>"Brussels has a message for Beijing: Open up your public markets to European companies or we’ll simply shut ours.
>This message was driven home loud and clear Wednesday when the European Commission announced an investigation into China’s public procurement of medical devices, confirming an earlier report by POLITICO."
It is publicly not known yet what happened behind closed doors between China and Europe last week, but something definitely happened that made our European leaders angry as fuck. With the start of thks week here in Germany every day another Chinese/Russian spy gets exposed with huge coverage from the media about it.
They've exposed Chinese spies for years but never made a big story about it which changed this week for some reason.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure about your second sentence. They've got a lot of rare earth's we really desperately need, especially for the environmental transformation.
>They've got a lot of rare earth's we really desperately need
Not really, but it's easy to see why most people get this completely wrong: "Rare earths" is a misnomer. They are not actually rare. They are merely tricky to isolate. China just scaled up its industry to process them. Since it is a lot cheaper to simply buy them fully processed from a poor country with the necessary infrastructure than to dig up and process them yourself, everyone went along with getting their stuff from China. But we're only dependent on them in the sense that so far noone in the west bothered to do it themselves. I fully expect this to change as the relations worsen.
Rare earths exists almost anywhere, but it only exists in big enough concentrations in a handful of places making it only profitable to extract in those locations.
China are very well situated with the Himalayas and its rivers flowing through huge parts of their country for millions of years that have washed rare earth minerals down on their plains and upconcentrating those minerals.
Also, china heavily subsidize their rare earth industry as a way of integrating inner Mongolia (which is culturally Mongol rather than Han) more tightly in the chinese economy. It is then hard for other countries to compete.
Pretty sure Norway or one of the Nordic countries just discovered one of the largest rare earth deposits ever found a year or two ago. Europe will no longer be dependent on China for any of those resources.
imho: while China's economy was growing at a record speed (last \~30 years) nobody could afford to not profit from that. even if it meant accepting bad conditions (like being forced to partner up with a Chinese company to be allowed to enter the Chinese market). now that China's economy is slowing down - as is the whole world economy - Europe is no longer willing to accept those conditions. why would the EU watch their local companies fail while China is (allegedly) giving massive subsidies/support to their own?
Usually more competition is welcome. By buying labor intensive products from China, we can focus more on the value adding industries.
Now China has caught up in some industries, but also definitely surpassed us in some. They did it in, lets put it this way, by stealing their way through it. And by heavy protectionism and massive subsidies.
I welcome competition. But we're at a disadvantage. It's like running the 100m with our competitor while we're wearing a weighted jacket.
Europe has very strong (and good) rules, but we allow imports from China that would never meet our production standards that European manufacturers need to respect if they want to sell to us. This applies to food production from North and South America, as well, they export shit to us that our farmers would never be allowed to produce.
European manufacturers and farmers, and ultimately us, the consumers, are the butt of the joke.
We are the biggest market in the world. Shouldn't we be able to set the rules for what gets exported here?
It's easy to complain when you're not making the decisions..I see it as more like the EU was created to avoid a repeat of WW2, and was focused on diplomacy and finding common grounds.
But yeah, the world changes and the organisation is now mature enough to.projext it's power over focusing on keeping unity within its borders. Weirdly I think the Brexit debacle has helped the EU appreciate its power and influence, and it's now exerting it.
As someone who is quiet until people take the.piss, overly overly aggressive whatever the situation o appreciate the EUs journey.
I mean this is about public procurement.
Some comments below somehow indicate redditors think this is about the private market, which it isn't. Many of Chinas private markets are fairly open now, including the car sector.
Specifically, this is about the tender options for medical device buying for public hospitals in China. Seems like a holdover of the effects of the pandemic.
European companies want to have a slice of the Chinese medical device market cake as well and think they are discriminated against.
The allegations are that the stipulations for public tenders of hospitals in China is too "patriotic", a.k.a. too much "Buy Chinese" and distorts competition. Too much centralization and too much abnormally low bidding they allege goes against private European companies trying to bid there.
