COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

[white belt]

Interesting idea and I fully support voting with dollars. However, I'm seeing a lot of misinformation or perhaps misunderstanding about Chinese government. I am by no means an expert on the subject, but I have studied the language and politics in country for an extended period of time.

These days, the Chinese Communist Party is communist in name only. China is not a communist state, it is an authoritarian oligarchy. Only about ~7% of the population is in the CCP and since the late 1970's China has reshaped it's economy using capitalist principles and policies. Many of the members of the CCP are wealthy businessmen themselves or have connections to such businesses. China has the 2nd largest economy in the world and will eventually surpass the USA, as one would expect of a country with comparable natural resources and a population over 4x that of the US.

Under Xi Jinping, China has become much more authoritarian. Aided by technology, China has been able to tighten the control of it's population and continues to maintain power. In the late 1980's all of the West thought that Chinese democracy was inevitable and then the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened. Again and again, the CCP has proven itself as both pragmatic in economic policy, and adept in social control of the enormous population.

I agree with others that the world is so globalized, that completely boycotting Chinese goods is likely a fool's errand.

[7Wannabe5]

@whitebelt:

The author of “Capitalism Alone” describes the current Chinese system as Political Capitalism as opposed to Liberal Capitalism. He also suggests that we may be moving in that direction given growing political control by the 1%.

[Alphaville]

China is not a communist state, it is an authoritarian oligarchy.

yes, and that was a great post, but i’ll make the caveat that since the days of george orwell we’ve figured that a communist state always devolves into an authoritarian oligarchy.

[Jason]

Granted, China is not communist in the Marxist/Leninist tradition. What I generally meant by communist is that predictions that it would become progressively democratic were misguided just because capitalism was in the mix. Whatever the appropriate terminology for the political apparatus, it needs to be made clear to people that being critical of China is not being critical of the Chinese in the racial sense, because that's how China is taking advantage of the current US obsession with identity politics which misdirects our understanding that its first priority in response is propaganda and not policy.

[chenda]

Short video highlighting Australia's increasing satellite status to China.

https://youtu.be/5SDUm1bx7Zc

[nomadscientist]

One can look at China as a limited franchise constitutional monarchy which was the standard government format in Europe in the nineteenth century. The 7% of Chinese in the CPC can be seen as "voters." The head of the government and the cabinet are selected from within this group but are not hereditary and the group itself is (today) more like a group of all the important people in the country than people committed to a specific ideology, hence businessmen and upwardly mobile professionals joining.

So, the current PRC is like the UK in 1880 which allowed about three million people to vote from a population of about thirty five million. The electoral roll also determined who could serve on juries, as lay magistrates, and so on. In China this may be less formalised (in the official ideology everyone is equal of course) but many "corrupt" aspects of their system can be seen as functional and intended features in this sense.

This format was very successful at the time, was not regarded as extraordinarily repressive, is not viewed today now that it is gone as some unbelievably horrifying time with no continuity with the present, etc. Perhaps it will prove more stable in the long term and return somewhat as the world increasingly models itself on China rather than the United States. "Puppet" Australia has the virus controlled; America does not. America-aligned Japan does not. It's not the only factor influencing the decision, but it's surely going to be an important factor for some time.

As for separating the race and the state, well, it's an idea that makes a great deal of sense in the American worldview created by America's history as a multiracial immigrant country founded by "illegal" breakaway from another state: race is contingent and states disposable. It makes less sense in the context of an ancient state attached to a specific race and cultural tradition and located in the land in which that race and culture emerged. It's possibly not even comprehensible to them. Certainly I've had discussions with many Chinese, all quite reasonable people, all very well educated, many critical of the Chinese government within certain limits, that progressed to matter of fact discussion of what would be called "blood and soil nationalism" from the mouth of a Western person. They did not seem to realise they were saying anything unusual.

[chenda]

@ffj

Interesting. When I was there in the 1990s it still felt like an old fashioned version of Britain, very provincial in many ways. Cities like Brisbane and Perth felt like small towns, and not very cosmopolitan. Vast acreage of land at the periphery could still be bought for next to nothing.

