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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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