Could the West survive without China?

It looks like we’re rapidly approaching a situation where China will actively support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I would have thought that economic sanctions against Russia would be reasonably effective in the short term – after all, we could survive without Russian gas, it would just get stupidly expensive – but could a similar policy be applied to China?

How reliant is China on Western exports? Would the threat alone be sufficient?

We’d all have to ride Orange 5’s

I like Orange bikes.

How reliant is China on Western exports?

I’d go with ‘entirely’.

How reliant is China on Western exports?

Are you suggesting we cut off their supply of Louis Vuitton luggage? Could work.

I’m no economist, but I think your question may be a bit one-sided. Could China survive without the West? The relationship is deeply symbiotic IMO.

I think a better question might be “how long can they survive without each other?”

Back in the 1980s, the West survived just fine without cheap Chinese goods. We could survive again, but it would require building a whole lot of factories somewhere else so things would get more expensive and it would take years to make the adjustment.

It would be very disruptive for the entire developed world, and very dangerous to the world economy.

China is very coy about it’s economics, a lot of people will tell you they’re hugely cash-rich and they own a lot of the worlds debt, but it’s not really the case. They’ve paid for their huge economic expansion with debt and they have more as a % of their GDP than even the US, worse still – their household and personal debt level dwarf even the US. Economic sanctions from the West could cause what many people expect to be an inevitable Chinese Great Depression, Chinese consumers, like American consumers a century ago will realise that they can’t keep borrowing forever and it could all come crashing down.

Not that it would be great for us either, the West survives on a diet of cheap imported good from the East and it would take a long time for European and US manufacturers to make up the shortfall.

If Russia invades the Ukraine and China Taiwan, I’m not sure the West will want to really do much about it.

China has to feed its manufacturing industry with raw materials many of which it can’t produce itself – without these its major industry starves and they know it.
Which is why they’re trying to protect the S China sea (as it’s a major import route) and expand into other countries by using their [borrowed] money and workforce.

Russia has an economic link with China which is helping them keep their head above water.

From. A tech point of view, we’d be boned, cars, watches, washing machines, street lights,aeroplanes, games consoles, smart speakers, surgical robots, tvs, street lights, defibrillators, PCR machines , not to mention phones, computers, communications, the Internet …

All dependant on Chinese manufacturing, yes its a 2 way relationship, but so much of our lives is built around tech we mostly get from china we’d be fked

but so much of our lives is built around tech we mostly get from China we’d be fked

Spot on.

A lot of key rare earth metals are currently only available in Chinese territory. And we import a chunk of Chinese steel, probably to build the Orange 5s 😉

Cotton from China would be almost impossible to replace in a medium term too.

The Chinese haven’t just made us reliant on their cheap plastic toys.

I’d say no…

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040115/reasons-why-china-buys-us-treasury-bonds.asp#:~:text=China%20has%20steadily%20accumulated%20U.S.,other%20foreign%20country%20except%20Japan.

Could the West survive without China?

Well I for one don’t want to be drinking out of metal mugs and eating off those awful Pyrex glass plates

I guess it would come down to whos population starved first.
China is walking a tightrope with smoke and mirrors being a tactic.
The west is walking on the curbstones slightly more room but equally iffy ground.
Australia has the keys to kingdom Coal ironore and food all going east. You would hope western companys have a plan B if china puts more pressure on the china seas. I bet they don’t Honda and Toyotas stockpile of chips has ran out and is effecting production.
More interesting is Russia and how they have become china’s second rate cousins political poodles in a short space of time

Well I for one don’t want to be drinking out of metal mugs and eating off those awful Pyrex glass plates

👌

Back in the 1980s, the West survived just fine without cheap Chinese goods. We could survive again

Not sure about that, we’ve since sold our jerseys.

China isn’t reliant on the West at all. They have enough internal space, resources, people to just get on with it, especially with Russia to aid them in terms of oil and gas.

We need china more than they need us. We need their natural resource, we also need their labour and production capabilities. It also doesn’t hurt to have access to a market with 1.2bn people…

China isn’t reliant on the West at all.

According to Wiki, China had exports of £3.36 TRILLION in 2021.

With the following breakdown: European Union 17.2% United States 16.7% ASEAN 12.83% Hong Kong 12.16% Japan 5.91% South Korea 4.37% India 5.08% Russia 2.64% Others 23.33%

I think “not reliant at all” may be a reach.

But what this really shows is why China’s bad behaviour is tolerated and why it WON’T end up in the situation suggested by the OP.

The Chinese haven’t just made us reliant on their cheap plastic toys.

I don’t think they *made* us be anything. We’re just a greedy entitled bunch of consumerists who want stuff cheap and quick and fashionably obsolescent. How’s that going to work? I know! – Let’s buy it in cheaply from virtual slave/child-labour factories/communist regimes?’. The rest was history. A good deal of us rely on big markups to fund such lifestyles. I think that we became a nation of resellers because we could, not because we were forced. Remember all the annoying hippies and greenies who used to go on about unethical sourcing back in the 80s/90s?

Annoying hippies.

China isn’t reliant on the West at all. They have enough internal space, resources, people to just get on with it

I disagree – their entire economy is based on manufacturing goods the vast majority of which are exported to the West. If we don’t buy their stuff then they don’t make it – which will lead to massive unemployment and civil unrest on a massive scale.

They also barely have enough water (the source of which they don’t control yet as it’s in the hands of Tibet) which can, and has, lead to massive food shortages in the past.
Water is a massive issue.

Ft article on china and it’s Australia relationship from today https://www.ft.com/content/fcb3590b-e468-4b88-9fba-217f54bd49d8

I don’t think they *made* us be anything.

Agreed. But they have made us far too used to paying low prices that don’t reflect the true cost of the products we buy.

Returning to local, fair labor sourcing would make us revaluate many of our consumer choices very quickly!

China now has its own tech industry, its own banks, social networks, industrial production, military providers and oil and gas partners. Its average wage has trebled in 10 years, its domestic economy has quadrupled and it is leaning more and more toward its domestic market with each passing year, slowly divesting itself of US stocks and bonds and delisting it’s own tech from foreign stock exchanges.

Would China suffer if it immediately severed ties with the West? Sure, to the tune of around 30% of its exports, but would it find other markets? Quite possibly. But you can guarantee that if China stopped exporting, it would damn well stop importing too, which would mean they’d turn all of that manufacturing resource, currently targeted to export production to domestic production. It would then subsidise that production to aid export of domestic products to other potential markets, just like it has done with the new Silk Road and with Africa.

With Russia in their pocket, China are sitting very very pretty.