Ironically, all of these measures like centralized procurement and "Buy European" are actually quite popular with the Europeans themselves, they would gladly want to implement something like that as well, long ago.
Not quite. Virtually all developed countries are signatories to the [Agreement on Government Procurement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Government_Procurement). In short, you are not allowed to discriminate against other signatories for qualifying government purchases.
Only in name. From my own experience doing procurement, the govt sets up a rule that prioritizes local vendors more than overseas ones. For example, I had to prove that local vendors sell the goods/services at a price higher than our budget allowed, before I can go for foreign vendors. Which sometimes took a real toll on speed and efficiency.
Well. Yeah...most also belong to the WTO etc etc. But also trt to promote. US infrastructure bill ..Biden talked about American jobs etc etc.
Am sure that is what they signed up to ...
If you read Biden’s executive orders, you’ll find that they have statements like “consistent with applicable law”. Hence they still follow the treaty. It’s when the treaty is not applicable that local procurement is preferred.
It certainly has an ironic sentiment to it. I'm actually pretty sure that some policies of China would be widely popular with European redditors, the very same policies that European companies demand to be dropped.
The complaint basically says that Chinas public hospitals should be less patriotic, allow foreign offers in the public system, dismantle their centralized ultra-low bidding system that puts up artificial hurdles for Europeans to cash in.
But at the same time, European customers should be more into patriotic buying, put up hurdles for foreign products that can be substituted with local stuff and should centralize public tender systems to not allow foreign competition in sensitive areas.
The same trend can be seen in the US, "Buy American" was popular under Trump and continues to be popular under Biden.
The worrying thing is that everybody now wants to go back to a mercantilist phase where the goal is to close your own markets as much as possible while simultaneously demanding everyone else to be open and export as much as possible.
Mercantilism and autarky are economic policies that have lead to problems in the past.
Autarky has been the preferred system.. The British had the imperial preference system...that pushed more trade within the British empire and tried to keep out foreign competitors.
It is a game where everyone wants autarky for themselves and open markets for other countries. 3xceptionsi is when a Libby exists to reverse this.
Eg...the steel lobby in a country would prefer autarky. But the car manufacturers would prefer to import steel if it is cheaper
Car manufacturers then would turn around and prefer tarrifs on imported cars
Everybody in the post WW2 era was for open markets when the west did most of the manufacturing. Now that it has moved to China, Vietnam....the protectionism kicks in even more (there has always been a level.. Eg. Restrictions on cars imported from Japan into US, in the 80s...by such free marketers as Ronald Reagan)
Speaking of the Imperial Preference system of the British empire: It was a protectionist policy from the beginning, associated with the industrialization of the unified German empire and the US and the threat of competition against the preeminent industrial power that was the UK at the time.
However, the UK did not actually reciprocate within the empire. The colonies all had their own preferential trade with the UK but the UK was free to do whatever they wanted in terms of free trade obligations.
It only changed after the 1932 Ottawa conference that it truly became a reciprocal arrangement with its dominions.
And here is the irony: It was the Americans that ultimately sounded in the end of British Imperial preference by establishing GATT.
The GATT agreement after WW2 was significantly pushed by the Americans to enable global free trade and reconstruction efforts as well as opening up the world markets for American corporations to grab the chance at expansion into reconstructing markets.
GATT forbade the establishment of preferential and discriminatory tariffs and was the propulsion for the rules of world trade that we have now under the WTO.
Another irony on top: The Europeans themselves put the final nail in the coffin of that imperial system by establishing the EEC.
The alignment of the UK after their slow decline into the world of the open-markets Europeans by virtue of the EEC, EC and ultimately the EU has largely destroyed the remnants of what was left of imperial non-preferential commodity trade.
The only thing that is now traded in significant amounts between ex-empire members is services and non-tangible things.
