Author: Sheng Tang rushong source wechat official account: the chief shopkeeper’s knife has been reprinted with authorization
Today, the economic data of the second quarter was released, with a positive growth rate of 0.4%. Under the recurrence of the epidemic, the pressure of economic recovery is still great. On the other hand, the current international situation is also bad. The Biden administration’s containment policy towards China is still very obvious, including the economic framework of India and the Pacific, as well as doing things on issues such as Taiwan and Xinjiang. Yin Xiyue won’t say much more. A far right element can’t wait to turn South Korea into a state of the United States.
What’s more troublesome is Japan. Abe himself is a Japanese right-wing, who has been advocating the expansion of troops to prepare for war and help defend Taiwan. After this assassination, the more conservative right-wing continues to rise, and will, not surprisingly, continue to move closer to the United States.
Over the past few decades, China’s external environment has been good for most of the time, and such a severe situation as recently is relatively rare. However, the strengthening of the containment and containment of China by the United States is actually something that cannot be avoided, which was actually realized by some people nearly 20 years ago.
As early as 2004, when China just joined the WTO, China’s national strength was basically difficult to shake the United States, and the relationship between the two countries was also harmonious. The famous economist Samuelson had a paper that pointed out the haze far away.
He believes that the United States is good at making airplanes, so he only makes airplanes, which can be more efficient than the United States; China is good at making shirts, so China will focus on making shirts, which is more efficient than making everything in China. The division of labor has led China and the United States to improve their production efficiency in professional fields, which is good for China and other countries.
Then he also pointed out that if China, which used to make shirts, suddenly made amazing technological progress in the field of aircraft manufacturing for no reason, what would be the impact on the U.S. economy? Lao Sa’s answer is shocking – if China really improves its productivity in aircraft manufacturing, it may “permanently damage the interests of the United States”.
Over the past decade, China US relations have become increasingly tense on the whole. Before, many people said that it was Chinese nationalism that scared the United States. This is Qiong Yao’s novels. After reading too many novels, he felt that the United States was as sensitive and rich as the hero inside. As soon as he made a move, he had to contract a fish pond, and asked the heroine to think only of herself. Please, a big guy like the United States would still care about your mood?
Since President Chuan, especially after the outbreak of the sweater war in 18 years, the relationship between China and the United States has gone further and further irreversibly. After Biden came to power, he seemed to roar less loudly than President Chuan, but the restrictions on China were no less, and even increased. Obviously, China and the United States must not go back to the past. People care most about making money and the position of making money for a long time. Your rise has affected this expectation.
In the eyes of others, our great development in recent years is permanently harming the interests of the United States, so you are the “public enemy of the country”. If we want to go back to the previous G2 state, unless we go back 20 years, just like the “black field” in the three bodies, we lie in a pit and want everyone to think that you are basically harmless. But this kind of self defeating martial arts is obviously impossible.
In the past, some people always advocated the “law of being close to the United States”, saying that countries following the United States have become rich. Trade, science and technology and political frictions between China and the United States are caused by China’s failure to “hide its strength and bide its time”, and even the conflict between Russia and Ukraine some time ago. Some people advocated that they should stand in line to support the United States. These views are too naive. Countries are not fighting for their own interests, but naked competition for interests. The rapid development of science and technology is good to say. Now it’s slow down and enters the stock mode. Your great development is harm to others. What can you do? No development?
Moreover, the “law of proximity to the United States” itself is also unreliable. The small partners around the United States are relatively rich. This is not with the United States, but those countries are already rich, and then joined the rich country club. The two sons of the United States, one is the Philippines and the other is Liberia, both of whom can’t develop. It also shows that a country’s development is mainly due to its own endowment. “Who to mix with” just strengthens this endowment. If the endowment is too bad, it doesn’t make any difference to mix with anyone.
A hundred years ago, countries like Germany and Japan were the world’s stone giants. The war just destroyed their factories, and those more important knowledge than factories, such as management and scientific research capabilities, can’t be destroyed. Even consortiums are there, and the funds will soon develop. Some small partners may not know that the great development of South Korea after the war does not depend on the United States, but on the Japanese consortium. Up to now, there are many Japanese funded enterprises in South Korea.
After the war, the areas controlled by the United States are all traditional rich areas, including Western Europe, which has been rampant since the era of great navigation, and Japan, which later developed. In addition, the United States itself and those resource countries have become a club of rich countries as a whole.
These countries have a large market size and strong capital strength, so as long as they participate in the division of labor in the United States and do a good job, they can grow rapidly. On the whole, only South Korea and Singapore, which are about the size of Hong Kong, have a reference value, just as the prosperity of Shanghai can not guide the economic development of other places.
