- 10 Apr 2020 21:33
#15083407
It’s Time for Conscious Uncoupling With China
I think we'll be hearing a lot of this theme in the wake of coronavirus, even from the most ardent of anti-Trumpers.
Why Brexit and Trump wasn't clear enough to the establishment is anyone's guess, but it's I think very clear to people now that globalization at these levels has been a misguided enterprise. More specifically, the idea that China would evolve into a liberal democracy with human rights has proven to be a disastrous delusion.
Indeed it has also shown that response planning must have a robust local and regional component, not just relying on the nation-state at large. Hence, just-in-time supply chains do no good if they get cut off. There is clearly a lack of diversification in sourcing--which is ironic for people who run around claiming "our diversity is our strength."
This is where I think the problems for China are growing exponentially.
This is from someone who is about as anti-Trump as you can get.
This is why I think Trump ends up remaining strong in spite of Sullivan excoriating him. Trump uniquely among politicians has differentiated himself from the bog standard establishment politicians who think there can be no debate about trade with China. As Trump runs against Biden, the Democrats and media will try to pin the blame for coronavirus on Trump--it will be unsuccessful in my opinion--while Trump responds with Joe Biden bringing his son along to negotiations with China and the US coming home with shit trade deals and Hunter Biden coming home with $1.5B of investment funds to play with. Even Obama hasn't endorsed Biden at this point, which is telling.
At any rate, those of you who are discounting this also discounted the US becoming energy independent in the wake of 9/11. I think the US will begin decoupling from China in the next economic expansion.
I think we'll be hearing a lot of this theme in the wake of coronavirus, even from the most ardent of anti-Trumpers.
Andrew Sullivan wrote:The same risks of a rebound are being seen in China, in so far as we can believe a word that murderous dictatorship tells us. Meanwhile, I look around me and see a slow attenuation of social distancing — the park where I walk my dogs is increasingly crammed. Humans are social animals. There is a limit to our capacity to remain alone. In crises, in particular, our instinct is to seek one another, gather strength from our common experience. The virus exploits this mercilessly.
It’s a brutal reality check, this thing — relentlessly ripping the veil off our delusions of control. So much is being laid bare. The promise of a truly globalized world, where government is increasingly international, and trade free, and all would benefit, was already under acute strain. Now, it’s broken, perhaps irrevocably.
Why Brexit and Trump wasn't clear enough to the establishment is anyone's guess, but it's I think very clear to people now that globalization at these levels has been a misguided enterprise. More specifically, the idea that China would evolve into a liberal democracy with human rights has proven to be a disastrous delusion.
Andrew Sullivan wrote:The nation-state was beginning to reassert itself before, but COVID-19 has revealed its indispensability. Europeans realized, if they hadn’t already, that a truly continental response was beyond the E.U. Borders were suddenly enforced, resources hoarded by individual nations, and the most important decisions were made by national governments, in national interests. Americans, for their part, saw their own dependence on foreign countries, especially dictatorships, for core needs — like medicine, or medical equipment — as something to be corrected in the future. Japan is now spending a fortune paying its own companies to relocate from China to the homeland.
Indeed it has also shown that response planning must have a robust local and regional component, not just relying on the nation-state at large. Hence, just-in-time supply chains do no good if they get cut off. There is clearly a lack of diversification in sourcing--which is ironic for people who run around claiming "our diversity is our strength."
Andrew Sullivan wrote:And for both Europe and America, the delusions that sustained the 21st-century engagement with China have begun to crack. We still don’t know how this virus emerged — and China hasn’t given any serious explanation of its origins. What we do know is that the regime punished and silenced those who wanted to sound the alarm as early as last December, and hid the true extent of the crisis from the rest of the world. There had been 104 cases in Wuhan by December 31, including 15 deaths. Yet as late as mid-January, the Chinese were insisting, in the words of the World Health Organization, that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” On January 18, despite the obvious danger, the Chinese dictatorship allowed a huge festival in Wuhan that drew tens of thousands of people.
This is where I think the problems for China are growing exponentially.
Andrew Sullivan wrote:On January 23, President Xi locked down all air traffic from Wuhan to the rest of China — but, as Niall Ferguson pointed out, not to the rest of the world. It’s as if they said to themselves, “Well, we’re going under, so we might as well bring the rest of the world down with us.” This is not the behavior of a responsible international state actor. Trump’s ban on Chinese travel was better than nothing, but it did not prevent over 400,000 non-Chinese from arriving in the U.S. from China as COVID-19 was gaining momentum. It’s fair to say, I think, that after the immediate, unforgivable cover-up in China, a global pandemic was inevitable.
This is from someone who is about as anti-Trump as you can get.
Andrew Sullivan wrote:Bringing a totalitarian country, which is herding its Muslim inhabitants into concentration camps, into the heart of the Western world was, in retrospect, a gamble that has not paid off. I remember the old debate from the 1990s about how to engage China, and the persuasiveness of those who believed that economic prosperity would lead to greater democracy. COVID-19 is the final reminder of how wrong they actually were.
The Chinese dictatorship is, in fact, through recklessness and cover-up, responsible for a global plague and tipping the entire world into a deep depression. It has also corrupted the World Health Organization, which was so desperate for China’s cooperation it swallowed Xi’s coronavirus lies and regurgitated them. At the most critical juncture — mid-January — the WHO actually tweeted out Communist Party propaganda: “Preliminary investigations by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel Coronavirus.” On the same day, another WHO official was telling the world that there was “limited spread” of COVID-19 by human-to-human transmission, and alerted hospitals about the risk of super-spreading the virus. And so the virus has forced us to accept another discomforting reality: Integrating a communist dictatorship into a democratic world economy is a mug’s game. From now on, conscious decoupling is the order of the day.
This is why I think Trump ends up remaining strong in spite of Sullivan excoriating him. Trump uniquely among politicians has differentiated himself from the bog standard establishment politicians who think there can be no debate about trade with China. As Trump runs against Biden, the Democrats and media will try to pin the blame for coronavirus on Trump--it will be unsuccessful in my opinion--while Trump responds with Joe Biden bringing his son along to negotiations with China and the US coming home with shit trade deals and Hunter Biden coming home with $1.5B of investment funds to play with. Even Obama hasn't endorsed Biden at this point, which is telling.
At any rate, those of you who are discounting this also discounted the US becoming energy independent in the wake of 9/11. I think the US will begin decoupling from China in the next economic expansion.
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