I think this is a bit of an exaggeration really. I think China can be self-sufficient in terms of food production if they devote the resources to do it. There are plenty of techniques to grow food in arid soils which China has plenty of. Also given cheap enough energy it is possible to use vertical farming as is done in Japan. The Chinese state has also been promoting further consumption of potatoes in the North, which have much more productivity per area than wheat.
Streams and water can be diverted and even without diverting them crops like Sorghum and Corn grow with little water if all you want is to feed cattle.
I think what China does have is major issues with pollution and quality control. Those can be solved with technology and the technology is also multiple use. For example quite often you can filter the water and use the residue as fertilizer after it has been sterilized.
I have often heard that Chinese have had issues adapting their taste to these new ingredients, but Singapore does fine with them and there are a lot of people of Chinese descent in there. The problem is as easy to fix as to have TV shows which show people how to cook with those ingredients. Or to give away free recipes when you sell the produce. Little things like that.
Besides that, China has found itself other agricultural sources like South America. To a large degree the USA is self-sufficient in terms of the basic produce, they only import beef for the most part from those regions AFAIK. Brazil has complained time and time again to the WTO about US tariffs on cane sugar for example. Then there is Russia and Australia which have vast unused areas of land and which are open to foreign investment in there. The Chinese are already entering these places.
I think given recent Chinese semiconductor investments their military will be basically self-sufficient and have leading edge electronics over the next 5 years.
This is something which should give everyone some pause. While sanctions will keep China behind in process technology, military weapons typically do not use the latest process technology in the USA, they never did because of the gestation time of the military programs and the need for long term support of a product. With regards to the consumer market, other than 5G technology, which is infested with patents, the Chinese have the ability to build much of the technology with their own industries. Where they lack is in the memory and storage sectors. But they have plenty of CPU design expertise as is shown in the supercomputer projects and even in the commercial industry with native smartphone chip designs.
I think it is naive of the current US government to assume that China will not surpass their own GDP even with tariffs given the disparity in population that both countries have. Even when Japan's economy stalled it only did so when it reached the same levels of GDP/capita as the USA. There is plenty of infrastructure investment which still needs to be done in China and the economy will continue to grow over the next decade in my opinion. Much of the citywide coal usage will need to be replaced with nuclear power, natural gas, and renewables. This means not only power plants but also electric and power transmission grid investment.
Also China has been preparing for these sanctions for years now. They have done bilateral deals with several countries to exchange their currencies for the Yuan without using the Dollar as an intermediate currency for example and the US sanctions will only accelerate this process. Also, unlike the EU, China is one nation, they will have a unified and necessarily large military force. Regardless of what the USA wants or not.
Streams and water can be diverted and even without diverting them crops like Sorghum and Corn grow with little water if all you want is to feed cattle.
I think what China does have is major issues with pollution and quality control. Those can be solved with technology and the technology is also multiple use. For example quite often you can filter the water and use the residue as fertilizer after it has been sterilized.
I have often heard that Chinese have had issues adapting their taste to these new ingredients, but Singapore does fine with them and there are a lot of people of Chinese descent in there. The problem is as easy to fix as to have TV shows which show people how to cook with those ingredients. Or to give away free recipes when you sell the produce. Little things like that.
Besides that, China has found itself other agricultural sources like South America. To a large degree the USA is self-sufficient in terms of the basic produce, they only import beef for the most part from those regions AFAIK. Brazil has complained time and time again to the WTO about US tariffs on cane sugar for example. Then there is Russia and Australia which have vast unused areas of land and which are open to foreign investment in there. The Chinese are already entering these places.
I think given recent Chinese semiconductor investments their military will be basically self-sufficient and have leading edge electronics over the next 5 years.
This is something which should give everyone some pause. While sanctions will keep China behind in process technology, military weapons typically do not use the latest process technology in the USA, they never did because of the gestation time of the military programs and the need for long term support of a product. With regards to the consumer market, other than 5G technology, which is infested with patents, the Chinese have the ability to build much of the technology with their own industries. Where they lack is in the memory and storage sectors. But they have plenty of CPU design expertise as is shown in the supercomputer projects and even in the commercial industry with native smartphone chip designs.
I think it is naive of the current US government to assume that China will not surpass their own GDP even with tariffs given the disparity in population that both countries have. Even when Japan's economy stalled it only did so when it reached the same levels of GDP/capita as the USA. There is plenty of infrastructure investment which still needs to be done in China and the economy will continue to grow over the next decade in my opinion. Much of the citywide coal usage will need to be replaced with nuclear power, natural gas, and renewables. This means not only power plants but also electric and power transmission grid investment.
Also China has been preparing for these sanctions for years now. They have done bilateral deals with several countries to exchange their currencies for the Yuan without using the Dollar as an intermediate currency for example and the US sanctions will only accelerate this process. Also, unlike the EU, China is one nation, they will have a unified and necessarily large military force. Regardless of what the USA wants or not.
