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China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

nytimes.com

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Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#311

Post by age_of_stone »

teknologist wrote: post #268
dis-sys wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeChat is not blocked, just like a long list of US internet services not blocked in China - Amazon, NH, booking.com, ebay, uber, airbnb, expedia and many more. That being said, Huawei and Alipay's expansion into the US has been repeatedly blocked by the US federal government [1]. By citing the same national security concerns, using such logic, Cisco and Microsoft should have long been banned in China - but they are n…

Those companies had to obtain ICP licenses and participate in forced partnerships and open up their servers to the government. Your claim of fairness here is simply quite laughable

Huawei would like to participate in "forced" partnership and open their servers to the US government in exchange US market access. But still, it's banned by national security. laughable?

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#312

Post by steve19 »

age_of_stone wrote: post #310
joefranklinsrs wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The US will have to bootstrap a lot of manufacturing to replace Chinese labor." They just have to move to cheaper countries to replace Chinese labor. One time upfront asset cost, but lower expense over time. "US trade "only" accounts for about ~18% China's total trade" Once China is not part of the trade flow between US and X country (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, etc), the total trade for China will fall even more th…

you forgot that China would be the biggest consumer market in the world. comparing to cheaper labor, western companies may prefer more market shares.

But China protects local emcumbents and new entrants, forces joint ventures and IP transfer. If the Chinese market worth it? For some companies yes if course, but I don't think the Chinese market is always a good idea... Which is exactly what China wants.

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#313

Post by 07d046 »

int_19h wrote: post #285
07d046 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how likely that is, but that looks like an ideal scenario for the White House, and a possible existential threat for the Chinese Communist Party. People have a habit of putting up with a lot when the economy is growing dramatically and their lives are noticeably improving, but they might not be so happy with an increasingly oppressive government and a struggling economy that isn't giving any sign of fu…

Thing is, an oppressive government can deal with more discontent from the citizenry than a democracy like US. So it's not just a question of relative GDP and balances etc - purely economic issues - it's also a question of who is more resilient politically. I'm not so sure US is, if only because politicians have to chase votes, and even relatively minor economic pains among important constituencies can blow up very qu…

I think it goes both ways. As a democracy, America has a pressure valve if things are going poorly, and a peaceful transition of power to the other side of politics is always an election away. (It could fall as a democracy, but it's hard to see a trade war with China being a cause for that.) Maybe America might discover a lack of political will, but there's also a chance it could be wrapped up in nationalism and sold to voters, and action against China is one of the rare things that a number of strongly anti-Trump people do support.

As the rulers of a one-party totalitarian state, the CCP is setting itself up to take the credit and blame for everything in China. Following the "century of humiliation", China is attempting a century of rejuvenation. It started poorly with the Cultural Revolution and tens of millions dying in famine and violence, but it has made remarkable progress since Mao. It appears that the government is well-liked today (although nobody knows anything about China [1]) and economic development is continuing. The government can easily deal with a bit of discontent if required (by, say, putting a million people in concentration camps), but if there was a genuine crisis and people realised that the government had terribly mismanaged things or economically stagnates long before it becomes truly wealthy, the CCP might find that the mandate of heaven has shifted.

1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-a...

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#314

Post by salimmadjd »

gonvaled wrote: post #74

Extremely one sided comments, with a US centric view. The world is not the US, and HN readers are not only US citizens, so let me express a different point of view. Assumption: Trump wants fair trade. HN readers want fair trade. What is needed: fair trading rules, fair IP rules, fair capital structures, and a fair currency. Tackling some of the unfair trade practices does not address all those issues. In particular i…

>And we have not yet started talking about the weaponizing of the dollar, which can be recently seen in the conflict with Iran.

Not just with Iran, but everywhere. Most people do not realize the monopoly of USD in banking transactions. Essentially US can pass laws or even through executive order control the economic and trade policy of other countries. Turkey and India are barred from buying Russian equipments. This is not free trade. When US uses its monopoly to block India from trade with Iran and tries the same with China, that’s not really free trade either.

You mentioned weaponizing dollar, many people do not realize how it works. We’ve seen a lot of negative news about China recently . I suspect some of it has to do with their decision to open their own oil futures trading that is not run on USD. This could be the largest threat to the USD monopoly. Time will tell..,

edit: additional links and info:

Basic info on Shanghai crude futures [0]

Some early speculative behavior. I wonder with low early volumes in this market can be manipulated to scare off more serious investors [1]

Seems like the Shanghai market had its first delivery on Sep 12 [2], that being said, some predict it might take 10 years before it will have serious impact on the market. But sometimes financial markets move ahead of the physical realities. So, its impact might become palpable in just a few years [3]

[0] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-crude-oil-futures-an...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-07/oil-specu...

[2] https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/China-Completes-First-...

