“Domestic markets can make a country an economic power when you have a population of a massive 1.4 billion...”
Not really. There is an essential difference between domestic industries selling to a domestic market vs selling to international markets. Selling domestically is just shuffling the wealth you produce around your own economy, which is good, but it isn’t as good for your economy as taking wealth from another country’s economy and injecting it into yours. Also, you only have one domestic market, while selling internationally gives you access to many markets, thus more demand, which equals higher prices and profits.
And of course, to sell domestically, your people must actually have money to buy the goods you are producing, which the Chinese people wouldn’t have without Western companies paying their salaries. Certainly the Communist run native companies are not going to pick up that slack if they cut ties to the West.
Yes, really
There is an essential difference between domestic industries selling to a domestic market vs selling to international markets. Selling domestically is just shuffling the wealth you produce around your own economy, which is good, but it isn't as good for your economy as taking wealth from another country's economy and injecting it into yours
If that were the case, America would be one of the poorest countries on the planet since we've run massive trade deficits for DECADES and continue to do so today.
I don't even remember the last time we had a trade surplus. We keep importing vast quantities of goods from countries like China and exporting little to them in return.
Your idea of how the Chinese economy works is rather quaint. Chuckle.
For your information most of the smartphones, electric cars, HDTVs etc etc sold in China are manufactured by Chinese companies.
China is far ahead of the US in electric cars for example, with over 13% of cars in China being EVs as compared to 3% in the US.
And there are more EV startups actually making EVs in China than the US.