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-_-_-_-_-  13d ago (noahpinion.blog)   1801 thread views

Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now

noahpinion.blog

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.

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The rabidness of the Russian Bear should not cause us to discount the hunger of the Chinese Bear. Xi Jinping has made it clear that he wants China to have prestige and respect, and for all the power it has built up and all the subterfuge it has done, China does not yet have the same level of world-historical importance as the US. Anything and everything to reverse the Century of Humiliation should be considered as on the table for such a goal.

We have centuries of Chinese history in which imperialism was highly limited, contra centuries of Russian imperialism in which it very much was not.

Yes, but I suspect the point of view of China's current rulers is that these choices in its history were mistakes that they will consciously not make, which potentially means "take the opposite actions"--again, see the Century of Humiliation. Modern China will not do something as hindsightedly retarded as "ban oceanworthy ships."

This doesn't preclude China constraining itself in ways that are objectively counterproductive (overjuiced real estate, zero-COVID policy), but they seek to be the next hegemon, to embrace the Imperial history instead of trying to make it disappear, and thus we must assume they will not abstain from things that states try to do when they feel they have no limits.

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