I wonder why Singapore didn't say such things decades ago when the confrontation between US and the Soviet Union hit up? Because today confrontation still looks very much similar: between the free democratic bloc and a communist aggressive country (or bloc, maybe). Admittedly, the current conflict involves a lot of money and trade but most of all it's about geopolitical power, not soybeans or chips.
Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
171–180 of 209 posts
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#172Isn't the ball in China's court here? I am not sure what is the expectation of US in this. China has a completely closed market while at the same time they are reaping the benefits of selling in markets of other countries with no penalties. How is that fair? Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the for…
China has done what every developing country should do (Edit: and what the likes of Japan and Korea did before them) If you open your economy when you are relatively undeveloped and weak then foreign companies will immediately occupy your economy and you can forget about creating national 'champions'. China is not a closed market but they are careful not to fall into that trap.
This is accurate.
For example, India doesn't have Alibaba or Tencent or whatever because they allowed in foreign companies with stronger currencies too soon.
USA set the rules after WW2. China played the game according to those rules. Countries that didn't were either smashed economically or by warfare.
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#173As others has observed the economies of USA and China are tied at the hip. China sells goods cheaply to USA and takes the dollars it makes and invest in US treasuries. This keeps inflation low and keeps interest rates low. And allows the US to maintain an unnatural high living standard with low savings and asset price inflation. The central bank may be able to compensate from the lack of Chinese buying but it is an u…
Singapore is smart. Nobody can rely on a government on the other side of the planet with a history of war-mongering. For Singapore, their geographic proximity is more important than a fiat hegemony.
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you raise a lot of valid points, the US is hardly innocent on a historic global basis. That being said, what's your take on China's behavior specifically, do you believe they are acting in a "fair" manner? Do you believe the advantages they enjoy are all justified? (Note: for the sake of this argument only, karmic payback for US historic behavior is not considered a valid justification.) EDIT: I'm curious why…
> That being said, what's your take on China's behavior specifically, do you believe they are acting in a "fair" manner? Regarding trade: I think China (and any country) should have absolute say in how they do business, and who they want to do business with, who to allow in their internal market, etc. And of course other countries should be free to reciprocate. That would be actually free trade in my book: with any n…
> Regarding trade: I think China (and any country) should have absolute say in how they do business, and who they want to do business with, who to allow in their internal market, etc.
I don't necessarily disagree, except:
- does this take into consideration explicit agreements they've signed with the WTO?
- if this behavior is perfectly fine, why the extreme reluctance (on both sides, at least until recently) to acknowledge specifics of how the game is actually being played?
> I think "fair" can only be considered in context. Something is fair or not according to how the actual players play the game, not according to some abstract rules. If everybody cheats, China is fair to cheat too.
That seems perfectly reasonable, but my question was: is the US "cheating" China? Are de-facto terms and actual actions (actual actions, so excluding "karma"-based justification) of trade between the US and China "fair", or are they not fair? As far as I can tell, that question remains unanswered.
> Naive pundits...
I absolutely agree on a philosophical basis, but unless I'm mistaken, this seems orthogonal to my specific question. For the sake of clarity and conversational efficiency, I'd rather we not add new topics of discussion to this particular sub-thread.
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#175As others has observed the economies of USA and China are tied at the hip. China sells goods cheaply to USA and takes the dollars it makes and invest in US treasuries. This keeps inflation low and keeps interest rates low. And allows the US to maintain an unnatural high living standard with low savings and asset price inflation. The central bank may be able to compensate from the lack of Chinese buying but it is an u…
> Also notice that Singapore seems to be saying: Please don't ask us to pick sides ...
> The US may have fewer friends in Asia than it assumes.
Isn't Singapore political system famously authoritarian capitalist and its people ethnically Chinese? It might be a mistake as viewing it too much of a representative of the rest of Asia. It sounds very similar to contemporary China, in many respects, so it may have an unusually strong affinity to it.
https://www.hrw.org/asia/singapore:
> Singapore’s political environment is stifling. Citizens face severe restrictions on their basic rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly through overly broad criminal laws and regulations. In 2017, the country tightened the already strict limits on public assemblies contained in the Public Order Act, which requires police permits for any “cause-related” assembly outside the closely monitored “Speakers’ Corner.”
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
how is china a closed market? germany sells plenty of cars there...
They force foreign manufacturers to create local businesses with 50% chinese share.
didn't know that.how would they measure chinese share. these days with trust funds i imagine it's pretty difficult to know exactly who owns something
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
China has done what every developing country should do (Edit: and what the likes of Japan and Korea did before them) If you open your economy when you are relatively undeveloped and weak then foreign companies will immediately occupy your economy and you can forget about creating national 'champions'. China is not a closed market but they are careful not to fall into that trap.
I find it scary that you get downvoted for saying something you can find in an economics textbook.
I think despite their best efforts, most people are still more or less influenced by nationalism. Not just Americans, but anyone in the world can be afflicted with nationalism that impacts true neutrality of viewpoints.
