China’s problem is that they import something like 80% of their chips (predominantly from Taiwan). The thing is that semi-conductor fabs don’t exactly respond well to war time conditions. So unless China can invade without without any meaningful resistance, it’s likely that it could be a long time before before that capacity is back online, which would cost china (as a large importer) dearly
China does not have that long if they invade. The US does not need to counter Chinese military locally, just hold Japan and cut off Persian Gulf and all food imports. China imports almost all good and energy.
China can only invade Taiwan to start ww3, and only if it is ready to use nukes pretty soon.
That’s one thing most people don’t understand about China… they import most of their food and energy. They’re stuck playing the nice(ish) neighbor because of where their nation spawned on earth.
That statement is contrary to data [1]. China is the single largest exporter across the globe. What food and energy they import is "luxury" for the growing middle class [2] but not essential (to Chinese Gov't way of thinking) as they have food and energy enough internally to get by.
The geographic bind for China is the China Sea - they are a trading super power with no bulk overland routes and all sea trade funneled through the one body of water (unlike the US with two large coasts).
1. China relies on chemical and oil imports to create the fertilizer that feeds the country. Cut off these imports and China won't be able to feed itself.
2. Much of China's top exports are processed imports: e.g. China is the world's largest exporter of steel but imports most of its pig iron. The country isn't really "resource rich" in the way the USSR or USA is.
3. In most sectors of manufactured goods, China is only capable of mass-producing low quality goods and so the country is reliant on other countries to provide higher quality goods. Steel is a good example again, China is not only the world's largest exporter of (low quality) steel, it's the world's largest importer of steel, mostly medium and high quality.
1. Seems to be more than four years out of date [1](page 9) :
> China has been transformed from being a significant importer of all nutrients in the mid-1990s to a major exporter today.
> A program to develop China’s domestic resources was implemented, and China rapidly invested in nitrogen, phosphate and more recently potash capacity.
(Nitrogen)
> China has relatively limited natural gas resources, so gas based plants account only for a quarter of total urea capacity. Instead, it has turned to its relatively abundant resources of coal, which make up three quarters of urea capacity.
etc.
( Also, China has been overusing fertilizer and has recently cut back and still increased yeild [2] )
2. Yes. China has a strong GDP growth (for what that's worth as a metric) on the back of importing, processing, and exporting to the benefit of China - as a country it is still able to survive well enough on its own (perhaps to the chagrin of the the growing Chinese middle class who demand more and more 'luxury' items).
3. China is quite capable of producing high quality steel - they have some of the highest grade iron ore imports available about the globe and they do produce plenty of high grade steel. Where we agree is that China makes an awful lot of money selling an awful lot of low grade steel.
IIRC China imports 16x the tonnage of US iron ore annual production capacity from Western Australia alone - the Chinese high grade steel production can easily dwarf the capacity of US high grade steel production capacity .. and still lose that total tonnage in the magnitude higher production of low grade steel.
It's a chicken and egg story - are we blaming the Chinese for selling low quality goods, or the world for being satisfied to hand over substantial amounts of money for low grade goods? (If they'll pay for crap, why export better?)
china can get all mentioned resources (fertilizer, pig iron, food, steel) from their neighbors (esp. russia). no way to cut china off. the days of low-quality are long gone. semiconductors and some other hightech are the only pressure points still available, and the US tries to use these.
Which is why they are stuck being friendly(ish) neighbors. They may not be dependent on the USA but they sure as heck are dependent on their neighbors. That’s what happens when you’re resource poor.
A little bit of both. It's true to an extend but you're absolutely right that the PRC isn't as dependent as many foreigners imagine. Depends on our definition of luxury/necessary goods as well. To me eating pork isn't essential but to many Chinese it would definitely be a problem if there were a meat shortage. Nothing that would bring the regime to its knees though and not that the CCP leadership would care about citizens anyway as long as they can be kept from revolting.
Also people should be aware this is exactly the sort of thing they're preparing for, while many other countries aren't. The Chinese leadership isn't just massively increasing military spending year by year but also preparing the economy and especially vital industries like agriculture to be more independent and resilient. One could say it's a precautionary measure, in case war were declared.
My guess is democratic nations meanwhile are going to drag their feet and deny the changes right in front of their eyes. This happened with Russia and it doesn't seem like most have learned their lesson from it. Especially certain European nations.
This is a big part of the reason they want to invade Taiwan. Taiwan is strategically located to make it a liability to PRC shipping, should neighboring powers / America ever decide to blockade the PRC. If the PRC takes Taiwan, they gain more breathing room to act aggressively against their other neighbors too.
They would have plenty of land to be self-sufficient if their population was a bit smaller... Lots of countries outgrew their own land due to efficiency gains from globalism (India and Japan also come to mind).
