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My complaint with this sort of analysis is that it treats countries as if they were a monolith, like players in a grand strategy game. And they're not, they composed of many different people who all have different goals. Perhaps some of them want to expand and increase their national power, like players in a game of Risk. But most are happy to just sit back, defend what they have, and grow the economy. Iceland might not be powerful on the global stage, but they're doing a great job being happy, prosperous, and secure.
For China especially, I just don't see them wanting to expand aggressively. They're like the US and India- they already have a huge amount of land, people, and resources, there's no need for them to expand. They might attack Taiwan and other nearby islands, but that's more of a political issue. It would be difficult for them to incorporate non-Chinese people into their country- most of us wouldn't even be able to understand what the hell the government is saying, since we can't read Chinese.
I think this view of expansionist-imperialist history is colored a bit by England. They were an island nation, so they had to build a big navy to protect themselves. But once they built that big navy, it was easy to sail around the world, picking up colonies everywhere, which provided more resources, which fed a bigger navy, etc. Other small mercantile countries did a similar thing- Spain, Portugal, Holland, Japan, etc. but England was the most successful. But that's not universal, it's just the unique situation of being a small, technologically advanced, island nation.
What China needs is economic growth and the only way I see that happening is increased trade with the rest of the world. Noah Smith has a locked article arguing that China is doubling down on manufacturing to save their economy as the real estate bubble pops. Makes sense. But you can see the contradictions in this strategy- part of why Chinese manufacturing is so competitive is that their workers are so cheap. And there's a limit on just how much stuff the rest of the planet can buy...
So I guess my view is that no, national strategies are not a good idea, because there are so many different people in power who all have their own idea of what the "national strategy" should be. Perhaps the generals want to beef up the military to fight endless wars of aggression, while the politicians just want cheap toys to grow the economy and make the middle class happy, while the academicians care more about cultural goals like DEI or Communism or whatever. In the end the result is a muddle of all three.
Factories, even small ones, are pretty quickly adopting robotics and other forms of automation. I visited a factory that manufactured dental crowns and had about forty employees. CNC robots manufactured the teeth from blocks of ceramic and artists manually finished the coloring on the teeth to match the client's existing teeth.
There was a team of 3D modelers that fed models to the CNC, but the owner was looking to use AI to reduce or eliminate the amount of work needed in that area.
This is true, and ultimately a detriment to China in terms of manufacturing strategy as the advanced robotics factories have to be installed in place of the old ones, and there are multiple reasons- ranging from economic to political- to build your new manufacturing low-labor-cost factory in somewhere other than China. China could be the place... but if the cost-savings are primarily from the automation, you could just build them behind someone else's tariff wall, and not risk being caught in the geopolitical risk factors.
Currently China is trying to leverage the sunk-cost advantage, rather than a worker advantage, but the key investors on the more advanced robotics factories are external companies, and they are the ones being pressured (or lured) by other governments to be elsewhere.
China will have its own robotics factories all the same, but the normal international response to this is tariff walls to prevent dumping, and the more China leverages it's current strength to keep barries low for its own advantages, the more diplomatic costs it incurs even as it expands the dependence on others to consume.
And this would explain why China needs to expand its international influence to try to prevent tariffs.
Ayup. And why the Japanese economic strategy of farshoring (Japanese companies investing into foreign countries instead of japan), and broader American/western 'friendshoring' (investing manufactories in more local supply chains in friendly-ish countries) is the crux of the US/western divestment strategy: by putting the industry in non-chinese countries, it guides those countries to have an interest in tariffs as an anti-dumping measure in order to keep domestic industry viable and employing.
A further... issue? Contingency? Is that as the PRC investments more influence/resources into keeping trade barriers low, the dependence on the maritime flows increases. This increases the advantage of the US's blue water capabilities, as while the PRC has invested significantly in local maritime denial capabilities, it's ability to project maritime power remains limited and subject to both phsyical and economic disruption. If/when there comes a conflict, the PRC's ability to maintain the low-tariff dynamic will be militarily and not just politically challenged, and various countries will have strong incentives to assume more direct control of their PRC-paid for investments and sell to viable consumers even as the PRC is cut off.
Not a clear or clean approach by any means, but one of the key strategic questions for the US in a conflict with the PRC is how to manage/mitigate the economic fallout.
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