From the US-China conflict perspective, it seems the Trump administration is looking for something that China cannot easily retaliate.
China can easily pick a consulate to close when the US closes consulate in Houston. But businesses from the US in China always require Chinese companies to operate, just like World of Warcraft is operated by NetEase in China.
After Microsoft acquire Tiktok's operation, if China just picks some US business to do the same it would make China looks too soft because China is already doing this for decades, and Trump could claim the US has beaten China in this round. But if China escalates the conflict by retaliating in radical ways, the Trump administration could rally more before the election.
I doubt China is interested to escalate this, beside some rhetoric. In fact, U.S. might open the pandora box of data sovereignty.
China already started to change U.S. just as Pompeo feared.
FYI, among the big tech Microsoft seems to have one of the best relationship with the Chinese state. Bing and Outlook is available albeit censored. Windows also widely used. It could be the case that Microsoft has a back channel with Chinese gov and already discussed this issue. I hope that the acquisition will be smooth.
Very much that. Beijing is running out of big "American" companies it can retaliate against.
No Facebook in China, no Tviter in China, all major American brands are effectively franchises, or joint ventures, so they will be shooting their own business in the foot.
They can of course order those Chinese joint venture owners to appropriate the American stake in their corporate entities, but those state never been high to begin with, with Chinese JV sides always trying to exfiltrate equity out of them.
Out of big fish, pretty much the only one remaining is Apple, which owns very little in China, but will be crippled if being denied access to Chinese contract manufacturers.
Apple will have 1-2 really bad years and would eventually be able to move their supply chain to other countries . Apple has the money to whether that storm
The millions of jobs lost in China would be permanent, and start a trend and they loose their manufacturing edge .
To add to your point: Apple has been pretty rapidly shifting operations to India, precisely for this reason. I’d be willing to bet Apple has plans in place to move the rest of their manufacturing operations if China were to retaliate against it. Not saying it would be easy, or painless, but perhaps not as difficult as we’d imagine.
> But businesses from the US in China always require Chinese companies to operate
This is a very common misconception. It was true decades ago, when China was just beginning to open up, but over the past three decades, joint-venture requirements have been removed from most industries.
China can easily pick a consulate to close when the US closes consulate in Houston. But businesses from the US in China always require Chinese companies to operate, just like World of Warcraft is operated by NetEase in China.
After Microsoft acquire Tiktok's operation, if China just picks some US business to do the same it would make China looks too soft because China is already doing this for decades, and Trump could claim the US has beaten China in this round. But if China escalates the conflict by retaliating in radical ways, the Trump administration could rally more before the election.