> A market of 350 million high income people (by global standards) under one regulatory framework
China almost has the same number of millionaires. Per capita it’s not as good, but in terms of volume. And I’d say they’re closer to a single regulatory framework than the US which has all sorts of conflicting state laws which get in the way of interstate commerce (despite the commerce clause). Sure there are a lot of advantages as you say. But they’re not indefinitely insurmountable.
Guess where many, many Chinese millionaires have been moving the last 10 years or so?
Anywhere but China. It is a failing state with a plummeting economy and subject to even more arbitrary control over the money, its citizens own than the USA.
For sure China has a ton of people and a huge economy. Fair point that the regulatory framework there may be more homogenous, but it's also weaker.
And it lacks all the other inbuilt advantages I mentioned.
Remember, the USA can ship goods back and forth between itself and what... 90% of the ex-US global economy? With very little geopolitical interference.
This is largely a function of geography, plop a cargo ship in the water, sail it, boom you arrive in Western Europe, or East Asia, without getting anywhere near some other country's sphere of influence.
China can't say the same. To ship cargo to America they have to sail near multiple political rivals (and they seem to enjoy antagonizing America itself as well). To ship cargo to Europe they need to do the same. So there are all these countries and political forces that could disrupt Chinese trade at any time. In the long run they have inbuilt geographic risk, the US has inbuilt geographic immunity.
I think this is a skewed perspective. In case of a war the Chinese leaders won't care about the fact that they won't be able to sell their plasticky stuff to Europe or the US, they'll only care to have enough food for their population and enough raw materials for their Army (it takes lots of iron and access to cheap energy to make lots of artillery shells). Lack of enough food for their population was what brought the Germans down in WW1, partial lack of raw materials helped bring down the same Germans in WW2.
By itself China won't be able to feed its people in case of a US naval blockade, but that's where the alliance with Russia comes into place. Transporting grains by rail instead of by sea is not as cost effective but will do the trick, and Russia has lots of grains. The same Russia has also lots of raw minerals.
That's why throwing Russia into China's open arms is such a geo-strategic stupid thing to do from the West's point of view, really, really stupid.
The alternative of allowing Russia to conquer another state and openly threaten further states would be far worse. The West has disengaged with Russia (and Russian money and gas) only very reluctantly.
China has been a clear threat since the 1990s. The US utterly failed to recognise it as a strategic danger.
Russia could have been Westernised with a little more effort, and turned into an ally and partner. (Which is not to say it would have been easy, but it would have been possible.)
Instead Russia was neoliberalised, turned into a mafia economy with huge concentrations of wealth on top of raging poverty, and its imperial pretensions were tolerated for two decades.
Ukraine and Russia are both direct US foreign policy failures.
Sadly I think that's why nothing better happened to Russia; everybody was comfortable with having a strongman to deal with and oligarchs to take money from. Even to the extent of overlooking crimes like the Salisbury poisonings and the airliner shootdown. It's a common pattern in US partner states.
Most of the former USSR and Yugoslavian states have sought freedom, although there are questions about Serbia, Hungary and to a lesser extent Poland.
I'm not convinced this analysis holds up to the numbers. China imports around $135B of food per year. Before the war Russia was exporting around $35B. Admittedly a lot of the Chinese imports are luxury foodstuffs but that's still a big big gap. China can't feed itself, even with Russia's help. This is a recurring problem throughout China's history.
I think you underestimate the importance of "plasticky trinkets." Exports are the backbone of the Chinese economy. Without them it can't afford to import food, and millions of Chinese starve. If China declares war and isolates itself so that Russia is its primary remaining trade partner, millions of Chinese starve.
The biggest importers of food to China today are the US, Brazil, Australia, and a handful of Southeast Asian countries - basically that's all gone if China goes to war or isolates itself in some other way.
Now I mean sure anything can happen in a war and the CCP might very well choose to let millions of Chinese starve, they've done it before. My point here was that isolation would inflict terrible and permanent damage to China. A war is unlikely to happen in the first place because not only is this damage so great, but China would probably lose any battle that wasn't very close to their home theatre.
By the way, Chinese food security is a great topic for illustrating how dysfunctional they are as a country. Here's an article on the topic - https://www.cfr.org/article/china-increasingly-relies-import... - basically they don't have food security, achieving it is one of their top priorities, and they are failing to achieve that priority. The cost to grow soybeans in China is 30% higher than in the US, and the yield is 60% lower!
Yeah but there’s all sorts of weird business dynamics w china. For the most part, government exists to enforce business/personal rights in the us versus the reversed in china. Like I’d say the single regulatory framework is actually a bad thing there
Every country has a single regulatory framework. Unfortunately for China 1 person can completely rewrite it.
China has a larger domestic market. The downside is the domestic market is still relatively poor and its state controlled by a uniparty government. When tough decisions need to be made, the CCP will protect the CCP over China.
Very interesting figures. Crazy that the US increased by 10% and China by 20% in a year (and during covid) - but there is still a large gap between the figures. In a decade they may converge, but not yet.
China is not, of course, turning back to proper communism. It is a wildly corrupt dictatorship, and will be for the foreseeable future. It was an oligarchy for many generations (traditionally, their central committee was allowed to preserve opposing opinions among factions, a practice Xi extinguished), but Xi has definitely removed the vast majority of his competent opponents.
China almost has the same number of millionaires. Per capita it’s not as good, but in terms of volume. And I’d say they’re closer to a single regulatory framework than the US which has all sorts of conflicting state laws which get in the way of interstate commerce (despite the commerce clause). Sure there are a lot of advantages as you say. But they’re not indefinitely insurmountable.