There were still lots of elderly relatives we visited, my grandparents generation who had been encouraged to leave austerity Britain in the 1950s with dreams of property ownership and tropical beaches (and were sold huge con) My mum remembers numerous friends at school who left school one Friday evening and never returned on Monday. £10 one way ticket.

[fiby41]

Russia is same as ffj described. I've seen train stations in Moscow and Petersburg display timetables in Cyrillic and hieroglyphs as it is called in Russian.
Perhaps it was because we were travelling in the tourist season in summer but we did not have a place to sit while we waited at the stations as the waiting area was cover with them. The janitor was cursing them complaining how they step/stand on the toilet seat to wash their footwear.

It was the same in Almaty in winter. Almaty is in Kazakhstan. It was last year and it is a pit stop for connecting flights. Snow, sneezing people and the crowding at arrivals which had no sitting area had made me wonder what would happen when the next outbreak occurs. As there was no seating someone would stand behind you and then you'd have to move along in the queue although you were standing in a corner waiting for the crowd to pass through the two lanes and had no intention of being part of it until it reduced.

As 40% of the hostel was Chinese my 4 roommates were too. The nearest supermarket knew their preferences and sold chicken feet- not legs- feet. The kitchen used to close at 11 pm but those who had electric vessels did the cooking in the room whenever. Going to sleep at 12 pm can be difficult if your roommates start cooking chicken feet. The smells and odours I'll pass on describing.

After the outbreak I was wondering why hadn't the borders been sealed yet. Russia depends on China for tourism and trade. China sends droves of tourists whenever Xi drops by as part of its diplomacy. Maybe they didn't want to disturb this relation until it was late. They've bought in and are now peddling the Chinese narrative. OTOH China has blocked its side of the land border to stop returning Chinese bringing the virus with them.

[7Wannabe5]

I bet chitlins smell a whole lot worse.

[Alphaville]

I bet chitlins smell a whole lot worse.

true...

but still, so yummy!

[tonyedgecombe]

I was going to post something about how if you target China then there are probably a lot of other countries you should look at as well. However looking at various freedom indices it seems China is near the bottom on most of them. The only countries that are worse are obviously despotic.

[thrifty++]

So far I am finding it really easy to buy all food products non Chinese made. Almost everything has been made in NZ and some made in Australia.

Non perishables seem much more difficult. Appliances as an example. The NZ market is completely saturated with made in China junk. And the prices being requested for some of it is unbelievable. People are so used to paying high prices here and they don't pay attention.

I notice that there are lots of non Chinese made products for what I want but harder to access in NZ. Easier overseas. I think there is definitely a business opp for a not made in China drop shipping business.

Its unbelievable how much junk is made in China now. If there was a large scale boycott of Chinese made I think it would really impact China in a big way. It is not as though China innovates and creates its own new products. It relies on the world constantly feeding it their former production. buying its cheap products and feeding it new technology/design.engineering to apply to the mass creation of cheap products. Its economy has constantly been in catch up mode and thats why the GDP has been high. Its harder to hit GDP beyond 3% when you are on the cutting edge of innovation. There would be rebound effects on the Australian economy and the NZ economy to a lesser extent. I think NZ and Australia need to diversify their economies a lot more.

[thrifty++]

Interesting that China's top export partners are all from places which do not have a good relationship with the Chinese government, except maybe for Mexico. I would say the relationship between China and Australia was a good one, but recently it seems to be on increasingly shaky ground. Chinese government recently threatened to boycott made in Australia products less than a week ago. This seemed an attempt to bully Australia into moving away from being part of the inquiry into the source and handling of the pandemic. A widespread boycott of Chinese made could have a significant impact on the influence of China's government. A few of the countries on this list have already had a widespread boycott of Chinese products in the past. http://www.worldstopexports.com/chinas- ... -partners/

But then what countries does the Chinese government have a good relationship with these days anyway? Other than North Korea.

Also, China seems to benefit a lot more form the relationship with USA than the USA benefits from China. Looking at export data. It looks like there is large support to boycott Chinese made in Europe which is China's biggest export market.https://eutoday.net/news/business-econo ... cott-china. And I imagine an even bigger desire to boycott made in China in USA which is the next boycott. India boycotted Chinese made in the past and there seems to be new talk of it there.

