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Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

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Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#161

Post by showbufire »

systemvoltage wrote: post #148
hkmurakami wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally enjoyed the hypocrisy of China initially requesting Nations to not "overreact" and close borders to its travelers (mid February), then proceeding to do exactly this towards these same nations (mid March) when things became worse overseas.

CCP does not understand that playing asymmetric games from business laws (booting Uber off of China for example), diplomacy and global influence, etc is damaging long term brand and goodwill. In this pandemic, democratic nations are suffering more than authoritarian regimes purely by choice - complete Wuhan style measures are unacceptable say in Sweden. This asymmetry is going to give a short term boost to China. Lon…

booting off Uber? Have you ever used Uber and its local competitor Didi in China? I've used both multiple times. The competition was just too much, both companies were losing money at a pace that's not sustainable. The Uber China business was acquired, and in return Uber received cash and stakes in Didi.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#162

Post by henearkr »

chvid wrote: post #150
henearkr wrote: post #10

I'm surprised that Japan's government is feeling this as a priority right now... There are no problems for goods importation between Japan and China now, and as in China the pandemics has been largely reduced, there should not be in the near future neither. PS: Japan and more precisely Tokyo is on the brink to imitate the human tragedy of Italy and US, so maybe they could vote some different budgets for now... (like,…

You are correct but in this situation there is fear and anger which leads to isolationist policies. The path out of this, both the handling of the virus and the economic fallout, is more corporation and trade. For Japan it means more trade with China as it is dependent both on Chinese supply and Chinese demand. I think the policies will be walked back or just become overshadowed and insignificant.

I am disappointed that only people who agree with me want to present their arguments :)

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#163

Post by catalogia »

zepto wrote: post #116
TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This heroism stuff is just bullshit so we can shame people who refuse to die. Every medical worker who goes into the fray to help save people in this pandemic deserves the highest praise. Every medical worker who doesn't on the grounds that it's extremely unsafe deserves understanding - after all, as the EMS mantra goes, the safety of the rescuer takes priority over the rescue; a sick or dead medical practitioner c…

I agree with most of what you wrote here, but I wish people would stop listing “praise” as the primary thing that healthcare workers deserve. Why not say they deserve money?

They already get paid, getting paid should really go without saying.

Of course maybe they should be paid more. I don't really know how much they get paid and how much more they should get paid. I've heard the industry is abusive in some ways, but from what I've heard most of the abuse seems like institutionalized hazing; particularly the sleep deprivation stuff. In those respects, I think it's probably on that industry to clean up their own act. The AMA is a professional association for doctors, by doctors. It seems to me they should be able to do something about the abuse.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#164

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

not_exactly__ wrote: post #62
FooBarWidget wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China will have more incidents of pandemics for sure, because they haven't learned from the last one, and they won't learn from this one. I disagree. They took many months to report SARS to WHO, yes. But this time, reporting to WHO took ~5 days. It was discovered by dr Zhang Jixian on Dec 26, then reported to WHO on Dec 31. Then it took them about another week to sequence the genome and share it with the world. Plu…

> But this time, reporting to WHO took ~5 days. It was discovered by dr Zhang Jixian on Dec 26, then reported to WHO on Dec 31. False. It took much longer than five days. The WHO was indeed notified on the 31st but the Chinese government organs knew about this long before. First CCTV report that I recall was around the 15th. First confirmed cases were early December. There’s even US intel reports dating back to Novem…

Any source for your claims? What you're saying contradicts all the reporting, including from Caixin, which has seemed to have the inside scoop throughout this crisis.

The first patient was admitted to the hospital on 16 December 2019,[1] and the first lab result indicating a SARS-like coronavirus came back on 27 December 2019.[2]

> First confirmed cases were early December.

Those cases were not known about in early December. They were discovered after-the-fact, when people went over hospital records to try to find earlier, previously undetected cases. As I wrote above, nobody had any idea that there was a new coronavirus until 27 December, when the first lab results came in.

1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

2. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-29/in-depth-how-early-s...

3. The Caixin article is reprinted here: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/how-early-signs-...

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#165

Post by adventured »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #55
magicsmoke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering this is an English site, most of the participants here are probably from the Anglosphere which, being led by the US, would tend to mistrust China. It's interesting how you mention that as Dutch and European, you don't have the same level of mistrust. Without a measure of how China is viewed, not just in the Anglosphere, but in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Islamic world, Central A…

I don't think this has got anything to do with China's soft power. The Dutch generally look at things in a calm and less emotionally-loaded manner, at least compared to the Americans. There is still a slight slant towards mistrust but it's nowhere near how it is in America. I see the US social media villanizing China for the most insane things that can be easily disproven. The Dutch at least make an attempt at being…

It's a matter of stakes. The Netherlands has no power and very few responsibilities globally. It's often easy to be objective about topics when your stakes are low and distant.

How's that supposed Dutch calm looking when it comes to Italy and fiscal matters these days? I've been following that closely, they've been anything but calm, rational, objective. They're being emotional and subjective, making poor decisions, because it's a very personal subject that is nearby.

The US directly leads the entire military power base of the Western nations, as represented by NATO. And it is the sole backbone to that system. The French and Germans barely have militaries that can project outside of their own borders at this point, and the British are not far behind. China is going the opposite direction, they're a rapidly expanding superpower that is about to project militarily to nearly every corner of the globe, with obvious consequences.

