I'm arguing that the United States is more critical to global manufacturing, and that China's manufacturing sector is easier to replace if it goes under. The "hub" of a wheel is the part at the center, around which everything else revolves. China has overtaken us in some areas, as you have pointed out, but the global economy still revolves around American industry and innovation.
Manufacturing is defined as 'the making of articles on a large scale using industrial production'. China makes things on a larger scale than any other country - as explained before, they account for 28% of global manufacturing, vastly more than the US at 18%. Ergo, they are the world's largest manufacturing country. By a large margin. It's not even up for debate. You can try and redefine 'manufacturing' or 'hub' to fit some convoluted definition that fits what you want to believe, but the simple fact is that, right now, China makes more stuff than America. By a wide margin. Could that change? Sure. It's changed many times throughout history. Once England was the world's dominant manufacturer. But we are not talking about what COULD happen. China is called the World's Factory for a good reason.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/102214/why-china-worlds-factory.asp"Industrial production does not take place in isolation, but rather relies on networks of suppliers, component manufacturers, distributors, government agencies, and customers who are all involved in the process of production through competition and cooperation. The business ecosystem in China has evolved quite a lot in the last 30 years.
For example, Shenzhen, a city bordering Hong Kong in the southeast, has evolved as a hub for the electronics industry. It has cultivated an ecosystem to support the manufacturing supply chain, including component manufacturers, low-cost workers, a technical workforce, assembly suppliers, and customers."
This is why China is referred to as a hub. Not only does it literally make the most stuff, but it sucks in vast amounts of raw materials and components and spits out finished goods. This isn't up for debate. Where those goods often designed somewhere else? Yes. But we are referring to manufacturing here, not design.
China is "stable"? You do realize that the Hong Kong protests are still going on, right? When China siezed a bunch of upscale condos to house Covid-19 patients, the locals burned them all to the ground. Meanwhile, they've thrown millions of Uighers into concentration camps in the west and have been harvesting organs from political prisoners for years.
Joe, I live in Shanghai. China is a very stable country by world standards, and it has a tight control over its population. Good or bad, this is what business wants. A few random anecdotes are meaningless. How was it able to stamp Covid out so quickly? It forced everyone to stay at home and rigorously tracked everyone that had contact with carriers. That's the kind fo stability businesses want. There are peripheral protests against Chinese rule in places like HK (a very separate entity to mainland China, by the way) but the areas that do the bulk of the manufacturing (Dongguan, Guangdong, Hubei) are very stable. I mean, we have armed protesters camping in state capitols and a few years ago riots convulsing US cities when African Americans were killed by police.
As for the infrastructure, have you looked at the building standards that Chinese construction firms follow? Back in March, a hospital collapsed, killing almost everyone inside. The reason? The structural integrity was so weak that it couldn't hold all of the people. This is hardly an isolated case. Does China build a lot of things? Yes, but most of them are death traps.
Anecdotal cases. Claiming that most of what China builds are death traps is ridiculous hyperbole. Is an Iphone a death trap? Your TV? Because dollars to donuts they were made in China.
China's position in the global supply chains is changing, largely due to the coronapocalypse. If the 90s was an era of globalization, the 20s is an era of deglobalization. Except for a few deposits of rare-earth metals, it won't be difficult to cut them out or go around them. China is functionally an island, cut off on the east by an ocean, the south by jungles and mountains, the west by deserts and mountains, and the north by tundra and permafrost.
It may change. But that is beside the point. We are talking about NOW and RIGHT NOW China is the world's factory and the largest manufacturer by a large margin. Also, China is not an island. That's a ridiculous assertion. China is at the center of Asia - and Asia, by itself, has a bigger GDP than the rest of the world combined.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/asia-economic-growth/China borders vibrant or rich economies like Japan, SK, Indonesia, India, the ASEAN countries, Singapore, Australia. If anything, America is more like an island, hemmed by two oceans and only bordering a sparsely populated Canada and Mexico.
China has been fighting a trade war with the United States for the past 40 years, and it's only because of Trump that we've begun to fight back. In a very large degree, we have appeased the Chinese communists by turning a blind eye to their atrocities and subsidizing their bad behavior through our misguided trade policies. All of that is now coming to an end.
In this, I agree with you. I disagree with literally every other thing Trump has done, but I do agree with his trade-war with China, and trying to shift global manufacturing away from China, a country with a regime that is an existential challenge to democracy worldwide.
