A planned economy focussed on long term (economic) power vs. market driven short term incentives led to a lot of indispensable goods beinganufactured only in China.
Now the dependence for critical supplies is an economic weapon that can be wielded by China. Even a lot of base products for medicine come from china, let’s see what happens.
I have my qualms about China but I gotta admit they really used economies of scale and long term planning well.
sure is easy to produce cheap shit when, somewhere down the supply chain, you’re not paying workers what their labour is worth
That is also a good point
The Chinese rank 60th in happiness, which is ahead of Greece, Russia, Turkey, India and other market economies.
There are other ways to care for your population than making them compete for basic necessities. It’s unfair to judge by your own lens.
But then again, this is probably much too much nuance for this thread.
Chinese people do compete for basic necessities though; stores aren’t passing out goods for free and rent/mortgages are very real.
Is there something you are familiar with that they don’t have to pay for? I suppose health care and public education, but that’s not particularly unique to China.
Deng Xiaoping, when laying out the market reforms of the 80s, was quoted as saying “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mice”
It turns out now that we are the mice.
The thing about capitalism is… The companys could be forced to leave and build the production capacity somewhere else this could be done very fast and through the back door (without causing a “trade war” short term)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In an interview with US media ahead of the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described China as “the main enabler of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”
According to the US assessment, China is the top supplier of machine tools, microelectronics, and nitrocellulose — critical to making munitions and rocket propellers — and other dual-use items that Moscow uses to ramp up its defense industrial base.
In June, South Korean National Security Advisor Chang Ho-jin told reporters Seoul will review the possibility of supplying weapons to Ukraine, after the leaders of North Korea and Russia signed a pact pledging mutual defense in the event of war.
NATO has collaborated with partners in the Indo-Pacific since the early 2000s, but Russia’s war against Ukraine and security challenges posed by China have led to a deeper engagement.
Ahead of the meeting, NATO chief Stoltenberg said the alliance and its Indo-Pacific partners “will build on our practical cooperation with flagship projects on Ukraine, cyber, and new technologies.”
Last year, France blocked a NATO plan to open a liaison office in Japan, insisting the alliance is geographically confined to the North Atlantic.
The original article contains 860 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
