China will need to rely more on its own market and less on exports. Thats what true world powers do. Look at the US and india. They have trade deficits but are still big economies. Export-dependent nations can never be world powers because they are dependent on the willingness of other nations to open their own markets to them. And china in many ways, cheats the system (closing its market and subsidizing a lot of companies) while it expects other nations to open their markets. And this has been going on for decades now.
The problem is that china wants to keep its ineficient and heavly-indebted state capitalism economy, prefering instead to keep growing by exports and debt. it doesnt want to privatize its SOE, which AFAIK continue to constitute a large portion of the economy, including most of its large companies ( i remember reading in 1993 that the chinese SOE were white elephants. Many of them probably only exist to keep people employed. They surely arent as well managed as private companies) and reduce the weight of the state in the economy.
This unwillingness to reform, coupled with the growing movement to close markets to china in the US, japan, india and even somewhat europe, will end bady for china, no matter what people in this forum may think otherwise.
Like you said, there's been Western criticisms of the Chinese model and Western predictions of impending Chinese doom for more than 30 years. And against this rhetoric, China's literally had one of the greatest runs in world history.
Your conclusion to that is, the western criticisms and predictions are RIGHT?
At this point, it's just hilarious. The Chinese model has worked incredibly. Reality proves so. All facts and figures prove so.
That's not saying western criticisms should not be heeded. Yes, there needs to be reforms. Yes, consumption needs to increase. Yes, there's a backlash against global trade. Fortunately, China surfed the wave of American-led globalization to become the largest industrial economy with the biggest consumer market for goods in the world. Western experts might want to worry about critiquing and effecting change in their own countries rather than providing free consulting for Beijing.
And India, are you serious? India literally missed the boat on industrialization. All developed countries fully industrialized through low-cost labor and manufacturing-led exports. India won't be able to manage that, with today's saturation of globalization and increase in automation. They're in huge trouble.
Regarding trade and the closing of markets, look, the world isn't doing China a favor by manufacturing and trading in China. Corporations and countries manufacture and trade in China because they make the most money doing so. If you move out of China, you're 1) paying more for less, 2) losing competitiveness against companies that stay, 3) losing the largest market for goods in the world.
The current American proposition of Cold War is basically asking its people and allies to pay huge economic costs (decouple China) for the interests of the American elite (global domination). How effective is that going to be? I'm skeptical.
COVID's probably hurt the American argument even further. Is some underemployed Spaniard or Italian, already taking huge economic losses with a 10+ percent GDP hit gonna sign up to tank their lives even further by decoupling from China? For what? Even one of America's closest and most integrated allies in the UK is struggling with that decision. No one wants to cut their paycheck and ruin their lifestyles for the interests of Washington elites. There's no economic argument there, and that's why America's been ramping up the rhetoric instead.
"You're not ruining your livelihoods and lifestyles for American elite interests, you're boycotting the new Nazis, the greatest evil of all times in the Chinese!!!" - Pompeo.
Looking forward to more furious State Department diatribes in the months ahead.
