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leovingi | 10 months ago
China's Manufacturing Production [1] and Industrial Production has increased year-on-year for the past 10 years, excluding abnormal events such as Covid, so where are you getting your data? If you meant to say that they are transitioning to a higher level of manufacturing, instead of the sweatshops they were associated with in the 90s, this is true. But it was the low-level manufacturing that allowed them to build up both the capital and the skill necessary to advance further and further.
Hell, you've got a naval empire (the United States) that is currently unable to come even close to the Chinese ship-building capabilities - their output dwarfs the US by 232x [2]. It's not something that happened overnight and it's certainly not something that was strategically planned out 30 years ago - it is a slow process that started with low-level outsourcing and allowed China to grow into the behemoth it is today.
Sooner or later the US was going to have to deal with this fact and it seems like that time has come. Whether or not there's a plan, whether or not it will even work - I have no clue, you have no clue and neither does anyone on this forum.
Also, to counter another point you made - "When we talk about these trade deficits do we include streaming services, television shows, films, games and whatever else?" - you can't fight a war with an economy based on streaming services, TV shows and games.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/china/manufacturing-production
[2] https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/chinas-shipbuildi...
re-thc|10 months ago
Is this how we came up with the "magical" tariffs formula? Look at some data, interpret it in a random way and off we go?
You don't say that [1] shows the average growth was 6.56% in China vs 9.28% in Vietnam [3] vs 10.33% in Bangladesh. So then relatively, it's not exactly "growing" is it?
If China was still explicitly growing manufacturing the numbers would be much higher. Is it actually focused on manufacturing or are there other triggers? E.g. US banned Huawei, so they had to go back home and manufacture. E.g. US is banning AI and other exports so China has to make their own. I'd say US is increasing China's manufacturing rather than China!
[3] https://tradingeconomics.com/vietnam/manufacturing-productio...
[4] https://tradingeconomics.com/bangladesh/manufacturing-produc...
[5] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/manufactu...
> Hell, you've got a naval empire (the United States) that is currently unable to come even close to the Chinese ship-building capabilities > Sooner or later the US was going to have to deal with this fact
Why? Does the UK need to deal with this "fact" too then? The US has a naval empire that the UK is no where close to in capabilities. Based on your logic, the EU would have to band together to revive the British empire and deal with the US?
I wouldn't want this. The US wouldn't want this either. So what fact is the issue?
leovingi|10 months ago
Why are you suddenly, when faced with data that doesn't fit your narrative, using that word when it was nowhere to be found in the original discussion?
>Why? Does the UK need to deal with this "fact" too then?
If the interests of UK and China ever seriously clashed and led to a conflict, yes, they would. I can't believe that military capabilities and force projection in the modern world need to be explained on a website meant for professionals.