"“I hope China
Posted on 05/14/2019 3:29:18 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
Wu Shichun is one of countless Chinese entrepreneurs who over the past four decades have prospered from access to American customers and money.
Today, as the American government threatens to take that away, the serial entrepreneur and venture capital investor is fundamentally rethinking how he does business.
One of his portfolio companies designs and makes fashion products in China, then sells to American consumers on Amazon.com. Another, a vape device maker, sells most of its products in the United States. The third, which makes metal materials for electronic manufacturers, exports 40 percent of its production there. All three would be hit by new American tariffs.
“From now on I’ll have to invest in companies that focus on the Chinese market,” said Mr. Wu, 42.
“I hope China and the U.S. can find a better way to coexist,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be mutually destructive.”
The Chinese government has struck a defiant tone since President Trump ratcheted up the trade war on Friday by raising tariffs on Chinese exports worth $200 billion a year. “If the U.S. wants to talk, our door is open,” said a commentary on state-controlled China Central Television on Monday night that quickly went viral. “If the U.S. wants to fight, we’ll be with them till the end.”
Many entrepreneurs and intellectuals, by contrast, are hoping for a deal. China’s rise out of the stark terror of the Cultural Revolution was fueled in part from connections to the United States, an early diplomatic partner that offered investment, markets and opportunity. There’s even a word going around the Chinese internet for the tight economic bonds that have formed between the world’s two largest economies: “Chimerica.”
The trade war is taking direct aim at Chimerica. New tariffs, if they stick, threaten to cut off a big market
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
At any rate, it's probably a good idea to uncouple from China's economy to prepare for the military campaigns to come, if history is any guide. Every single new Chinese dynasty has, once it swept away internal opponents* and fought off external enemies fishing in troubled waters, engaged in attempts to expand China's boundaries. China's economy isn't quite as dominant as it was relative to its neighbors before Industrial Age Europeans first showed up in numbers at its ports. But at # 2 in the world, and about the same size as all of its neighbors, combined, it's big enough to allow the Chinese state to throw its weight around. And it's starting to do that in the Western Pacific. So we need to get ready for the PLA's grand tour of the Pacific, which might give the Imperial Japanese Army's version a run for its money. And then some.
* These internal opponents would include military commanders who felt they were given too small a share of the spoils of the war that brought the new dynasty to power, remnants of the ancien regime looking to restore the previous dynasty's rule or rival rebel groups that thought they might have a chance at the throne before the new dynasty was able to consolidate its power.
China, you chose poorly
once USA gets a fair and balanced trade going with China, the sky’s the limit! for Chinese manufacturers as well as Americans
Mr. Wu, embrace the suck.
or...…...newer version of Rice Paper Fail?
I’ve read that China’s current economic & governing system is what the Kuomintang would have had if they had won the civil war.
You see what Nixon started?
Chimerica will be slain by Trump riding his figurative horse, Deplorabus.
“I hope China and the U.S. can find a better way to coexist”
That’s what Mr. Trump is doing. But not getting the cooperation he deserves.
“is what the Kuomintang would have had if they had won the civil war”
Now THAT is a really good point!
China uses slave labor in many factories. Why do we need cheap Chinese crap again?
If I remember the book correctly it’s “Generalissimo: Chang Kai-Shek”. Fascinating book!
[I’ve read that China’s current economic & governing system is what the Kuomintang would have had if they had won the civil war.]
I’m inclined towards the Kremlinologist Richard Pipes’s view that the issue with the Soviet Union wasn’t that it was Communist, but that it was Russian. By that, he mean that the regime shared the Russian tendency, established once Dmitri Donskoi broke out from under the grip of Mongol vassalage, towards universal empire (much like the Mongols themselves). And Mongol ambitions may themselves be derived from the Chinese sovereign’s claim to rule “all under heaven”, because in the Chinese way of thinking, universal peace is achievable only under universal empire (a theme in the chop socky movie “Hero” featuring Jet Li).
In other words, we’d have had trouble with the Chinese whether the Nationalists or the Communists were in charge. At least with the Communists, we got a 40-year reprieve.
[If I remember the book correctly it’s “Generalissimo: Chang Kai-Shek”. Fascinating book!]
Now I’m going to have to dig it out!
Interesting stuff. Thanx.
“Today, as the American government threatens to take that away...”
NO ONE is threatening to take ANYTHING away; President Trump is merely leveling the playing field.
The Chinese business people have had it too easy for too long. The party had to end one day. Today is that day with more pain to come very likely. It’s the pain of an even playing field where they have to actually work and compete normally; something many of them have never experienced except with each other; not us “stupid” Americans.
China is building roads and bridges and everything that goes next to roads on a massive scale. Big buildings, cities, etc.
Like others like the Saudi’s they have become used to a certain rate of cash flow. They have bet the farm on that run rate and cannot hold up to a big dip in the revenue stream.
Unlike 99.9% of Washington Trump understands money.
Trump is a genius.
At some point the federal government is going to experience what China is going through. Shrinkage, and not the George Costanza kind.
3 years ago I would never have thought I would have seen the things I have seen recently. God is in the house.
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