Made in China was a ‘strategic mistake’ by the West
Washington and its allies ‘will probably struggle to compete with such a rising economic power’
Cock-a-hoop China continues to crow about its manufacturing might. In a major interview, Communist Party “insider” and academic Yao Yang described why “the West’s de-industrialization was a strategic mistake.”
The director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University also made it clear that “attempts to reverse this trend” will “fail” in a swipe at Washington and its allies.
“Such a trend is very hard to reverse. The time for developed countries to re-industrialize has, I’m afraid, passed forever,” he said in an interview translated and published by the Sinification Newsletter.
In a league of its own:
- A European think tank described China as “the world’s sole manufacturing superpower.”
- Its “production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined,” including the United States.
- But this would never have happened if “America’s biggest companies” had not “made China great again” by outsourcing manufacturing there.
[Manufacturing] amounts to a hollowed-out thing [in the US].
Yao Yang, director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking Universit
Delve deeper: “With China’s unstoppable economic rise, the United States will probably struggle to compete with such a rising power. The hollowing out of American industries is too severe,” Yao said.
Between the lines: “It amounts to a hollowed-out thing [in the US] competing with a real thing in China. The United States has made a strategic mistake,” he added.
Big picture: In 2021, The Atlantic illustrated the challenge facing Washington when it reported that “new technologies fall into a ‘valley of death’ between conventional R&D and commercialization.”
What that means: Funding simply dries up. But that has started to shift in the past three years after the Biden administration’s “radical shake-up of US industrial policies.”
China Factor comment: Academic Yao was right when he called “de-industrialization a strategic mistake.” But with trillions of dollars being pumped into green tech by major democracies that is about to change.