Since y combinator new is most frequented by people from the US and other western nations that are having this conflict with China right now, my belief is that their emotions guide their logic. So everything that China does is bad and western countries are the victims. Which is the narrative that is also being strongly pushed in the American media and to a smaller extent other western media.
But as a Singaporean living in Asia, I don't see anything wrong with China's development path. It is developing the same way as almost every other industrialised nation in the world did. First by blatant disregard for IP and then slowly as it progresses up the economic ladder, it provides more and more protection for IP. China today and China ten years ago is vastly different in terms of the amount of the strength of its IP protection enforcement. And with its current trajectory, it will be vastly stronger in ten years still. With regards to barriers to imports, China has less barriers than most of the other developing nations and reducing sharply each year.
Instead of recognising this fact and working to hasten IP protections, America seems to me to be going on a mutually destructive path that is bad for everyone in the region if not the world. That makes me suspect this is not really about IP and prosperity but power which unlike the former, is zero-sum.
Its one thing for the average person on the street, but I don't understand why intelligent people in the West find it so difficult to separate facts from fiction and emotions from logic.
Lastly, I would like to add. There is nothing inherently moral or immoral about IP. It's just a way for the incumbents to protect their position. Making this a moral problem (Chinese bad because they steal IP) is not the right approach.
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
China has done what every developing country should do (Edit: and what the likes of Japan and Korea did before them) If you open your economy when you are relatively undeveloped and weak then foreign companies will immediately occupy your economy and you can forget about creating national 'champions'. China is not a closed market but they are careful not to fall into that trap.
Yup, they've set it up so money can flow within their own system and their own economy can prosper, rather than money feeding out to Google or Facebook. Quality of life in China has exploded massively, and things like restaurant prices are reaching American prices, which is insane going back ten years. And they remix the ideas of western tech and often improve upon it. WeChat is orders of magnitude more convenient th…
WeChat is orders of magnitude more convenient than what the US has to offer. Everything is centralized and integrated, what Google tries to do, but adopted everywhere
Fascism has it's good points!
Seriously though, WePay isn't innovation - we could have that right now in the West. Citibank could make an app that would allow peer-to-peer money transfers with QR codes the way WePay works. It would be smooth and easy. You'd just have to have a Citibank account. After a while, everyone could get an account with Citibank and it would be great! The other banks wouldn't like it, but whatevs.
Then Citibank would realize they were the gatekeepers of the digital peer-to-peer economy and they would seek rent. Transaction fees would increase. Monthly account fees would sky-rocket. Eventually, the govt would realize this was a drain on commerce and would seek to regulate and maybe even break up Citibank, but in a rule-OF-law nation, the govt would actually have to go to court and Citibank would get to argue their case against govt intervention. It could take YEARS! Look at how long it took the govt to prosecute IBM back in the day!
Meanwhile, if Tencent gets too greedy with WePay, the govt just makes their CEO disappear. In fact, in a fascist state, having monopolies is an ADVANTAGE! It's one throat to throttle - if there's a problem, there's just one CEO you need to kill.
WePay isn't innovative - it's just something that works particularly well in a fascist state. Getting the whole banking industry to agree to communicate and cooperate on a common mobile payment system is a bit more difficult...
Update - s/rule-by-law/rule-OF-law/
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#179China is highly unlikely to undermine the U.S.-led global system given it has been one of its biggest beneficiaries, Balakrishnan said. They undermine it every day they refuse to allow free trade. The US and others spent a lot of resources building the free trade system of the world... and China wants the benefits of selling into that global market, while reserving their own market for themselves. Every day they are…
The "free trade" the US propagates is horrible for anyone not in the top 20% of society. Your manufacturing business has been decimated, many people outside coastal areas have been seeing declining standards of living. Even the EU has many import tariffs to protect its own industries from unfair competition from China and others. Why should someone who makes bikes in the EU compete with someone who does it for $0,50…
> Why should someone who makes bikes in the EU compete with someone who does it for $0,50 an hour in Vietnam or who knows where?
Because this will lead to increased competition on the low cost countries labor market, increasing their wages. Long term that should equalizes wages and thus standard of living globally and everyone is happy. At least that's the overly simplified and wishful thinking. Reality is obviously a bit more complicated, but I still wouldn't want to entirely discard that concept.
Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations
#180Isn't the ball in China's court here? I am not sure what is the expectation of US in this. China has a completely closed market while at the same time they are reaping the benefits of selling in markets of other countries with no penalties. How is that fair? Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the for…
>Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the foreign companies.
If the companies are willingly going to the Chinese markets on their own accord under an IP sharing agreement, you can no longer use the term "force". They have a choice to not share it by not entering the market. You can critique this as an inherent weakness of capitalism, but China is not forcing anybody in this situation.
And why would they have to steal it if its already shared? This doesn't even make any sense.