However, under the division of labor system in the United States, everyone has a ceiling. The ceiling is the United States itself. Everyone lives in peace. The United States eats meat and drinks soup, on the premise that it cannot challenge the status of the United States.
I don’t know if you have noticed that in fact, the United States’ allies have generally developed less than the United States in recent years. In the past few decades, the United States and Japan have fought trade wars and virtue trade wars. Even for “true allies” such as Japan, Germany and France, the United States will never be soft to contain them.
Moreover, we look familiar with many methods. For example, for several years, we forced Japan to reduce tariffs every day. Later, we suspected that Japanese chips sold to the United States would occupy the American market, so we simply imposed a 100% tariff, or we directly found a reason not to sell them in the United States, which is the first mock examination as our current operation. And in 2020, a 50% tariff was imposed on the German aluminum giant, up to 352%, which is too much for us. It can be seen that it is not aimed at anyone. Everyone here looks unhappy and repairs it.
It can also be seen from here that when a country is “misaligned” with the United States in terms of industrial level, scientific and technological innovation, economic size, that is, it cannot threaten the United States, the United States is a partner. After all, it used to be close to us, saying what G2.
However, once a country wants to move the cake of the United States, or may move the cake of the United States, the United States will certainly do it, and its allies will not let go of any of them. While China is larger, more technologically advanced, and its own unique political and military system, the United States will certainly do it harder, not based on our subjective will.
When we first chose this independent development path, we will naturally face all kinds of thorns. For example, the contradictions with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s and now with the United States seem different and similar in essence.
In the past three decades, the economic growth rate of the United States has far exceeded that of its allies, and Europe and Japan are completely behind in the fields of Internet, cloud computing, new energy and so on. On the contrary, China is challenging the United States in these areas, or we don’t want to challenge the United States, but we go our own way, and they panic.
The recent round of new technological revolution is different from the past, especially in the need for a large-scale unified market. The United States monopolizes the big market in the western world. Probably, the United States, together with its small partners in the English speaking world, has a maximum of 1.08 billion people. China has its own huge market. Japan and Europe are not dependent on each other, which is very painful. The Internet, cloud computing, new energy, etc. have not started.
Looking at the world today, China is the only country that is seeking breakthroughs in all technical fields and maintaining independence in politics, military and commerce.
More importantly, at the beginning, the United States repaired Japan and Germany mainly from the market level, that is, Japan and Germany could not absorb their own production capacity and had to sell to the territory of the United States. Under this background, the United States said almost nothing to them. After all, technology can be developed, and the market can also be developed?
However, Germany has taken a very right path, which is to continuously expand production in China. There is a saying that Germany has moved half of the country’s industries to China, and Germany’s largest overseas market is also in China, which not only reduces costs, but also finds itself a huge overseas market.
Take Volkswagen as an example. In 2021, Volkswagen group sold 8.882 million vehicles worldwide and 3.3 million vehicles in China. China contributed nearly 40% of its sales, while Mercedes Benz 35% and BMW 28%. Recently, China is buying European aircraft on a large scale. Coupled with the merger of Germany and Germany, the population soared. Germany survived the blow of the United States, and the Japanese market contraction combined with the population collapse was almost defeated. In recent years, there are few new technologies in Europe, and the old technologies are mainly digested by us. Therefore, although Biden continues to win over Europe and wants them to join the containment of China, China still has economic leverage to divide Europe.
On the other hand, the gradual maturity of China’s market, coupled with the huge scale of consumption, has brought application space to many new technologies, so that there is a chance to realize “lane changing overtaking” next.
In the first half of the year, the economy was not very prosperous, but there was an eye-catching performance in one area, that is, new energy vehicles. This year can be said to be the outbreak year of new energy vehicles.
I read a report a few days ago, saying that new energy vehicles can only be launched in developed countries and China next, because a large number of new infrastructure and charging piles are needed. In the past, many people did not have a deep understanding of infrastructure. In fact, infrastructure is actually the basis for the development of many new industries. If you can’t do this, you won’t catch up in the new technological revolution.
Moreover, Chinese enterprises have become bigger and bigger in recent years, and their demand for digitalization is also growing. China has naturally become one of the most important cloud computing markets in the world, and the industry has naturally developed. Alibaba has done particularly well in this regard. E-commerce itself has a lot of computing needs. Doing cloud computing solves its own needs, reduces the cost of purchasing hardware, and now it is open to more customers, which has become a very positive cycle.