The Netherlands isn't militarily facing off against China in Asia. The US is, every day - and at the eager welcome of numerous nations including Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. The US is the only nation that has directly confronted China and slowed down their annexing of the South China Sea. It won't be the Netherlands that has to make a decision about going to war with China when or if China invades Taiwan to annex them. The Netherlands will barely so much as lift a finger to help; first, they can't do anything because they're weak compared to China; and second they have little real stake in the matter. The US has dozens of allies it is militarily responsible to, countries that count on the US to shield them; the Netherlands has no comparable situation.

The Netherlands has little at stake in the China matter, compared to the US. They're a small trader nation at this point, shielded by larger nations in numerous ways.

So yeah, having dramatically more at stake in every possible way, the US is more charged about the topic than the ... calm and rational Dutch (about a topic they have very little stake in) that don't have to militarily confront China every day.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#166

Post by TeMPOraL »

xamuel wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as it pains me, I think you might be right. Perhaps we're not ready yet. Then again, who's ready the first time they do something? This pandemic has made obvious a lot of places where our attempt at globalization doesn't work. I hope our societies will learn from it and do better next time.

How would it work if we got globalism "right"? What if instead of a virus, it was an asteroid which instantly destroyed all the factories in Country X, so there's no way for Country X to send supplies overseas even if they wanted to? If we want to be safe from events like that, we better not outsource any critical production to Country X. But if we don't outsource any critical production to any foreign countries, wha…

I think doing globalism right would require everyone to mandate some amount of redundancies be left in the supply chains. Some amount of fat left uncut. All in order to derisk the economy in case a random piece of it gets shut down by force majeure.

I mean, imagine if all of AWS was just a single data centre labeled us-west-1. Imagine something happened to it. This is comparable to how Wuhan shutting down impacted the global supply chains.

(I lack a good web comparison for what happened afterwards - the EU, and recently the US, shutting down, hitting the global supply chains again, this time on the demand side.)

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#167

Post by FooBarWidget »

not_exactly__ wrote: post #62
FooBarWidget wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China will have more incidents of pandemics for sure, because they haven't learned from the last one, and they won't learn from this one. I disagree. They took many months to report SARS to WHO, yes. But this time, reporting to WHO took ~5 days. It was discovered by dr Zhang Jixian on Dec 26, then reported to WHO on Dec 31. Then it took them about another week to sequence the genome and share it with the world. Plu…

> But this time, reporting to WHO took ~5 days. It was discovered by dr Zhang Jixian on Dec 26, then reported to WHO on Dec 31. False. It took much longer than five days. The WHO was indeed notified on the 31st but the Chinese government organs knew about this long before. First CCTV report that I recall was around the 15th. First confirmed cases were early December. There’s even US intel reports dating back to Novem…

> First CCTV report that I recall was around the 15th.

Could you link to a source? I have not been able to find any sources that definitively point to something concrete (as opposed to merely rumors and heresay).

> There’s even US intel reports dating back to November.

Ah yes, the CIA reports from November. I find this highly suspicious. How did the CIA know about it that early? And if they did know about it that early, why did they not do anything about it, like preparing America for the coming onslaught?

And please forgive me but US reports about China are not exactly the most trustworthy given the current environment.

> But when this started, the Chinese system did what the Chinese system always does: try to save face and pretend all is okay.

Believe what you will. I believe otherwise (or at least, I believe in a more nuanced story than you do): there was indeed face-saving going on by city-level authorities, but once human-to-human transmission was confirmed, the central government stepped in and kicked the city-level authorities on their asses. Now, the city-level authorities have been fired, and I believe the central government will do something to discourage similar behavior in the future.

The Chinese government is not a monolith. See also https://twitter.com/dbey85/status/1246370465209188357?s=20

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#168

Post by friedman23 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34
rsweeney21 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nations exist to protect it's citizens. So yeah, as they should, each country is prioritizing their own needs before exporting any surplus to other countries. The challenge is no one really has any idea how much of the supplies they actually need. It's interesting to me that you find this surprising or view it as bad behavior.

> It's interesting to me that you find this surprising or view it as bad behavior. It's not surprising in the sense that it fits the definition of a "nation state". It's surprising because one would think that in XXI century, people understood that global problems require global coordination; competition of selfish actors fails spectacularly in such cases.

Except in this case the only countries that got out unscathed took unilateral action rather than listening to the recommendations of the corrupt multi national organizations that are supposedly trying to protect global public health.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#169

Post by surge »

systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Actually this pandemic has shown some true colors of many nations. 1) US trying to unsuccessfully hoard supplies, issues with the German testing company 2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine. 3) European countries are in-fighting for supplies. Switzer…

French seized supplies bound for Britain. Everyone is doing it.

You always protect your own citizens first, then once you're in a position of strength, then you help your neighbor. If you're both in a hole, you have to get out of the hole first before you help your friend out, otherwise you're just both going to be in the hole. Put your mask on before assisting other passengers, etc. So many analogies, but this is very basic behavior and expected. Until a country no longer has a shortage themselves, its only when they have an abundance should they give needed supplies away.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#170

Post by TeMPOraL »

friedman23 wrote: post #168
TeMPOraL wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's interesting to me that you find this surprising or view it as bad behavior. It's not surprising in the sense that it fits the definition of a "nation state". It's surprising because one would think that in XXI century, people understood that global problems require global coordination; competition of selfish actors fails spectacularly in such cases.

Except in this case the only countries that got out unscathed took unilateral action rather than listening to the recommendations of the corrupt multi national organizations that are supposedly trying to protect global public health.

In a way. WHO was way too cautious and severely underplayed the issue in January and February, but even then, the small recommendations they did make were completely ignored by the entire Western world.
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