> Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance.
The problem with China is that the "free access" was always one-sided as we did not insist on reciprocity - not for the Internet, not for tourism, not for companies, not for goods.
We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them virtually full access to our economic market, we gave them access to the Internet, we gave them seriously discounted shipping rates and customs exemptions.
And look where that got us. They lock in their population in a way reminding me of the GDR/Stasi era - if you're not an obedient citizen, you don't get permission to travel, everything is subject to surveillance and the one will of the Party -, they use their access to the Internet to steal, hack and run secret police organizations while locking their population behind the Great Firewall, they buy up our companies and shift crucial knowledge back to China. And in the meanwhile, good paying jobs in our countries were lost en masse to China, what used to be high-quality products that would last many years if not decades got replaced by China made ultra cheap junk.
You're talking about it as if it was a bug, it was not. I'm pretty sure a generation of MBAs got raised and retired really rich shifting manufacturing jobs to China. The narrative about them not being open is just a way to cope with their rise now and get rid of any blame.
> We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them virtually full access to our economic market, we gave them access to the Internet, we gave them seriously discounted shipping rates and customs exemptions.
Lol, when you have to convince people that working in services instead of manufacturing is the future, that's what you get. Mindset is also a big issue, I know enough people who played the Erasmus game and graduated in double the normal time just by coasting that I think it's just normal at this point. And the problem with this spiral is that it just compounds, Europe is shifting to a continent of pensionists, highly educated people that live with their parents til their 40s and nepobabies playing airbnb landlords.
> You're talking about it as if it was a bug, it was not. I'm pretty sure a generation of MBAs got raised and retired really rich shifting manufacturing jobs to China. The narrative about them not being open is just a way to cope with their rise now and get rid of any blame.
IMHO it's both. It did make sense to introduce China to the Western markets, even leaving the MBA BS aside, just out of moral fairness. It was the right thing to do ethically, the execution was just fucked up - in no small part as you say due to the rise of neoliberalism.
> Lol, when you have to convince people that working in services instead of manufacturing is the future, that's what you get.
Yup. The problem with anything manufacturing is the associated pollution, energy usage and the healthcare costs from dealing with old-aged former physical laborers... we shifted all of that to China.
> Europe is shifting to a continent of pensionists, highly educated people that live with their parents til their 40s
Not by choice though. The problem is that real estate markets are fucked over, in the hot markets where the jobs are, even as a gay DINK couple (aka landlord's dream - two full time incomes and a very low chance of them adopting a child which makes noise and causes complaints from other renters) you don't stand a chance.
One might be tempted to say that offshoring the manufacturing pollution was the point - the Silicon Valley is the US' top Superfund site for a reason [1]. Now it's not Western countries that get to deal with the legacy of a few decades of exploitative capitalism, it's China, Taiwan and India which are out of sight, out of mind to us.
> Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage.
Indeed but that's a niche market which means R&D costs alone make products so much more expensive that it's basically impossible to compete... and for the stuff that is made domestically, manufacturers love to go for "planned obsolescence" and other strategies to turn consumer spending into recurring revenue - always remember BMW and subscription seat heaters.
> We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them virtually full access to our economic market
I'm impressed by their generosity (whoever you're referring to as "we"). Did they also allow the Chinese to win Math Olympiad trophies at some point?
The problem with China is that the "free access" was always one-sided as we did not insist on reciprocity - not for the Internet, not for tourism, not for companies, not for goods.
We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them virtually full access to our economic market, we gave them access to the Internet, we gave them seriously discounted shipping rates and customs exemptions.
And look where that got us. They lock in their population in a way reminding me of the GDR/Stasi era - if you're not an obedient citizen, you don't get permission to travel, everything is subject to surveillance and the one will of the Party -, they use their access to the Internet to steal, hack and run secret police organizations while locking their population behind the Great Firewall, they buy up our companies and shift crucial knowledge back to China. And in the meanwhile, good paying jobs in our countries were lost en masse to China, what used to be high-quality products that would last many years if not decades got replaced by China made ultra cheap junk.