In fact, new energy, 5g, high-speed rail, cloud computing and AI technology have made great breakthroughs in a short time after the rapid expansion of the Chinese market, and our own enterprises and consumers have money to support our own technology research and development.
And China is also lucky that we have our own independent and efficient business network. Now the world has entered the era of e-commerce, but in most countries, the e-commerce is dominated by Amazon in the United States. Competitors other than Amazon, such as express, sheen, shrimp skin and lazada, are basically Chinese funded.
Therefore, now the country with independent retail industry lifeline, in addition to the United States, that is, China. Taobao beat back eBay nearly 20 years ago, and Amazon has never been weak in the Chinese market, so China’s business network is completely autonomous, unlike other countries, where online is occupied by Amazon and offline by Wal Mart.
In fact, many people always think that compared with technology, business seems to have little technical content. In fact, it is not like this. We often talk about economic sovereignty. In fact, commercial sovereignty is also a part of economic sovereignty. To objectively evaluate Alibaba, we should see that its development actually protects China’s commercial sovereignty and allows us to have an independent commercial system.
What are the benefits of China’s independent business system? In fact, not only apple, Qualcomm and Boeing, but also Coca Cola, Procter & Gamble and Nike are among the top brands in the United States. Consumer goods brands in the United States and Europe have developed for hundreds of years around the world. They are rich and powerful, and their offline channels are much stronger than our domestic brands. If Amazon is also the leading e-commerce in China, our domestic brands will have no chance. Of course, there is still a gap between our consumer goods brands and them, but domestic brands such as Li Ning are moving forward, and platforms such as tmall are very important positions.
In fact, behind consumer brands is the country’s soft power. If our business is occupied by Amazon and Wal Mart, the promotion of this soft power will also be greatly affected.
Many people are willing to say that our production capacity is awesome. This is indeed true. But many people have not realized that China’s consumption capacity is more scarce. Although the epidemic has had an impact on the economy in the past two years, people don’t dare to spend money so much, compared with other countries in the world, China’s economy is still OK, and China’s market is too large.
Now Alibaba and other companies have developed an independent and efficient business system to give full play to the dividends of the unified market. Large companies are also increasing investment in scientific and technological innovation to break through key technologies. After that, China will be very awesome in terms of consumption and technology.
So we should see that we still have a better hand. Some short-term fluctuations may have an emotional impact on everyone, but there is really no need to be too pessimistic when you calm down.
Ending:
The Institute of international studies of Tsinghua University previously conducted a study on Sino US relations, which is shown in the following figure:
It can be seen that the best relationship between China and the United States is that after Kissinger’s visit to China, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then after George W. Bush launched the war on terrorism, as well as the economic crisis in 2008, it was OK for a short period of time, and it has not been good at other times. So don’t be too concerned about the decline of the relationship between the two countries. It may be this state for a long time in the future, and the business still needs to be done, but various political conflicts can’t be avoided.
However, there is no need to worry. Now the world economy has entered a big quagmire and will not get out for a while. This time is both a challenge and an opportunity for us. The challenges are obvious. Now the tide of globalization is clearly ebbing, technological progress is slow, and all countries have financial problems. When it comes to opportunities, it’s because it will be very difficult for the United States to provoke relations between all parties in the case of economic downturn, because the only way to live is to keep warm together, and no one will make economic troubles at this time. For example, China has just bought so many Airbus aircraft, and Europe also has a large number of enterprises in China.
The Chinese market is large enough, so there is hope for research and development in China, and there is also enough scenario support. Therefore, although there are difficulties and challenges at present, and the United States still wants to contain us, we have a huge market. No matter how determined we are not to withdraw from the market dominated by the United States and resolutely embrace the global market, as well as innovators like Alibaba, Huawei and BYD, China will certainly be able to break through the ceiling set by the United States.
In the final analysis, this is a protracted war. The key to who can win is who has a more stable and large stable positive circulation system. People spend money to buy better products. Enterprises have the motivation to develop newer and more advanced things, and the R & D system is built. We have our own huge market, and we are not as highly dependent on the United States as Japan and Germany. More importantly, we used to grow national enterprises such as Huawei, Alibaba and BYD, We can grow more in the future.
In other words, what China and the United States really compete for is the unity of the big market, the strategic determination, and the ability to solve their own problems. The most important thing for China now is to take its own road well and focus on solving its own problems. The current economic situation is indeed not optimistic, but China’s overall fundamentals are still good. The market of 1.4 billion people is not small at any time. As long as we do a good job in this market, everything can grow like a fertile land, and it will still get better and better.
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