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 -
Just like Japan and Korea’s fear of being cut off from the ocean is understandable, so is China’s. Even a reasonable and peaceful China would do everything to remove this knife from their throat. I’m uncomfortable getting into a massive war without trying appeasement first. You can speculate on China’s ultimate goals, but there is no record of defection and increasing demands like there is with Russia. Every power gets one tschekoslovakia, one free defect, that’s my rule.
Are you perhaps forgetting Hong Kong? They agreed to preserve Hong Kong's political systems from 1997-2047; that didn't even last until 2022.
They also have been building villages inside Bhutan, apparently confident that Bhutan can't do anything about it and nobody will call them out on it. I think there was one inside India as well.
Let's not forget their long-standing habit of taking hostages to extort their home countries' governments, and of controlling their diaspora by holding their non-diaspora families hostage.
I seem to recall a recent incident where they lit up an Australian ship with targeting radar (usually considered sufficient cause to fire back), but I can't find a citation.
The PRC is currently playing defect-bot*. A lot of these incidents are "nothingburgers" because the other side just cries and takes it, but that just means it's playing defect-bot successfully.
(Also, Japan and South Korea have far, far more to worry about from blockade than China; China has a much-better land:people ratio and it has access to land imports; Japan has no land borders and South Korea's only one is with North Korea i.e. a close Chinese ally that would take part in any such blockade. China would feel some pain from a sea blockade, but it's a long way from "lol state failure as people eat each other".)
*Its strategy is probably technically "Spiteful-Bully", but eh.
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