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-_-_-_-_-  5mo ago (noahpinion.blog)   2108 thread views

Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now

noahpinion.blog

Industrial policy has been a frequent subject on Smith's blog, for those who don't follow it. (He's for it, and thinks that Biden's industrial policy was mostly good - it's worth following the links in this post.) This post focuses on defense-related geopolitical industrial policy goals and pros and cons of anticipated changes under the incoming Trump administration and Chinese responses. Particularly, he highlights two major things China can do: Restrict exports of raw materials (recently announced) and use their own industrial policy to hamper the West's peacetime industrial policy (de facto policy of the last 30 years). These are not extraordinary insights, but it's a good primer on the current state of affairs and policies to pay attention to in the near-future.

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Why don’t we just let China have Taiwan and the South China Sea? I really don’t care about China. China doesn’t care about most of the rest of the world. China doesn’t seek dominion over European civilization. China is uninterested in the export of world revolution in the way that, say, some historic communist states were. The Taiwanese will do just fine under Chinese rule; even the old KMT vets are unlikely to face any retribution in their very, very old age. Most people neither require nor care about democracy; they want streets that are safe, low crime, affordable and decent food on the table, a youth that is disciplined and hardworking, and a feeling that their country is headed in the right direction.

What matters is civilization. What matters is mass immigration. What matters is law and order. What matters is the cultural rot that has hollowed out the West, leaving a small class of feckless, neurotic elites and a vast population of normal people held hostage by the scum at the bottom of society who continuously go un- and under-punished. What matters is ugliness, in architecture, in obesity, in fonts, in advertising, in fashion. China is responsible for relatively little of this.

Challenging China is both pointless and cruel. The Chinese, for all the great flaws of their system, still have the kind of state capacity and self-belief that Western nations can only dream of. Waging a war against China would be an act of nightmarish self-harm. Fix the West, first, on a cultural level, then worry about whatever the fuck is going to happen with Taiwan (I don’t care).

Why don’t we just let Russia have the territory of former Novorossiya? The same arguments apply as here.

  • China is about 10x as strong
  • China does not seem to want more than taiwan and access to the ocean
  • Russia has a (recent) record of using military means and nuclear threats to expand its borders – China’s relative peacefulness (100x) should be rewarded and Russia’s behaviour punished . If nothing else, to avoid nuclearization.

True, if you were to have knowledge of Putin vs Xi’s wildest territorial dreams if they could get away with anything, I think I’d be quite sure the latter’s would be Taiwan, nine-dash-line and the US out of Korea (and probably also the end of the Kim regime, which the CCP has long been ambivalent about). Putin’s wildest territorial dreams clearly go way beyond Eastern Ukraine.

I find all this to be a bit far-fetched. When exactly did the Chinese Communists express any intent to unify Korea after expelling the Americans? Their intervention in the Korean War didn't go to such lengths either. We might as well say that their wildest dreams include Vladivostok. And what Russian ambitions are 'way beyond' Eastern Ukraine? Don't tell me it's Moldova of all places.

Their intervention in the Korean War didn't go to such lengths either.

Uh, yeah, it did? Mao was absolutely trying to unify Korea under Kim Il-Sung. They captured Seoul and would have taken all of South Korea had the UN forces not driven them back.

I don't think we can say that with certainty. The intervention happened when North Korea was on the verge of complete defeat and I'd be surprised to learn that it had goals more ambitious then restoring the status quo.

I think you might need to read up a bit more on Mao Zedong. The Sino-Soviet split occurred because Mao thought Khrushchev wasn't being aggressive enough in spreading communism; Mao was very aggressive, and was involved in the planning of the initial North Korean invasion of South Korea.

It's debatable whether Mao would have come in if the UN hadn't invaded North Korea, but once he did he absolutely intended to unify Korea under Kim.

(To be clear, this particular incident has little bearing on modern Chinese intentions; Xi Jinping is not Mao and has different objectives. He is also aggressive, but in a different fashion.)

Rhetoric is one thing, actions are another. Altogether I find it a bit of a stretch to say that Chinese foreign policy was markedly aggressive during Mao, either compared to that of the USSR or the Qing Dynasty for that matter.

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