Discussing Biden's Potential China Policy

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Deleted member 15887

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So Biden sounded tough according to the BS BBC.

Biden warns China will 'eat our lunch' on infrastructure spending

12 February 2021 Business

Here's the link.

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But what he really said:

View attachment 68685
Biden is calling for federal spending of only $700 billion USD in his plan to invest in infrastructure, manufacturing, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and other sectors.

Meanwhile:
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Nearly all of China’s 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have announced key infrastructure investment plans for the next 5-7 years, covering 24,515 projects at RMB43 trillion (~$6.7T), of which around 25% will be spent on transportation projects.
BTW, if you measure at PPP prices (more appropriate since shit is cheaper in China since they didn’t outsource everything + economies of scale), then China is spending $12.3 trillion USD over the next 5-7 years. Compared to Biden's proposal of just $700 billion (certain to get whittled down a lot, and likely may not even pass). Even if it passes, you are still being outspent by a factor of almost 20 times, and it's a losing battle if you don't significantly match China-levels of spending.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
As I said many time trying to rope in Japan in effort to contain China is just futile effort It will never work because the Japanese captain of industry know which side of the bread is buttered. And by extension the rest of Asia will balk at effort to contain China. Here is an excellent article from William Pesek

No competitor, though, can rival China’s scale. Given its so far successful battle against Covid-19, 2.3% growth in 2020 and prospects for 8% this year, Japan Inc would seem to have few incentives to look back. Japanese CEOs, it seems, get something that neither Trump nor Abe did: the game is learning to live with China, not to be used as proxies in
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.

This tale, though, is as much about missed opportunities on Japan’s part as China’s rise.


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Why Japan Inc can’t and won’t quit China​

Japan's corporate giants have mostly spurned Tokyo's US-urged call to 're-shore' their China-based production facilities
By
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FEBRUARY 12, 2021

TOKYO – As the fog of economic war lifts, the ways in which China outmaneuvered Donald Trump’s White House are becoming clearer. Nowhere more so than in Japan, a nation the former US president tried hard to pull out of China’s commercial orbit.

Though Trump’s decoupling-from-China imperative was rather America-centric, he cajoled Tokyo early and often to join the battle. And Shinzo Abe, prime minister from 2012 to 2020 and old-school Japanese nationalist, was happy to oblige.

Abe pursued an ambitious “
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” scheme. And in the last six months of his premiership, which ended last September, he leaned into supply chain disruptions related to the coronavirus. He even sweetened the deal, offering subsidies to companies bringing jobs back from China.

The scheme hasn’t gone well, if a September 2020 survey by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) is any guide. JETRO found that only 7.2% of Japanese companies operating in China either planned or considered shifting production out of China. That is down from an already paltry 9.2% in 2019.

The real figure is arguably even lower. Given the historical antipathy between Japan and China, few CEOs want to admit they’re not at least mulling decreasing exposure to President Xi Jinping’s nation. It follows, then, that the number of manufacturers scouting production sites on the other side of the East China Sea is far smaller.


That said, Abe’s team — and Trump’s, too — should’ve known the policy had little potential from Toyota Motors. Top-down Tokyo loves a precedent and none matters more than what the global vanguard of Japan Inc does.

Back in 2015, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda reaffirmed the auto giant’s intention to follow where the growth is. And that meant — and still means — China. Xi’s economy was a major beneficiary of Toyota’s plan that year to lavish $1.4 billion on new factories.

Some historical perspective.

Prior to WW2, the Nissan/Panasonic zaibatsu was producing steel in Manchuria.
And Manchuria produced more steel than in all of Japan.
 

weig2000

Captain
Biden is calling for federal spending of only $700 billion USD in his plan to invest in infrastructure, manufacturing, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and other sectors.

Meanwhile:
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BTW, if you measure at PPP prices (more appropriate since shit is cheaper in China since they didn’t outsource everything + economies of scale), then China is spending $12.3 trillion USD over the next 5-7 years. Compared to Biden's proposal of just $700 billion (certain to get whittled down a lot, and likely may not even pass). Even if it passes, you are still being outspent by a factor of almost 20 times, and it's a losing battle if you don't significantly match China-levels of spending.

Nothing really new here.

For over a decade now, China has been spending more than the US & EU combined in infrastructure annually. I remember I once said somewhere in SDF that it might sound impressive that the US is building a fleet of Ford-class nuclear-powered super-carriers at $13 billion per piece, but China has been building on average 10 HSR lines a year at roughly the same amount per line. Over time, the difference would show.
 

localizer

Colonel
Registered Member
Nothing really new here.

