https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/elon-musk-china-and-the-b…
Dual circulation meant fostering a domestic productive apparatus that is independent of foreign technology and finance, while making sure the rest of the world is dependent on Chinese control of key supply chains, whether it’s shipping, railroad construction, electric batteries, or solar panels. Chinese ‘grand economic strategy,’ in other words, is to operate as a giant monopoly on which the rest of the world must rely.
Of course, the strategy isn’t just economic. The Chinese leadership believes they will be able to demoralize and defeat the U.S. without firing a shot, but they are also preparing to defeat the U.S. violently, building up a massive blue water navy and a military apparatus to rival America’s.
The Chinese government is explicit about its goals, and has been for decades. But largely, it is Western financiers and monopolists who have helped China undermine liberal democracy, both in the U.S. and in Europe. American strategists, arrogant after the end of the Cold War, frittered away our national strength by moving the U.S. towards a low production economy dominated by finance and branding. China served as the willing manufacturing center for all the factories we chose to offshore.
Corporation CEOs have sold out to China for higher profits via low wage environment. But their manufacturing productions are located in an authoritarian country.
Periodically, the Chinese bureaucracy reminds powerful entities within China, and that includes corporate America, who is in charge. Tesla, as many others have, was thus forced to engage in a self-confession, turning on its belly to demonstrate subservience to the Chinese, a far cry from Musk’s routine attacks on American regulators and policymakers as bastards and fascists.
What if corporate groveling is not sufficient? What happens if China nationalizes these foreign owned production center?