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I don't mind people using AI to assist with writing, but when I see the markers of ai assistance, I wonder if the author actually reviewed what the AI wrote(hallucinated?) before publishing the article.

Also the ChatGPT writing style in this piece is really annoying to read.

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> Author’s Note: What follows is entirely my own opinion

is it? ChatGPT wrote most of it...

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> they import 30% of soybeans from us

I thought they stopped importing soybeans from the USA?

> Some legacy manufacturing

Where does the author think iPhones, automotive parts, computer / IT equipment, medical devices, machinery tools, are made?

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If the author is here, can they talk about Trump's TACO strategy? Its one thing to say Trump is just doing a chaos monkey, but if he always pulls back on his promises, then Trump is being consistent, not unreliable.

I don't think China wants to fight.

What would Trump be without an enemy? I think that's the question we need to answer here. Can he thrive in a world in peace? I have difficulty imagining what he would do.

I would go even further: most countries in the world right now don't need an enemy. There is just a few of them that are defined by persistent war.

> What would Trump be without an enemy? I

The answer is, "He'd pick another".

IIRC there's a quote from Hitler about how he could have picked another minority than the Jews to rail against.

> No equivalent to Windows/Office for enterprise (yet)

Chinese govn't has been using Linux based OS exclusively with WPS Office[1] (co-founded by Xiaomi's Leijun in the 90s)

Private sector use Win+Office though. But tech companies all choose Web based office like Feishu. docx/xlsx/pptx were just for compatibility only and interop with customers. Windows was like a Browser launcher anyway.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office

I don't know how it's evolved since, but yeah, WPS was an almost perfect clone of Office a decade or so ago. I could help Chinese students use it because everything was so similar that the UI was usable without knowing Chinese if you knew Office already.
China is not a free market. Capitalism is a new thing for them, their regime will not hesitate to go back to the old ways even if they have to starve the entire population to death to ensure that the regime survives.
>China is not a free market.

Correct, China actually exists.

Funny, but even "mostly free market" is not accurate.
Well, yeah, it's hard to approximate a bullshit ideological abstraction.
I’m confused about who will make our stuff if we decouple from China. As far as I can tell (trying to order advanced parts in smallish quantities), anyone other than China is a ~10x price difference? I have to assume labor cannot fully explain this, but I have yet to see anyone seriously trying to onshore cheap manufacturing?
Automation, scale, locality which comes from scale.

By locality I mean having an expert or a whole company on a very niche thing effectively as your neighbor. Main reason why it is so hard for Apple to leave China.

That guy is taking a couple of data points and running with them. The US could not AT ALL freeze 2.5T of Chinese assets without major consequences. They froze 300B of russian assets and all other central banks are running away from the dollar. The share of reserve currency in USD is now at its lowest in many decades at 40% and gold is soaring.
I'm so tired of reading ChatGPT output. It really distract from the topic.
What did China even do to be seen as this super evil enemy? Apart from actually challenging American economic superiority?
(comment deleted)
Are they described by anyone as a super evil enemy? Is so by whom? The main worry seems not that they are super evil but the combination of threatening some bad stuff like invading Taiwan with having a lot of military and economic power.
The big assumption is that the US can be fully independent from China's rare earth metals in 3 years. Is there any evidence this is possible? A quick search/promt suggests no way, 10-15 years needed for full chain autonomy.

Overall, terribly written useless AI slop.

Where this current administration is leading, the US does not need an enemy to "lose".
I don't know much economics, but the article seems absurd on several points.

- China can nationalize anything on their territory, including banks, buildings, land. Bank debt is not a real problem. Money aren't real. Imports/exports flows are very much in their favor whatever the currency.

- None of the things listed as China needs from US are really needed for their survival. What a nation needs to survive is locally produced goods (incl. food) and energy, and AFAIK, they have both in abundance.

The list can be simplified to:

1) continued access to tech advancements, without which they'll keep on improving on their own with less speed, but let's be honest, we mostly hate this new tech invading our lives. The 7nm they have is good enough for everything, incl. AI.

2) Access to US and allies markets. Seriously?? What US allies? EU, Africa and S.America will happily trade with them without the US.

3) Art. They can just pirate that one. In fact, once decoupling gets to a certain point, they can just ignore copyright completely. No copyright matches communism perfectly, if they ever think of going back to it.

- On the other hand, the things US needs from China will really crash the standard of living, not just the economy, until US replaces all the factories lost in China, and there are a lot of factories to replace. I don't even think US can easily replace the factories themselves without China.

I'm actually a bit scared of Russia resources and industrial design/research + China manufacturing. Just 2 things need to happen and the rest of the world is fcked for the next 100 years: Russia to get real leader(s) interested in their country, not personal profit/status, and China to address their reputation (see Poorly Made In China).

I’m just not sure that this is a Win Lose thing. I want China to win. I want America to win. I just don’t want China to invade Taiwan, etc etc.
China doesn't need to invade Taiwan. There are enough trade and business links between the two already that would make military confrontation bad for business, and send neighbouring countries into the arms of the west.
Retarded finance bro demonstrating why PRC will win.
No need to use a derogatory term when it's clear you mean something along the lines of "Murica-pilled"
I don't buy the basic economic argument. China can do fine. Take:

>The math is unforgiving: $5-10 trillion in hidden property losses against $5 trillion in bank equity. That’s not a solvency problem—it’s a physics problem.

No, that is not physics, it's finance pretty obviously. The government could deal with it in all sorts of way - lend the banks more money, nationalize them, print money and so on.

People have been saying that sort of thing for decades but China remains uncollapsed with more engineers than pretty much anywhere else, more production, more high speed rail, more new housing even if they overshot a bit and so on. The accounting can always be re-jigged if the physical stuff like trains and factories are working.

Excellent article with excellent points. Why foreign businesses continue to do business with China is beyond comprehension.
"What the US needs from China: Some legacy manufacturing (toys, furniture, textiles—annoying but replaceable over 5-10 years)"

Is this some Trumpist unreality propaganda? Hello solar panels, just for a start.