think the most likely risk is economic. No country can escape the laws of economics forever. At some point, the economy will have a downturn. Like with Putins Russia, when things are bad domestically, there is pressure to create conflict abroad (aka Ukraine) to distract their people which if managed badly, could turn out quite ugly
Its too early to say they are in collision course, but lets put it this way, if the balance of power tilts too fast .. some one will "push the button" of war.
"The move is fuelling claims that consumers will pay a higher cost for the 5G services if Australian companies are forced to turn away Chinese equipment suppliers such as Huawei, given estimates the company is a step ahead of its US and European rivals on price and performance.
Fairfax Media can reveal that US President Donald Trump raised the US concerns about Huawei directly with Mr Turnbull and other officials, but those aware of the talks said this did not mean Australia had decided to ban the company.
The Turnbull government’s message to the US was that the Trump administration must do more to prevent Chinese companies leapfrogging their American competitors and offering cheaper and better technology."
http://www.watoday.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ph...
If growth slows, reduced cash flow could put some immense pressure on their banking system as loans fail. Their bad debt rate was already thought to exceed Japan's at its worst years ago.
Then again, people have been predicting Chinese growth can't continue for years.
For example, the Chinese lags in traditional car manufacturing techniques because they only have a few decades to accumulate experience on that front, but they are spearheading mass manufacturing electric vehicles at scale with efficiency rivalling anyone in the world.
DJI is the leading drone company globally. Chinese carmakers manufactured 47% of all plug-in EVs sold worldwide in 2017. [1] (Yes, with solid government support, but they are part of the system we're considering.)
They developed the first (and only, so far) AI to pass a medical licensing exam human doctors need to take. (If you thought it's just rote learning, it's not. Analysis is required.) [2]
Regarding creativity, please see the replies to this comment by people with first-hand experience in China. [3]
Blocking tech transfer will prompt China to intensify their efforts to develop their own technologies. With their scale, ambition, and work culture, it's not clear at all that technologies they develop in new fields, where no one has a head start, will be inferior to those created elsewhere in the world. The evidence so far largely refutes this hypothesis.
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/29/2017-china-electric-car...
[2] http://sites.ieee.org/futuredirections/2017/12/02/congrats-x...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16612175
I can tell you are Chinese and extremely proud of her achievements. Saying as a whole, the education system in China produces less on creativity should not be viewed as an insult to national honor. There's nothing wrong with admitting that things are not the best. Otherwise, how can you improve?
I feel like I can agree that the education system, based on observation from afar, could possibly be weak on "creativity" as traditionally defined.
However, if you look at their Gaokao math questions, it requires much more creativity to solve than SAT Quantitative. For example, https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-examples-of-hard-Chinese...
Creativity has broad meanings, and each culture may value and support its expression in different terms.
The Gaokao reference you make is interesting. One of the biggest complains about standardized testing in the States is that it pushes teachers to "teach to the test". The Gaokao takes that to the extreme. It's much harder than the SAT quant, but the way my cousin and her class prepped for years is literally prepping for the test.
Imagine the SAT quant prep book with its "These are they types of questions you will encounter in the test" and take that a few steps further. Wayy higher level maths and more, but not infinite, models of questions on which they prep for every day and night for years.
How about writing programs to solve problems someone else has solved elsewhere (and you are not privy to the solution)?
That writing programs to solve problems that someone else has solved elsewhere? That's called IBM Watson and Jeopardy.
So thinking that Chinese economy will stall similar to Japan is wishfull thinking and denial at this stage. And China's large population and huge effective territory allows it to handle both low-value and high value manufacturing. Which means that there is no pivot that someone can stop.