So it seems increasingly likely this COVID19 epidemic is going full pandemic at this point. Even though China was the first to get hit and the country to get hit the hardest by far, it appears China is on path for a good recovery, at least from the disease itself... Global supply chains and JIT inventory logistics etc are for sure very intricate with lots of codependencies. The longer they are surpressed the harder it would be to restart without sustaining substantial damage. An analogy would be the brain and its billion of neurons and synapses and connections etc, if it goes without oxygen for more than five minutes then it deteriorate to a point where it cannot be recovered as too many of the nuerons have died out and the countless connections are lost, never to be rebuilt again.
We know that there is a battle going on in terms of economic trade war, tariffs, sanctions, and in this East versus West geopolitical hegemony tug of war the US has been trying very hard to convinence its allies and partners to isolate China be it with the anti-Huawei 5G campaign it has waged against China or something else.
While in terms of COVID19, though China may be the first to recover, it appears many if not most of the smaller nations in Europe and the rest of Asia will be likewise affected (though not to the extent that China had to suffer) and would have to go through a similiar cycle or process themselves. If so, it would seem that at least for a period of time (maybe one or two quarters) there will be almost a total shutdown of global trade.
Another analogy is the saying that it is hard to reroute a flowing river, in that trying to carve a new path for a river that is already rushing with water is exponentially more difficult than waiting until the river has depleted most of its water and the flow has slowed to a tricke, then it becomes much easier to reroute or bypass. Once the economics and trade of the nations of the world recover one by one and slowly come back to life, wouldn't it be reasonable to presume that America will be waiting in the wings to recruit them and take advantage of this golden window of oppurtunity to rewrite the rules and reroute the global supply chain in favor of the Western bloc? These sorts of alliances are more easy to sway/change when the deeply rooted impediments (the economic dependencies of complex trade systems prior to COVID19 etc that had largely involved China at center) have been largely dissolved. For example say Italy totally gets ravaged by COVID19 and basically economically goes offline for a year, and wouldn't be in a position to deploy 5G with Huawei even if it wanted to, but by the time it comes back online and starts opening to the world again, America would have built its own 5G and this time around Italy would be made much easier to say No to China/Huawei and yes to the USA.
I don't see a good way for China to counter this strategy if this US were to employ such a strategy to contain China's peaceful rise and to influence its trading partners to switch sides... But no matter what, it is more important than ever before for China to seek ways to become truly self-sufficent, this is not to say China should close its door nor become isolationists again, but that it needs to be self-sufficent to the point that even if America managed to isolate China and convinence a good portion of the world to bypass China that China could still survive and thrive. With over 4 times the population of the United States, if China was to refocus and shift its priorities on internal development of its own internal consumerism instead of giving free things to the US in exchange for fiat petrodollars etc then it would set a model for the rest of the world that has suffered US sanctions to switch to the Chinese side as an alternative geopolitical ecosystem... then at least China can still enjoy some of the economics of scale that comes with first being self sufficent but then secondly exporting that sufficiency to the rest of the world whom wants the China alternative to an increasingly hostile America hegemony...
Many have said that it was China whom saved the US during the 2008 great recession crisis, of course China did it for its own reasons to be able to have a market to sell to, but surely both sides have realized by now that decoupling is inevitable and its bound to happen at some point sooner rather than later, and if that is the case, and if 2020 ends up being another 2008, I see China fighting for its own survival this time around and won't come to the rescue to prop up America again.
We know that there is a battle going on in terms of economic trade war, tariffs, sanctions, and in this East versus West geopolitical hegemony tug of war the US has been trying very hard to convinence its allies and partners to isolate China be it with the anti-Huawei 5G campaign it has waged against China or something else.
While in terms of COVID19, though China may be the first to recover, it appears many if not most of the smaller nations in Europe and the rest of Asia will be likewise affected (though not to the extent that China had to suffer) and would have to go through a similiar cycle or process themselves. If so, it would seem that at least for a period of time (maybe one or two quarters) there will be almost a total shutdown of global trade.
Another analogy is the saying that it is hard to reroute a flowing river, in that trying to carve a new path for a river that is already rushing with water is exponentially more difficult than waiting until the river has depleted most of its water and the flow has slowed to a tricke, then it becomes much easier to reroute or bypass. Once the economics and trade of the nations of the world recover one by one and slowly come back to life, wouldn't it be reasonable to presume that America will be waiting in the wings to recruit them and take advantage of this golden window of oppurtunity to rewrite the rules and reroute the global supply chain in favor of the Western bloc? These sorts of alliances are more easy to sway/change when the deeply rooted impediments (the economic dependencies of complex trade systems prior to COVID19 etc that had largely involved China at center) have been largely dissolved. For example say Italy totally gets ravaged by COVID19 and basically economically goes offline for a year, and wouldn't be in a position to deploy 5G with Huawei even if it wanted to, but by the time it comes back online and starts opening to the world again, America would have built its own 5G and this time around Italy would be made much easier to say No to China/Huawei and yes to the USA.
I don't see a good way for China to counter this strategy if this US were to employ such a strategy to contain China's peaceful rise and to influence its trading partners to switch sides... But no matter what, it is more important than ever before for China to seek ways to become truly self-sufficent, this is not to say China should close its door nor become isolationists again, but that it needs to be self-sufficent to the point that even if America managed to isolate China and convinence a good portion of the world to bypass China that China could still survive and thrive. With over 4 times the population of the United States, if China was to refocus and shift its priorities on internal development of its own internal consumerism instead of giving free things to the US in exchange for fiat petrodollars etc then it would set a model for the rest of the world that has suffered US sanctions to switch to the Chinese side as an alternative geopolitical ecosystem... then at least China can still enjoy some of the economics of scale that comes with first being self sufficent but then secondly exporting that sufficiency to the rest of the world whom wants the China alternative to an increasingly hostile America hegemony...
Many have said that it was China whom saved the US during the 2008 great recession crisis, of course China did it for its own reasons to be able to have a market to sell to, but surely both sides have realized by now that decoupling is inevitable and its bound to happen at some point sooner rather than later, and if that is the case, and if 2020 ends up being another 2008, I see China fighting for its own survival this time around and won't come to the rescue to prop up America again.
