Completely agree. Also it's not really "stolen expertise" as wetern companies and capitalist countries given it away willingly in exchange for cheap manufacturing. They just never expected China to take advantage of it to compete on a global market.

A lot of Americans still think of China as the place to make cheap goods, but their manufacturing sector has benefited from decades of stolen expertise.

I listened to a podcast (Dithering; it’s subscription based) talking about a book about Apple’s manufacturing operations in China. The distinction was that other companies guarded because their techniques would be stolen, whereas Apple focused on “we’re gonna teach you to do this,” which then proliferated to other companies. We wouldn’t have semi-affordable (depending on your situation) iPhones otherwise. They be impossible to build at scale. Really eye opening.

The ep was the second one last week, if you wanna listen.

The biggest problem with China is that they are Authoritarian.

China has already successfully destroyed manufacturing in most Pacific “first world” countries by undercutting us.

The fact that US, Australian, Japanese, Korean and New Zealand manufacturers were so ready to outsource to China in the first place, just to save a few cents in the dollar is how they got us.

What are your “cultural exports”?

The question is, will they decline more than their competitors? Right now i think the US will decline a lot more a lot faster. And Russia will likely not even be around.

China has proven itself able to change drastically and quickly. High speed rail and renewable energy. Both massive undertakings tackling massive problems for China and both done far faster and on a much larger scale than anywhere else. If there's one country I actually trust to be proactive about securing its future, it's China. I'll take the wait and see approach to the supposed imminent demographic collapse

Soft power yes, military power not yet I'd say

It's already called an electrostate and they'll supplant the old petrostates.

That's true, but the time between rise and fall takes a while. From the looks of things, the US empire is in the process of falling, which would clear the way for China to take over the top spot. This may change depending on how things go, but if China can grab that spot then it'll take a while for their turn to fall.

Nobody currently alive will live to see it

I saw that book pass by on the Daily Show:

Patrick McGee - Apple In China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

They literally own the means of production.

Honestly modern China in my lifetime has been a more benevolent world player than the US by orders of magnitude. Not perfect, obviously, but at least they haven’t been starting wars or electing fascists. I’m excited for this shift.

Mostly agree, but;

The reality is that if China stops supplying the world with stuff, we're fucked

The entire world relies on China's cheap and available "stuff", and it encompasses everything

I think is more their engineering expertise than cheap manufacturing. Cheap manufacturing can be easily moved to other countries as is already happening in India and Vietnam among others. However China has big expertise in high tech/large scale manufacturing in many areas like electronics, batteries, EV’s,… that doesn’t move easily.

However for those engineering domains China also strongly relies on other countries. In our world you can’t do everything alone.

The have enormous military power

They haven’t fought a war in 4 decades though.

Cheap as cheap price or cheap quality

Global power doesn't tend to be a peaceful transition though. If China does make a play to become the dominant force by then, it's bad news for everyone living right now.

There are benefits China has that will go away as they transition, which could also cause them to stumble. No longer being considered a developing nation, any poverty will be 100% on them to fix, international agreements will expect them to contribute instead of receiving, emissions will be more heavily scrutinized. Other countries will not be a tolerant about the rampant IP theft and extreme protectionism of their domestic markets.

They’re not ruining their economy by fighting what makes them great or their people healthy. They have their grift and corruption more under control. They’re not cutting back on investments for their future in favor of investments for their past. They have the attention span to commit to a plan for more than four years at a time.

It was really just Trump finding out the US isn't as strong as HE thought. Everyone with a brain told him it was a bad idea but the man doesn't understand economics