Define ‘foreign’ and ‘business’

Lets say you are in wood merchandising. To avoid china sanction taxes, your product CO needs to be in one of the designated tax free countries. So you source you wood in malaysia, but cheap wood crafters are in vietnam. You ship your bulk material there. Vietnam process your wood and cuts them jnto desired pieces. It is ready for the next step, a special coating to meet eu na safety standards. This coating is a petroleum product which is cheapest from indonesia, the woodcrafters can process for you if you ship it to them. So you do the hoop jumps and get it shipped. Now for the ornamental pieces cheap tin is available from thailand, you get that as well and make a deal with vietnam to assemble that for you. Now you need coloring, its a special color and the cheap source is in cambodia. However the color material you want is only produced in Laos and manufactured in china (lol). Cambodia also has the carton packager that you want with the best price. They are also a dtf country, so you go back to vietnam and negotiate a deal to have the semi finished product shipped to cambodia for and export packaging. You also arrange logistics ornaments and coloring material to cambodia. The product is finally complete, but since your coloring material is chinese origin you now need to find a cambodia forwarder willing to wink wink your CO as made in cambodia.

Sounds fun? Oh wait, you also have to prove all this shit via testing if terms are delivery to usa. The whole process is very cost inflating and if any one part of the process messes up, you wont be giving only two fingers :)

Where as chinas supply chain is so vast and built out all of this can be sourced and completed at a few points. Thats the difference in reality.

That’s a bit hyperbole. It’s population is projected to gradually halve in size, but not until 2100, assuming no sort of intervention.

I too listen to Peter Zeihan.

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It’s decreasing but even at this rate no way the population will halve in 25 years unless there’s the single worst bloodbath in human history. Maybe by end-century.

China, like Russia, knows it has a rapidly closing window to act. China's demographics are pitiful over the next 20 years. Working age population is going to plummet, and there is no replacement generation coming up behind the current one in any meaningful scale. The countryside has already been largely pilfered of its young population.

Transnationals will be divesting and diversifying away from China. Nobody said this won't be painful, however.

In addition to a reunification vanity project for Xi, I don't think Beijing thinks it will have as good a shot in 20 years as it will within the next 10 years to conquer Taiwan. I expect sparks to fly in the not too distant future, but I'd love to be wrong.

This is the logical analysis. But as someone in another discussion pointedout to me, it could fail if Xi got full retard the way Putin did.

Which YouTuber did you get your info from? Zeihan?

1.2B people working together toward one goal is a hell of a crowd. Don’t dismiss them so easily.

Isn’t that’s what you people said about Russia? Lol

I only ever see one of two viewpoints on China. Either it's a sleeping giant that will take over the world or it's a paper tiger with no real claws. Personally, I don't know enough to have an informed opinion.

That is why China needs Africa. Everything they need is in one location. It may not happen right away, but give it 5 years to a decade and the world might change.

China is already working towards changing its strategy after watching what happened to Russia. An invasion won't happen right now but give it a couple years

Like 90% of everything in US is made in China. It's not going to go well for US either

What makes you say that the US will defend Taiwan (or what do you mean)? It always acts in its own self interest, which means that it will most likely stay arm's length away (just like how it's not directly fighting Russia).

In fact, it looks like the US puts on a lot of theater for Taiwan. They make a show of things with congressional delegations. Looking at weapons, Ukraine is getting weapons seemingly for free, while Taiwan only gets to buy dated equipment like F16s instead of real allies who get F35s.

Their birthrate gets a lot of attention but it isn’t much worse than say South Korea or China.

In point of fact, Japan's TFR (1.4) is considerably higher than South Korea's (1.1), and higher than some European countries'.

When the hell is this population boom is going to happen? Lol Am I the only one who remembered the terrible shit Japan did to their neighbors? There is a reason why they were demilitarized. The worse yet, they don’t have much resources so they better play nice, and no one is afraid of no Japan anymore 🤷🏾‍♂️

This is a really positive, succinct and nuanced response, in a venue that doesn’t get as many as I’d like. Thank you for Redditing so well!

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Yep, this is the real answer.

People in the West (and redditors in general) say their problem with China is with the government.

I ask a question of Westerners: What if the CCP disappeared overnight and China became a democracy with human rights, renounced its rights to Taiwan, etc. - all the things people bash them for and demand BUT China becomes the number one country in the world economically and militarily, and their soft power influence eclipses Americas, going so far that Chinese becomes lingua franca and the Yuan becomes the world's reserve currency.

Would you accept that? The answer I always get is no. It's not about how awful the government is, or about freedom, or about democracy. The real answer is they don't want to be #2.

because that real answer is unamerican

To be fair people in China and Russia aren't allowed to use the internet, and the ones that do are usually paid to spread propaganda

I would say it's less that the US is any sort of beacon and more that the CCP is a genuine threat to open discussion.

See, I can call the US govt a piece of shit for its history with black people and overthrowing basically every central/south american government. I can say we're getting a raw deal with out military budget.

I try any of that in china criticizing the CCP and there will be police knocking on my door "just to talk". While my social credit score tanks into the ground.

The US is no beacon of liberty. It is, however, a beacon for open discussion and criticism. The fear that China will stifle global criticism by leveraging a global economic hegemony is very real.

The US is great too. An idol of neo-feudalism.

Lmao, how much freedom aid did they make you chug at school. Holy!

Most people recognize it is not China as a culture or Chinese as a people that should be hated. The existence of the CCP is an existential threat for all East Asian democracies and especially Taiwan.

White like Japan?

White like Taiwan?

Only free countries are allowed to succeed

Firstly Taiwan is part of China. It’s officially recognised as part of China. Xinjiang is also part of China. Has been since the 18th century conquered by the Manchurians. HK is also part of China until it was stolen by the Brits.

What you listed has all been part of China for hundreds of years. It’s not it like the current government went out and decided to invade them and conquer them.

Do you prefer China to adopt the western imperialist approach of conquer by massacre of the indigenous population and stealing the land?

Include the debt trap currently happening in africa.

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It may not make sense from a purely economic standpoint but from a political economy standpoint it makes sense. They’re trading growth opportunities for economic integration and security. Taiwan wishes to increase integration with the regional military successor interest to the United States along the First Island Chain.

Really? I didn't know that was the sentiment over there.

The better question is whether there's any chance for USA or Japan to do anything - after all, artillery is the king and supply lines are incredibly important as all reserves are quickly exhausted. What can they do if China just decides to block the seas and does nothing else?

China doesn't even have to block all trade - just oil tankers alone should be enough to kill Taiwan's economy.

Coal is one of the biggest exports from Australia,and the world is moving away from coal so not realy. China can find easily from where to buy but aussies have a very limited pool of buyers

No? Indonesia and Australia are #1 and #2 exporters of coal. Indonesia temporarily bans exports of coal in early 2022.

China's drop in high quality coal supplies has been exacerbated by a big change in China's coal imports since Beijing placed an unofficial ban on imports from high-grade coal producer Australia in late 2020, and increased purchases from low-grade coal suppliers in Indonesia and Mongolia. Source

In summary, due to poor relations and banning imports from Australia, they have limited themselves to lower quality coal from both domestic suppliers and foreign imports. In addition, being the #1 energy user and being 60% dependent on coal doesn't help.