Something that at least I have literally wondered about for years. Is China our (i.e., the US’s) friend or foe?
You have to admit we have an unusual relation with China now. Richard Nixon opened up China to us in 1972. Here is a brief article on that event.
And they do make a lot of our products. I mean, during World War II, could you imagine Nazi Germany making all our goods and products.? Think about it.
So are they friend or foe? Or are they somewhere in between? 
I vote “somewhere in between”.
I believe that people fall into a trap with binary thinking (good/bad, friend/foe), and that we would do well to have very good definitions of all of the possible spots on the spectrum. (Lover → friend → partner → acquaintance → etc. → competitor → opposition → etc. → enemy). In the US we have seen what happens when we promote the idea that our opposition is our enemy.
So, I would put China closer to competitor (in some areas), and partner (in others).
For sure China is currently an adversary overall, but as I have said in other threads, it’s taken to a silly comic book level at times in the US. Because, at any time, there always has to be a primary villain, and right now China is that villian. So you literally only hear either negative news about China, or neutral stuff that is nonetheless given a negative spin.
Let me be clear I hate the Chinese government, and in just the last couple days more secrets of the Xinjiang training camps were leaked.
But in 8 years of living in China I was sometimes surprised by how little interest most people had in the US. And even on state media, there was far less talk about adversary nations than you would find on US TV. Most of the talk was what the country could do to progress. And most of it good, to be honest. Stuff you wouldn’t hear about on international news.
Foe. We have avoided bringing issues to a head, but China is too interested in Taiwan now, and we can’t let them have it.
That’s my understanding, but it comes from nowhere near as close to the issue as your understanding does.
China is complicated. Our relationship with them is complicated. On one hand, they’re our drug (ie, consumer goods) dealer so we have to measure any responses.
They also hold our mortgage, so there’s that.
Chinese Investment In The United States – BigAss PDF
On the other hand, they do some fairly repugnant shit (as do we, even if our repugnant shit is quantitively and qualitatively different).
In terms of ‘competition,’ though: we’re eating China’s dust as they play the long game, understand where the money and power will come from in the next generation or two, and then doing whatever it takes to exert control over those resources, markets, and countries:
China is playing a very long, very farsighted game of strategy while we watch the Kardshians and Johnny Depp/Amber Heard.
Agreed. I want to see liberal democracies and freedom of speech win out.
But right now a lot of the fundamentals don’t look good.
For example, Chinese society massively prizes education, and the government is making large improvements at every level.
The US…in fairness, still has many of the world’s best universities. But public schools are struggling, and American culture is right now about as anti-intellectual as it is possible to imagine. I know people like to cite Idiocracy, but right now many aspects of US culture are worse. At least in that movie there was an agreed objective reality.
This cuts both ways. In one sense, it’s obviously bad for us if they outcompete us. On the other hand, playing the long game means that they (presumably) aren’t interested in destabilizing modern civilization and staring a war / doing other evil shit, that will send everyone back to the Stone Age.
As pointed out, it is complicated.
Chinese historically don’t view others via a friend or foe lens? Rather real politic. And “the Chinese” as a whole do not buy into “win-win”. Their societal view is “you win, then I lose.”
@davndnrockies China is far from holding the US mortgage or at any kind of level that would imply leverage. Sure, maybe the Seattle property market might drop some if every Chinese citizens were to hold a fire sale. The math doesn’t work. Press used to say the same thing about Japan back in the 1980’s.
The Chinese Yuan is non convertible. And is far from being fiat money anywhere more than 100 miles of the border.
Economic adversary is an unequivocable yes. China has never come close to WTO obligations nor any kind of IP protection. I do believe the “world” collectively should be insist on equitable market access. And there should be serious consequences for both the State and the private industrial espionage that is taking place. Stopping Huawei on 5G is a step in the right direction. Huawei is the poster child for being a military company that got their start conterfieting switching equipment into Africa. Fun fact, even the hard hitters at Lehman Brothers, who were known for dealing with pretty much any pariah, refused to do business with Huawei over fear of being kidnapped.
China views Taiwan as being both in their “backyard” and “in the family.” Hmmm, not unlike Ukraine. Taiwan happens to be surrounded by water, and have been preparing to repel invaders from the mainland since the last time they were invaded in the 1940’s. Hopefully, the Ukrainian reception (and hong kong for that matter) is making Chinese leadership stop huffing on their own crackpipe that they would be welcomed with open arms.
Aside from private investment, I was making the point that mainland China is the second biggest foreign holder of US public debt:
It’s a non-trivial amount that further complicates the US-China relationship.
It is a trival amount. Loot at Statista data:
China is more than welcome to sell their trillion dollars. That is two days average trading of US treasuries. It is trivial and wouldn’t do more than a short term blip.
(I know a trillion dollars seems like a lot, but it’s not when you’re talking the size of the US and/or the US government.)
I don’t want to take this too far afield, and you may very well know all of this (while others may not), but I think this article summarizes the potential risks nicely:
Selloffs can cause cascading deleterious effects. There’s also speculation – quite difficult to confirm – that China may hold even more US debt through more opaque methods:
However, the US Treasury does warn that the data may not provide a “precise accounting of individual country ownership” of US Treasury securities, given that US securities can also be held in overseas custody accounts that may not be attributed to the actual owners. Market analysts have suspected for years that China uses securities firms in other countries to buy additional US debt.
Um. Take another look at your numbers there.
Good catch 
ETA: actually, it looks like a typo.
If 1 is staunch ally and 10 is staunch enemy, probably a 6 or 7.
I look forward to some aspects of China. I think they’ll (hopefully) contribute to science and solving global problems like climate change.
But they don’t respect human rights, they’re getting aggressive, Some of their behaviors are very short sighted.
For example I read an article recently that the covid lockdowns are causing a lot of educated young people to consider leaving or never having children. Both are terrible for China. Just like the one child policy had serious long term repercussions that they’re just starting to see, their authoritarianism is probably going to have serious long term repercussions too. Authoritarian dictatorships tend to drive away the most educated and most creative people.
Correcting typos - my bad. Easy to mix up millions, billions and trillions.
The South China Morning Post article does lay out that if China were successfully push down the global treasuries market, it would also weaken the dollar and result in less money flowing back to china from bond sales and more importantly from Chinese exports.
Furthermore, China likely would only liquidate in the event of something on the order of magnitude as war with Taiwan or the US. At which point, the global bond markets would not view this act of liquidating treasuries as a catalyst to sell off the global market for treasuries. Au contraire: there is one fiat currency, one deep bond market, and one safe haven country of magnitude in times of crisis. War with Taiwan isn’t going to make global bondholders rush to buy Japanese, Singaporean, Russian, English, Swiss or any other “safe haven” bonds. In fact, the likely outcome is a global flood of money into the US that would easily absorb less than 2 days worth of treasury turnover.
Looks like yet another self-interested strategic move by China, in another resource rich African nation:
I like this quote (because it agrees with what I said <grin>):
Nantulya has previously described China as playing the long game, saying in February: “Its presence is felt each time an African walks into any of those buildings. China is creating a portrait of itself as an enduring partner that remains present and stands in solidarity with African governments.”
Walk softly, and carry a big fat checkbook.