
All of Our Bets on China Have Been Wrong - howard941
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/12/marshall-auerback-bets-china-wrong.html
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oflannabhra
I was really impressed by an article [0] linked by the original, which details
the philosophy of Robert Lighthizer, the current US Trade Representative. I
had little to no knowledge of of history or motivation of the current tariffs,
and had mostly viewed the US administration's approach to the WTO and
multilateralism as foolhardy at best.

I am more and more becoming convinced that West v China is going to be the
single most impactful issue of this decade, if not century. One would never be
able to glean that based on what the western media reports on, however. I
don't know if Lighthizerism is the best approach, but it is at least a
_different_ approach. I'm not sure if I agree with the article's apocalyptic
ending tone, though.

[0] - [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/06/you-live-in-robert-
ligh...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/06/you-live-in-robert-lighthizers-
world-now-trump-trade/)

~~~
HillaryBriss
> One would never be able to glean that based on what the western media
> reports on, however.

yeah. i feel this is an interesting point.

the article says that within China there are mainly _disincentives to argue
with or reason against the leader (Xi)_

OTOH, Western media see mainly _incentives_ to argue with and reason against
the leader (Trump).

i daresay sometimes the Western media seem like theologians who already have
the right answer (Trump and all of his statements and actions are by
definition ignorant/wrong/bad) and have tasked themselves with constructing a
path, a narrative, which supports only that answer.

and, of course, Trump himself acts a lot like a medieval theologian too, but
one who belongs to a different religion than the media. also, he often commits
heresy and even changes religion altogether. at unpredictable times.

so we're all rather confused about what's going on now and about what the
future holds. interesting times.

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squozzer
I would argue the earlier mindset (i.e. China engagement) was not based solely
on pie-in-the-sky optimism, but had a couple of other factors -

1) The belief that China would eventually succeed with or without us, so it is
to our benefit for them to succeed with us.

2) The belief that engaging the Soviets hastened the end of the [First?] Cold
War, so it might also work on the Chinese.

Because we have no control scenario we can't be sure, but engagement probably
worked, if for no other reason than to set up a situation where China appears
a bit more transparent today than 30 years ago.

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soared
The article makes some pretty intense claims but I'm not clear if they are
purely hypothetical or closer to real predictions

> This entry was posted in China, Doomsday scenarios,