[3] https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/2139676/will-ch...

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#315

Post by age_of_stone »

teknologist wrote: post #267
dis-sys wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With all of the talk of how China is or is not playing fair, I feel like their internet bans get taken for granted, and I wish there was more pressure to play fairly there. In a fair environment, you'd be seeing Facebook/Google/Twitter used by hundreds of millions Chinese when most Americans paying their bills using Alipay and talk to their friends using WeChat. US dominance in tech is _NOT_ something called fair.

This is an amusing point of view. WeChat is really the worst messenger out there from a technical standpoint. No attempt encryption at all (who knows if they even use SSL?) and the stickers and social networking features still resemble 1st gen. messenger apps

1st gen? are you kidding? millions of its international users love it no mention 1 billion domestic users. it's just mostly designed for Chinese users.

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#316

Post by rqs »

gonvaled wrote: post #74

Extremely one sided comments, with a US centric view. The world is not the US, and HN readers are not only US citizens, so let me express a different point of view. Assumption: Trump wants fair trade. HN readers want fair trade. What is needed: fair trading rules, fair IP rules, fair capital structures, and a fair currency. Tackling some of the unfair trade practices does not address all those issues. In particular i…

I've watched a video[0] from Fox News few months ago, the key point been the "unfair trading" problem should be addressed through WTO rather than direct tariffs, and those tariffs maybe against WTO's rules.

Also, many people here maybe don't know, China is suing the U.S. for those tariffs. Maybe wait until it played out, the everything will be a bit clear.

I don't know how people in the U.S. view this trade war, but in China, many people already start to treat it as a new normal now after realizing it will be a long lasting one. Jack Ma for example, believes it will last for ~20 years.

I also watched another video[1], which is a voice recording from a seminar, the speaker was Jin Yi Nan[2], who is one of the "Hawks" in China. In that recording, other than trying to calm the listener (mainly business man I assume) down, he made few points, which been (I oversimplified it, somebody can do a full translation of the recording if interested):

- We (China) had problems, but the U.S. also had problems. At the same time, they (The U.S.) had advantage, we had ours. We're actually chained together (trade war will be bad for both, and they are hurting themselves while we facing the challenge).

- Chinese business should keep trying to enter international (including US) market and make investment, regardless the trade war.

- Trump's idea is frozen at '40s, and we (China) will be more open (more participation in trading and welcome international investment).

I think it sort of reflects the idea of some people inside the China government, or at least showing how the government want people to think of the trade war.

On the bright side, by the time all of this ends, it will be a very good topic to discuss with our future high-schooler kids.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGbcsBfPF0g

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8svRtTAw_10 (It's in Chinese)

[2] https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E9%87%91%E4%B8%80%E5%8D%97 (Only Chinese version available)

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#317

Post by chii »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #307
jayalpha wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There would be little fuss if China was sticking to it's own agreements. " This alone would be very "un-chinese". A signed contract in China is always a contract in negotiation. Can change any time.

It doesn't matter what's on the paper. What matters is what they do. If they don't respect IP, we shouldn't respect theirs. If they respect ours, we respect theirs.

And so an eye for an eye leaves the world blind.

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#319

Post by repolfx »

gonvaled wrote: post #278
pankajdoharey wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man i am from India, at the same time you gotta call a spade a spade. US has been too liberal and gave a leeway to everyone to export goods to US without any tariffs. But every country Including my own puts a import tax on goods imported from the US. This isnt fair business, and US has actually lost a lot of money trying to be the leader in fair trade practice and globalisation. Other countries are just plain stealin…

US promoted free trade after WWII, when it was the last man standing and the only manufacturer. Free trade meant "we sell made in America all around the world". Leading by example meant opening their market, at no cost since nobody was in a position to export. The rationale was "open your markets as we do, and we will all get richer". But the real intent was to foster the dominance of American manufacturing So we did…

If that was true the US would have had giant import tariffs after WW2 and been promoting the absence of them in other countries. Even if you assume the US would have abolished tariffs knowing it'd cost them little immediately after WW2, they'd have put them back in the decades that followed as places like South Korea, Japan, most of Europe recovered and started exporting again. But the US didn't do that, as far as I know. American tariffs are something I didn't hear about until very recently. The US can be criticised for hypocrisy on various issues but this doesn't seem to be one of them.

Re: China Once Looked Tough on Trade. Now Its Options Are Dwindling

#320

Post by robjan »

snaky wrote: post #281
notabot wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked Trump wasn't exactly a fan of immigrants either.

That's especially acute considering China is more and more opening to foreign labour - despite the fact there is no path to Chinese citizenship for foreigners, well, except Nobel prize and Olympic gold winners.

I know a number of people who were non-Chinese "foreigners", but who attained Chinese citizenship. As long as you legally remain in the country for sufficient time it's not impossible.
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