How? There's nothing that prevents any country from being a bad actor. Show me at least a single example. China already supplies their "northern" neighbor with a full stack of different µ-electronics, as much as full stack of lethal weaponry, and personnel. The global "peacemaker" authorities and countries are just showing their "worriness".
That's easy, North Korea. Just look at the difference in economies between North and South Korea. That's the difference that economic isolation makes. It becomes increasingly hard to develop an advanced economy without worldwide partners as products and supply chains increase in complexity.
But it didn't accelerate them to return the production back home. Everyone is so patriotic, until it comes to their sweet margins. And the governments that supposed to question these companies for their "antipatrionic" behavior, simply allow that, by descending the expences on their own citizen, leaving the companies with all profits they can have, for sweet lobbying "funding".
Read my comment, I never said anything about home. I said anywhere but China.
China could do that, because they are planetary scale factory. US and EU gave up their production abilities more than fourty years ago. The EU is anemic consumer now. Most things that they have, still come from the "cheapest" eastern european countries, including the wood (that is banned for cut in "progressive" countries) and food.
Also, for how long, the companies like VAG and GM did produce the cars for Chinese domestic market, again? There's no way, that the "experience" didn't find it's implementation in own car production.
You seem to be confusing China's production capability now with when it first started. If you look at Shenzen before massive industrialization, it was just a rundown fishing village with no infrastructure. China imposed very high tariffs on foreign goods when it was just starting off and lowered them as their domestic industries advanced. As I said in my prior comment, this is nothing unique to China. It's a common pattern of advancement for third world countries and a reason why 1st world countries accept the higher tariffs.
It's not unique to China as you are implying here and it has nothing to do with their factory count or product output. It's something that the vast majority of successful developing nations have deployed.
It's objectively incorrect to say the US gave up manufacturing output. The US's manufacturing out has continued to increase on average ever since it first started being measured:
Similar to the transition from an agricultural based economy, a services based economy looses jobs in the manufacturing industry but output continues to increase. The agriculture and manufacturing sector are supporting pillars for a services based economy that allows for the creation of a ton of high value jobs. As I pointed out in my last comment, 98% of all employment in the UK is in the services industry. That's not a bad thing, that means that manufacturing and agriculture has become very efficient to support all those services jobs.
That's just pure coincedence, that some "blue" company gobbled the absolute part of it, just to later build and upgrade own foundries, used for production of own products, all across the globe.
Intel has thus far been granted $8 billion in CHIPS act funding out of the total $280 Billion. That's not much higher than others like TSMC that have roughly received 6.4 billion. These companies may be granted more in the future but to say they've "gobbled the absolute part of it" is completely incorrect, they gotten exactly 2.8%.
They also manufacture a lot of medicine. Good luck getting cheap generics if they decide to retaliate with increased drug pricing and any US policy against them will not withstand the backlash of citizens not being able to get their meds if China flexes this advantage especially during an election season. (sorry I was in the mood for run on sentences today)
China accounts for 31.5% of US drug imports with India being number 2 and a bunch of others coming in after that. The supply chain is diversified enough to withstand china pulling it's drug exports to the US as they are some 12 other exporters the US already does business with. Worst of all for China is that it's geopolitical competitor india would likely pick up a lot of those previously Chinese orders.
Most generic drugs are not complicated to make. There might be a shortage of more complicated formulas but the basics without a doubt will be covered by competitors to China.
The EV have the another level problem. Because the huge amount of the electronic components still being made solely in China. Once they decide to stop export, many electronic factories of the west, if not go bust, at least will have to halt the production, until the local alternatives would catch up.
No country produces EVs without foreign parts regardless of if we are talking about China or the US. Ditto goes for ICUs as well, they all contain chips.
And maybe the electric crisis isn't very much affects the US (outside AI surge), due to abundance of nuclear power. The EU on the other hand, still has to rely on coal and other fosile sources of enery to charge the "eco-friendly" vehicles. An irony indeed.
This comment is wrong on multiple fronts. First the US only gets 18.93% of it's power from Nuclear. The lion's share comes from Fossil fuels.
Second, the EU produces the vast majority of it's energy from renewables:
If we suddenly came out to a war between our nations, China's manufacturing advantage would be key in the early days. It will take years for USA to ramp up and build our own factories, while the Chinese factories would immediately switch from peacetime Li-ions for phones/games into wartime Li-ions for Drones and other weaponry.
China cannot produce Drones and phones entirely domestically yet, it requires outside parts. Manufacturing consumer goods doesn't necessarily translate to manufacturing weapons either. The US arms manufacturing industry never really slowed down, it has been the number 1 arms dealer in the world for some time now. Ukraine has help clear out old stock to make way for additional production as well. At the end of the day the US has the weapons now and has proven experience making these arms. The Chinese have numerous scandals involving weapons production issues due to corruption. I know which I'd favor, the guaranteed factor over a bunch of ifs / maybes.
There's a bigger problem for China though and that's down to the fact that it's highly rely reliant on energy imports. It imports 85% of it's total domestic oil consumption and 40% of it's domestic gas consumption. It also imports coal from Australia and Indonesia. The problem comes down to a matter of supply lines, where the oil imports have to pass through the Bab-el-Mandeb straight, along the bottom of india, and finally to China. The problem is that there are multiple US bases and US allies located along that route. Imports from Indonesia would suddenly become very difficult and obviously imports from Australia would completely stop.
Mind you a protracted war is absolutely not in China's best interest. China is likely to be fighting a US led coalition with South Korea, Japan, Australia, and likely other European allies as well. China's economy will loose access to the international banking system and most if not all external investment sources.
Hypersonic Missiles are really expensive, like $10million to $100million each. But it's worth it if those take out a $10 Billion US Supercarrier.
No one knows how good Chinese Hypersonic vs Aegis Missile Shield is. Literally no one. Not even US generals or Chinese generals. What we do know is that China has a reasonable plan vs Carriers though.
You mean like those hypersonic Russian missiles that were taken down by antiquated Patriot systems in Ukraine with novice operators? As the old saying goes, everyone has a plan until the shit hits the fan. The US has real world experience, the Chinese are experts in attacking fishing vessels with water cannons. Big difference.