[Alphaville]

i don’t like to put this struggle in national terms because it frames them in the same old way as before, which only gives china an excuse to do more of the same: the spanish did it, the dutch did it, the british did it, the americans did it, now it’s our turn.

the suffering that western powers imposed upon their colonized subjects was not insignificant and is not forgotten in many places. the reason why we still have cuba and venezuela in this hemisphere is because things like gunboat diplomacy and the united fruit company are not yet completely forgotten. and the central american gangs all over the united states is a case of the reagan chickens coming home to roost.

i know the history of latin america a little better so these examples come easy, but i’m sure international people in this board can remember all the ravages that asia and africa have suffered at the hands of western powers.

and maybe the maoris have some things to say about the british empire...

also, western capital has a history of going into a place, ravaging it for natural resources, and leaving in broken when the resources are depleted or disaster ensues (bhopal says hi). so maybe i take china’s demand of technology transfers as a way to keep something for themselves once the companies we send there are done ravaging their environment and putting their workers through the meat grinder—instead of just disruption and pollution.

i mean, just try to consider it from their historical perspective. i’m sure the opium wars are still fresh in their memory.

but hey, my point here is not really to start pointing fingers about who did what to whom in what century or who is entitled to spread the abuse now.

what im trying to get at is that maybe the struggle should be a struggle of values, rather than nations. can we have human rights? can we all protect our common environment? can we eradicate misery, without becoming glutton consumers? can we spread democracy without shooting rockets at people? can we really have “freedom and justice for all”? can we have fair trade? that sort of thing. utopian, i know, but worth it.

also, i’d like to add a reminder that every industrialized country has oozed trash and pollution and produced cheap crap at some point in their history. back in the 1950s “made in japan” was a sign of cheap crap: cheap cars, cheap radios, cheap everything. today “made in japan” is a stamp of quality manufacturing. taiwan today makes the “good” electronics, back in the 70s they made electrical adapters that melted in the socket when you plugged them. look also at the history of kia or samsung in korea, and how far they’ve come in recent times.

also: “china” is not a monolith—although their central government tries very much to consolidate into a monolith, there are other forces at play there. there are democratic forces, there are religious forces, there are ethnicities who refuse to be erased, there is a lot going on... who/what will win is not a matter of “china”, it’s a matter of the forces at play.

so maybe let’s focus on the forces at play rather than national flags.

[chenda]

When Australia started pushing for a global inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, no other countries were on board, and officials had no idea how it would work or how harshly China might react.

Europe soon joined the effort anyway, moving to take up the idea with the World Health Organization later this month. And Australia, in its newfound role as global catalyst, has become both a major target of Chinese anger and the sudden leader of a push to bolster international institutions that the United States has abandoned under President Trump...Countries in Europe and Asia are forging new bonds on issues like public health and trade, planning for a future built on what they see as the pandemic’s biggest lessons: that the risks of China’s authoritarian government can no longer be denied, and that the United States cannot be relied on to lead when it’s struggling to keep people alive and working, and its foreign policy is increasingly “America first.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/worl ... quiry.html

[ZAFCorrection]

I would just boycott China since they are a rival to US power and don't seem inclined to play nice with us if they ever become the dominant party. No moralizing or looking for some deeper douchiness.

People are often opening themselves up to legitimate criticism over that last point. Trump is a bonefied asshole, but people still cooked up Russiagate and the Steele dossier. China clearly performed some kind of cover-up at the beginning of the pandemic, but people also want to believe the virus came from some Chinese lab. Take the ammo you are given and be happy.

[thrifty++]

Well my personal little boycott aside big changes are happening regardless. Capital actually already started moving out of China due to the trade wars between USA and China. Apparently Mexico is the major benefactor of this. This makes much more sense logistically and politically. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/ ... 5d0aef40fe.

It started escalating due to China both being the origin of the virus and for covering it up. And now I think its escalating further as China is behaving in an increasingly politically volatile manner. China is going to increasingly be seen as a threat for a multitude of reasons.

