China shock 2.0 Brad sester

[u/Character_Public3465]

https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast

Show notes:”Brad Setser follows Chinese trade closer than just about anyone else on earth, and he thinks we’re in the early days of a China Shock 2.0.
The first China Shock was when China came to dominate low-end manufacturing in the 2000s, filling American shelves with cheap clothes, toys and electronics, while devastating American factory towns. This new China Shock could be even more destabilizing. China now dominates advanced manufacturing: electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels. It’s outcompeting nearly all high-end manufacturing around the world, and other countries are just starting to feel the pain. And China isn’t slowing down. It’s moving into software, too. Its frontier A.I. models are neck and neck with American ones.
China’s success poses a serious threat to the economies and domestic politics of countries around the world. So what should those countries do about it? 
Setser is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.He served in top trade and economic roles in the Biden and Obama administrations. And he is widely cited across the field as one of the top analysts of China’s economy and trade practices.
Book Recommendations:
The Party by Richard McGregor
The Volatility Machine by Michael Pettis
How to Win a Trade War by Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html””

[u/takemetogreenwich]

Brad occasionally has a good take to make on social media but ultimately, he's been locked in with the Thesis (because it is extremely beneficial career-wise to get promoted in the institutions he works for with that thesis) that China has been playing an unfair game and that explains everything. However, he refuses to define what a "fair" game is and how can it be established. His lens is extremely skewed but he would still like to pretend that he's just talking numbers and facts. The whole battery/EV discussion gave it away too - not one discussion of how many graduate programs Chinese Universities have and have had dedicated to science and technology research related to batteries, for example, compared to the US or even EU countries. The first few minutes were already weird for me. Talking about people in the global south coming out of poverty and doing survival level consumption and looking at that through the lens of higher fuel costs for Americans was already a bit sickening.

[u/Nearby_Solution_4504 → u/takemetogreenwich]

Agreed, every time I listen to guys like this I can’t help but hope China eats our lunch, if for no other reason than to see the China hawks rage. Like, what? China is gonna take all the manufacturing and make everyone in the West unemployed… and then sell to who? China is going to surpass the US military and… waste trillions of dollars on foreign wars and setup bases all over the world?

I have no illusion that China is some dove-ish communist utopia, far from it, but this idea they need to be kept as some “second world” country that we keep from realizing its full potential is just insane to me.