Your points are fair, and I'm not saying China isn't directly responsible for the environmental costs of both their internal and export manufacturing. But it's not fair to shift
all of the blame, as some naïve or disingenuous people do, because most of the export manufacturing is either managed by and done for western companies (China being "the factory of the world"), or simply driven by the demand on western markets. In other words, their environmental impact is in large part caused by
our consumerism. And if China decided to no longer serve as the world's 3D printer, you're correct that some other nation would probably take up that role - and those same naïve/disingenuous people would then decry that nation for all its environmental problems.
In other words: it's bad that China is offering, but it's also bad for the west to take them up on that offer.
> Also the factory orders were coming from multinational corporations, they have no real allegiance with the West, they disrupt Western political, taxation and legal systems just like anywhere else.
That's IMO just giving up. Corporations are not yet independent governments, they should still be taken to account in the countries they originate from and those they operate in.
> China has not only enabled western consumerism, it disrupted the natural economic forces that would prevent such a thing from arising in the first place.
Not sure what they disrupted. It looks to me they played by the books, simply arbitraging labor costs like everyone else does in a global economy. Still, it's a feedback loop - China is enabling western consumerism, but growing consumerism is driving further growth in environmentally unsound manufacturing, most of which happens in China. If China did not enable it, probably some other nation would. It's a feedback loop, and both sides of it are to blame.