For over a decade now, China has been spending more than the US & EU combined in infrastructure annually. I remember I once said somewhere in SDF that it might sound impressive that the US is building a fleet of Ford-class nuclear-powered super-carriers at $13 billion per piece, but China has been building on average 10 HSR lines a year at roughly the same amount per line. Over time, the difference would show.
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The Beijing Shanghai line gets almost $5 billion revenue a year.


Infrastructure is good when it is needed.

The question is does US actually need infrastructure. People prefer driving and flying here.
 

weig2000

Captain
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The Beijing Shanghai line gets almost $5 billion revenue a year.


Infrastructure is good when it is needed.

The question is does US actually need infrastructure. People prefer driving and flying here.

Infrastructure is not just about transportation, even less about just HSR. It also include clean energy, public transit, smart electricity grid, high-voltage transmission network, 5G network, smart city, all of which China invests heavily and lead the US. China is investing and creating an infrastructure of the future. China leads the world in EV, which would have a profound impact on transportation, energy, telecommunication, AI and environment.

Meanwhile, the US is stuck with the legacy infrastructure. People "prefer" driving and flying because there are simply no alternatives. American way of life has been built on cheap oil and the resulting urban sprawl and decaying urban centers. The path dependence and sunk cost make it difficult to transition to a new and different world.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
So for 2019:

World rankCompanyCountryRegionIndustryR&D 2019 (€million)R&D one-year growth (%)
1​
ALPHABETUSUSSoftware & Computer Services
23160.1​
24.36902486​
2​
MICROSOFTUSUSSoftware & Computer Services
17152.4​
14.17990045​
3​
HUAWEI INVESTMENT & HOLDINGChinaChinaTechnology Hardware & Equipment
16712.7​
31.22824218​
4​
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICSSouth KoreaRoWElectronic & Electrical Equipment
15525.0​
8.27088064​
5​
APPLEUSUSTechnology Hardware & Equipment
14435.6​
13.91542568​
6​
VOLKSWAGENGermanyEUAutomobiles & Parts
14306.0​
4.882697947​
7​
FACEBOOKUSUSSoftware & Computer Services
12106.1​
32.38586586​
8​
INTELUSUSTechnology Hardware & Equipment
11894.3​
-1.336483792​
9​
ROCHESwitzerlandRoWPharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
10753.2​
5.874898164​
10​
JOHNSON & JOHNSONUSUSPharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
10107.7​
5.382830626​

The amount is in Euro. So Huawei spent just over $20 billion on R&D, a huge 31% increase.

Interesting that there is no Japanese companies in the top 10, neither UK & France

I had expected Alibaba and Tencent were up there

Considering PPP, so in real term Huawei spend much more, even more than Alphabet
 

emblem21

Major
Registered Member
I have low confidence this country can build a good public transportation system


the people can't even be bothered to save half a million people by wearing masks.
Yeah, the number of people dead is just a few days away from 1/2 million. And accomplishment that no one should boast about and also to note is that the roll out of the vaccines isn’t going to change or help this fact much at all. Also to ask, is the Pfizer/moderna really as good as what the media is humming about repeatedly since they claim that this is usable against all variants of the virus, yet there delivery of said vaccine seems to suck. I ask because the mainstream media is going crazy in propping this up as the holy grail but I can’t get this nagging feeling out of my head that this is ultimately a load of crap and a possibility that this will prove the whole cure is worse then the cause statement to be somewhat prophetic in the near future
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
Yeah, the number of people dead is just a few days away from 1/2 million. And accomplishment that no one should boast about and also to note is that the roll out of the vaccines isn’t going to change or help this fact much at all. Also to ask, is the Pfizer/moderna really as good as what the media is humming about repeatedly since they claim that this is usable against all variants of the virus, yet there delivery of said vaccine seems to suck. I ask because the mainstream media is going crazy in propping this up as the holy grail but I can’t get this nagging feeling out of my head that this is ultimately a load of crap and a possibility that this will prove the whole cure is worse then the cause statement to be somewhat prophetic in the near future

Well, it's a new way to make vaccines. If it works properly, which it seems it does, scaled up it enables the production of vaccines for just about any virus much faster than traditional methods. It's basically a fully synthetic vaccine from what I understand. In comparison the Chinese Sinovac vaccine uses a traditional method with a attenuated form of the virus proper. But it has never been used in scale like it's being used right now. It shouldn't have any problems but this is still a massive experiment at a huge scale.
 
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