The Japanese government has been paying companies to shift out of China. https://qz.com/1843977/governments-are- ... -of-china/

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Inside ... c-security

Tech companies are planning to shift out of China https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/coronav ... china.html

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/11/ap ... -to-india/

China has been getting fattened up by the rest of the world and the benefits of the outsource to China experiment are now outweighed by all the problems that have been thrown in our faces and is now far too hard to ignore. Capital is going to be fleeing out of China at an increasing rate. And production and consumption boycotts will be increasing.

And it has now been reported that the CIA believes China tried to prevent the WHO from sounding the alarm on the coronavirus outbreak in January at the same time when China was stockpiling medical supplies from around the world.https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/ex ... spartandhp

[jacob]

China has been getting fattened up by the rest of the world and the benefits of the outsource to China experiment are now outweighed by all the problems that have been thrown in our faces and is now far too hard to ignore. Capital is going to be fleeing out of China at an increasing rate. And production and consumption boycotts will be increasing.

To put some nuance on this. Western consumers got addicted to the "everyday low prices" that not having to pay more than 25c/hr to the labor force and thus had a chance to live above their means for a few decades. Of course outsourcing manufacturing had an impact on income but people were happy to drop their savings rates to zeroish or find "non-essential" jobs in the service sector. China was also happy about providing the money by taking the income they earned and exchange it for western capital assets in turn keeping the currency exchange rate lower than it should be for an arrangement where one side does much of the work and the other side does much of the consumption. This has essentially been an eloi & morlock arrangement that those who service the arrangement had benefited tremendously from. That would be distributors and financiers of cheap imports from SEA to the western world (FAANG stocks and finance stocks which essentially produce nothing but distribute imported plastic doodads for endless easy payments of $39.95 now dominate the US markets) and manufacturing in China---and increasingly technology and the colonials increasingly hollow themselves out and/or move on. The kicker here is of course in taking this too far and getting hollowed out all the way to the top of the technology tree thereby losing all comparative advatanges. 5G anyone?

Like others have pointed out above, this is not the first time this pattern has occurred in history and it's not like the western countries haven't taken turns starting out extracting resources in return for military governance (colonial occupation) only to have the colonies eventually build up (insource) their own fabrication and overtake the colonizer which has become decadent/lazy. We'll see to which degree western citizens will be willing to decrease their subsidized high standards of living in return for a strategic advantage. I'm not holding my breath although I appreciate individual efforts to a) buy [high-priced] (or is that fairly priced) "made in the US" (or NZ or wherever); and b) start a business that attempts to sell those $$$$ "made in the US" goods to the people in the first category.

[The Old Man]

And it has now been reported that the CIA believes China tried to prevent the WHO from sounding the alarm on the coronavirus outbreak in January at the same time when China was stockpiling medical supplies from around the world.https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/ex ... spartandhp

The CIA has long engaged in disinformation campaigns - a relic of the cold war. Not to say China did not do these things, but a more credible source is needed.

[RealPerson]

@Jacob

I agree with your post, but I wasn't thinking that all this manufacturing would move from China to the western world. Business can move to Vietnam, Thailand, India, Mexico... Not because companies are becoming virtuous, but because putting all your eggs in one basket is making them stunningly fragile.

These are some reasons to leave China:
-the cost of manufacturing in China has increased a lot
-the CCP has proven it is willing to keep anything and anybody hostage for their purposes
-long supply lines are prone to disruption
-manufacturing everything in one hostile country is a strategic mistake

Moving manufacturing to cheaper countries may lower the cost of goods, instead of increasing them. There are many places in the world where wages are lower than in China, even though there are other factors to consider: infrastructure, political stability, corruption, proximity of suppliers etc.

China is using its muscle to even prevent an investigation into the origins of COVID 19, possibly because the virus may have been genetically altered and then accidentally spread. For worldwide public health it is essential that we learn exactly what happened. The political class in every country will try shenanigans to keep themselves out of trouble. China just takes this to a whole new level and it matters a lot due to the size and strategic importance of the country.

I heard a podcast https://chrisryanphd.com/419-winston-st ... youtubers/ yesterday that is truly enlightening for anybody wanting to better understand the inner workings of China. Highly recommended.