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Plus, competing with China is very difficult. They've got a gigantic, insanely large industrial base. China has 30% of global manufacturing value-added, equal to the EU and US combined: https://policytensor.substack.com/p/is-the-us-stronger-than-china?
It will be very hard for other countries to compete with such huge economies of scale, such massive amounts of infrastructure. Chinese labour might not be so cheap anymore, yet they've got all the steel, railways, ports, engineers who built 1000 factories before and are getting really good at it. Who can work more cheaply than a robot? Who is more pro-industrial/economic efficiency than China? Not the US, that's for certain. The US doesn't even have the best ports in North America, they refuse to automate like China is doing. China has roughly as many industrial robots per worker as the US (probably more by now), despite the US having a rather large head start.
https://www.therobotreport.com/10-most-automated-countries-wordlwide-in-2020/
I agree that if China manages to wholeheartedly automate the majority of their industry, they'll be nigh unstoppable unless the US wakes up and does the same.
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