71–80 of 241 posts
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The US has a significantly larger consumer market. A lot of people would complain if they were unable to import cheap goods from China.
Yeah but it means they don’t get paid as much either as there is no wage pressure at the bottom. You can’t have $5 T-shirts and also a $15 minimum wage.
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The status quo also leads to suffering and death in the civilian population and it's hard to predict which future would be worse
Actually it's quite easy to predict! We can simply look at the track record of Western intervention since WW2, see that it comes down so squarely on the side of "please USA just leave the world alone, my god" that it achieves the platonic definition of a square, then call it a day.
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By that logic at WW II, Germany was also a nation of German people, so am assuming per the above definition Germany was not a hostile nation? A nation is generally its government, CCP in the example of China and yes it is hostile against every non-China nation. Chinese are people just like every other people.
> A nation is generally its government This is exactly the argument I object to. As per definition, "A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or a common culture." Keeping this distinction (between the government and the citizens) is crucial because the discourse influences actions.
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The us let’s Chinese firms generally speaking full access to the us market. The CCP doesn’t allow the us companies the same. Why our government let that happen. Letting so much business leave to the CCP will be one of the greatest failings of the us government.
A few speculative ideas/thoughts: - The US needs access to China's goods to be viable. For half a century US companies improved their efficiency/competitiveness by moving their process to China. They now have too many dependencies in the form of Chinese manufacturing and development capabilities and do not have the skills/knowledge/talents/infrastructure in the US. Because of this China can dictate their rules with z…
Realistically, what would china do? If you "start massively selling US debt", what does that mean? Someone has to buy it. You're increasing the supply while demand probably stays pretty constant. But realistically, I don't think it could go below 90-cents on the dollar. I mean, who wouldn't take US government debt at a 10% discount? Compared to commercial debt from a company with way more risk than the US government, that's way better. So, are we talking about raising the US government's cost to borrow by a few percentage points for a few months?
China can't really disrupt the US economy via its debt holdings. Actually cutting China off from the US would have a far greater impact. Heck, Trump's tariffs were a tiny move and created intense disruption in a lot of industries like bicycle sales. That's not even cutting off China or anything. Imagine if smartphones couldn't be imported into the US for a year or two?
But I don't think the original poster is talking about "cutting China off" in whole. I think the issue in question is about a company like ByteDance/TikTok getting to operate in the US while Google, Facebook, Clubhouse, etc. get blocked from accessing China. If TikTok doesn't need to compete with US companies in China, but Twitter/Instagram/Clubhouse need to compete with TikTok in the US, it means that Chinese companies will have double the market to sell into.
China's GDP is around $24T and the US's is around $21T so a service like TikTok can get access to all $45T while a US-based company like Facebook can't get access to the Chinese market. If you're able to service both countries, your investment in software, infrastructure, etc. goes further.
I don't think it's about cutting China off, but rather wanting a more level playing field. When we're talking about something like smartphones, Apple, Samsung, and others sell into the Chinese market a lot and while China might do things to help its own companies like Huawei, it's open enough to placate a lot of people. That's very different from Facebook and Twitter which are banned in the country. Apple is 20% of the Chinese smartphone market.
If a US company makes the Next Big Thing in social networking, a Chinese company gets to copy it for the Chinese market. If a Chinese company makes the Next Big Thing, they can launch it in the US market as TikTok did.
I don't think this is about cutting Chinese manufacturing off. I think this is a question of whether firms like ByteDance/TikTok should be allowed to come into the US while US firms like Facebook or Twitter can't enter China.
Somewhat recently a head of Microsoft was asked about forgoing access to the Chinese market if it meant protecting American interests in the face of new threats. He unequivocally said, yes. He was willing to forgo their market. I'm not sure Apple and others who either sell product there or have large manufacturing there are as willing to forgo the 'promise market', but it looks more and more we will have to. More or…
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> A nation is generally its government This is exactly the argument I object to. As per definition, "A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or a common culture." Keeping this distinction (between the government and the citizens) is crucial because the discourse influences actions.
The people of China don't control espionage; the government does. So you'd better think about the government when the topic is espionage, which it is in this discussion.
Where is the proof that this was a Chinese hacking group? I certainly don't trust Microsoft to provide it. In fact, it's very concerning that Microsoft seems to be in some quasi-governmental role in this. It's literally a giant security hole in their software, why should we trust what they say? The White House acting as a PR unit for MS (or is it vice versa?) is a serious problem.
How are we to trust you're not a paid Putin or CCP propagandist? Arguably Microsoft has far more credibility than you - my point being there are ways people orient for trusting individuals and organizations. If you think the current White House administration and Microsoft aren't on the more trustworthy side of the trust spectrum, then who in your opinion is more trustworthy?
Who would I trust? I’ll start with someone providing some sort of proof. Which is entirely absent here.
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A few speculative ideas/thoughts: - The US needs access to China's goods to be viable. For half a century US companies improved their efficiency/competitiveness by moving their process to China. They now have too many dependencies in the form of Chinese manufacturing and development capabilities and do not have the skills/knowledge/talents/infrastructure in the US. Because of this China can dictate their rules with z…
> The US needs access to China's goods to be viable. No, it really isn't. The thing the US is indeed does very little for an economy of its size. Washington can slam fist on the table, and US industry will be out of China by tomorrow, without much impact at home besides no iToys this season, and few percents off its stock market. Lack of consumer goods would of course be upsetting, but people wouldn't die from lack o…
People barely making ends meet aren't very interested in those kinds of political statements.
You could, of course, try to lie to them about what the consequences of your policies are going to be.
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Because we're arrogant. We thought that if we go down the road we went down, they'd naturally settle into their proper place as manufactory for the West without wanting a seat at the table. Now they're a global power and, gasp, they act like one. Nobody could have seen this coming.
The US also believed that giving China an example of "the good way" via access to the US markets would cause them to open up and allow access in kind. Turned out that was a pretty naive belief.
I read a dozen books on post-Nixon US politics.
The amount of allegations from both sides of US politics that the other benefitted in the personal capacity from trade with China is staggering.
At least some of them must be genuine.
It comes to a very simple explanation that communists have indeed been influencing US politics for decades with very crude means, and that they were successful in that.
This is an embarrassing admission US has to do first before any recovery can be started.