Regarding the luxury goods import, for the certain groups of people, you cannot wish away their desire for the prestige associated with some brands. The demands for luxury goods like Gucci bags exist whether you, and others including myself, like it or not.
But If you try to suppress the demands with trade barriers or even bans, you will create opportunities for smuggling. Will it be worth it? Depends. Right now, I think China wants to keep the jobs for the manufacturing of the luxury goods, and to use the import of luxury goods to balance the trades to some degree.
Of course, China needs to and has been developing our own luxury brands. It's just fighting against a matter of long engrained recognition and white worship from a dead era of Western domination that makes Chinese people think that Western cars/bags/coats are better or better represent status. Peng Liyuan is taking a lead in representing Chinese fashion and I think that's the direction for the future. There is absolutely no reason to send absurd amounts of money to France or Italy (other nations as well) for fashion or cars that China can make better. There's absolutely no reason to give these nations any recognition.
it's because fundamentally, nobody is going to allow you to have market access if you don't buy anything from them. If you look at everything from a self centered point of view, then you are going to not succeed in what you want to do.
If your goal is to deprive "your enemies", then you will have no market. And Chinese producers need overseas market to not only make money but also to improve their own product. In order to have market access elsewhere, you need to pay attention to other countries complaints in terms of their market access and currency weakness and such.
That's all I got to say.
In the short term, as China is transitioning into dominance, you are correct in that the global spread to the wealthy economies of Chinese high tech products aids in that transition. However, at some point, China needs to leave behind the idea that we want them to use our products; rather, it is the West that wants and needs to use Chinese products. When they are unwilling to export any tech we want but only want to push redundant tech on us that compete in China with what we already have, we need to realize that they are offering nothing, nothing good, and we are giving them the best. We are giving them things they cannot make at a price that elevates their lifestyles beyond what they can make and beyond what they deserve.
We are fast approaching a future where if we continue trade with the West, we are essentially trading them all the things they need for their lifestyles but cannot make or cannot efficienty make at the best prices in the world and all we are getting back is either things that can be sourced from anywhere in the world (sometimes including in China) or things with inflated value due to luxury branding. When we reach that point, and hopefully, by that time we will be completely dominant in all tech manufacturing, we need to make the decision of whether we want to keep up that type of trade, which exalts their status, preserves the power of their currency and finance control and upholds their first world quality of life, or if we want to pull out the rug from under them and transition ourselves to more internal consumption, less overwork for excess production, and trade with our partners in the global south. It will be a ground-shattering transition for us, but all the components for success are going to be there. For them, it will literally shatter the ground underneath their ivory towers and create a world where the West no longer represents modern high quality lifestyles of plenty but of technological and lifestyle modesty compared to the plenty seen in countries that trade as economic and political partners of China. For me, this is the ultimate long term goal, although making this move prematurely would be the worst mistake for China.
