I think most people don’t get just how much China is present in the worldwide market.
They used to be known as the low-tech manufacturer of the world because of course everything says “Made in China”. But today they are present in more than just the secondary, low-tech sector. 80% of the worldwide cotton supply is provided by China. At my national grocery chains, we even get canned beans from China – despite them being native on the continent.
And of course they are piercing in the high-tech stuff with weapons, space exploration, pharmaceutics, supercomputers, etc. Chinese-made items are already present in Chinese businesses, and slowly they’re going to be exported too.
People still think China is the manufacturer of crappy cheap stuff and that’s why they think their economy is unsustainable. But this is the power of a planned (somewhat) economy; it can adapt to changes really quickly and it can plan ahead for years to come. Just because we get the crappy cheap stuff doesn’t mean that’s all the Chinese are capable of producing; we’re not in the 90s any more and China makes very good products too. They find ways to produce things for cheap and this is not reliant only on underpaying labour. Economies of scale for example play a big part in their industry.
Not to mention they arguably have the most powerful military in the world and have the BRI which is a great attraction for allies in places such as Africa and the rest of Asia.
we’re not in the 90s any more
I think the trick of it is that China has changed so dramatically and so quickly people simply aren’t keeping up. They beat the US to 5g, and they’re leading the way on quantum computing all while developing domestic chip-making; simply put, China is not anymore the semi-industrial back-water it has a reputation in the west as being, and never will be again. Despite this, average Americans remember crappy plastic goods and suicide nets, and imagine a nation-wide gulag. I think it is still possible for milenials and genZ to more easily adapt to the idea of a modern China.
TFW Westerners blame China for the Suicide nets outside Apple’s Foxconn production lines
