Industrial policy has been a frequent subject on Smith's blog, for those who don't follow it. (He's for it, and thinks that Biden's industrial policy was mostly good - it's worth following the links in this post.) This post focuses on defense-related geopolitical industrial policy goals and pros and cons of anticipated changes under the incoming Trump administration and Chinese responses. Particularly, he highlights two major things China can do: Restrict exports of raw materials (recently announced) and use their own industrial policy to hamper the West's peacetime industrial policy (de facto policy of the last 30 years). These are not extraordinary insights, but it's a good primer on the current state of affairs and policies to pay attention to in the near-future.
Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now
noahpinion.blog
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Notes -
The only likely ways for the CPC to fall are:
They took steps to ensure they wouldn't wind up liberalising like the Soviet sphere or Taiwan or South Korea, and those steps work. You need something huge. Note that the CPC knows about #2, which means it won't co-operate easily; this threat (if made with the will and unquestioned ability to follow through) might get them to cave in, and military defeats of course don't have to be consensual, but that's about it.
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