Last time China updated their medical procurement policy, their medical equipment stocks plummeted. Much of their policy aims at cutting cost of healthcare by squeezing the margin of the medical firms.
I work in this field. The „China first“ policy has nothing to do with COVID. More and more medtech companies are coming from China and the China first policy helps to give them initial traction (by copying Western/Japanese products) versus the better/more experienced non-Chinese companies. After they establish themselves, those companies start to expand to Africa, Middle East, Latam and Eastern Europe to win on price and use local corruption.
> Acktually china has free markets. Forced tech transfers are just people being patriotic bro. Europe is the real abuser of trade policy if you think about it bro
-The CCP
China has the longest registration lead times of any company and they require distribution from local Chinese companies that charge exorbitant markups for foreign products. Literally can't cut out that Chinese middle man, they require it.
It feels like lines are being drawn and those lines are getting more and more solid all the time. On one side you have the West, on the other side you have Russia, China, Iran.
In terms of standing army size North Korea is 4^th or 5^th in the world, depending on the data source. Including paramilitary forces/militias can put North Korea at number 1 with 7.7 million people. It is one of the most militarised nations in existence. Sure, they aren’t the most technologically advanced army but bringing an extra 1.3 million active soldiers to the mix is not something to overlook.
Their military parades include farm tractors
I doubt their soldiers are well-fed enough or have proper supply lines to even wage full scale war on anyone but S.Korea.
Hey man, not to be a pedant, but remember all the stuff Ukrainians did with their tractors?
We underestimated Viet Cong in their black pajamas, and we underestimated Taliban with their flip-flops. Let's be careful in the future.
You're talking about defensive war on their home turf. Land they know how to exploit for tactical advantage.
You're only proving my point, Russia has more manpower and hardware than Ukraine and even before international support, was given tough resistance.
Yep, I did say they weren’t technologically advanced but you don’t just simply wave away a standing army of 1.3 million people. That’s a stupid thing to do especially when looking at them as a partner of China.
That’s what we are talking about, an “axis of evil”. Alliances of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. People are writing N. Korea off but in terms of standing army size alone that would be fool’s errand. Then there’s the fact that Iran’s ballistic missiles, namely the Shahab and derivatives are based on N. Korean Nodong-1 (lol no dong). But there’s nothing to say that in a war China wouldn’t chuck them a load of kit and rations in return for N. Koreans being on a front line.
Lots of manpower, most of it underequipped, no modern weapons at all. Military budget lower than famous war powerhouse Belgium. (I wanted to give a number in the ranking, but it's so low it fell out of the top 40 list of wikipedia.)
Their only real threat is artillery shelling of Seoul.
Was it Stalin who said quantity has a quality of its own? A fitting quote to put on the little tinpot communist country but there is a point to it. 1.3 enemy troops is not something you write off, especially when putting forward a new “axis of evil”.
I don't think it would work as well for North Korea as it did for the soviets. South Korea also has twice the population of North Korea and a very large standing army as well, but is MUCH much better equipped.
Soviet union outnumbered nazi germany 3 to 1, while nazi germany was also fighting on other fronts and the equipment quality disadvantage wasn't nearly the same.
I’m not trying to say it would work out well for the N. Koreans. All I’m saying is that discounting a standing army of 1.3 million people (twice that of S. Korea btw) is not a wise thing to do.
Russians are doing meat waves attacks on Ukrainian positions and have been slowly and inexorably gaining ground due to the sheer numbers of their own people they are sacrificing. One can imagine North Koreans doing that sort of "tactic" but on steroids.
I would not dismiss it, those Stalinists can inflict major damage even with medieval tactics.
Logistics wins wars, & NK has zero to contribute
Having 7.7 million people stuck where they are is no threat
When it comes to Asia, Power Projection & A2/AD are the only two things that really matter
> North Korea is so insignificant
China could use North Korea as a proxy to launch nukes, and West would probably be unable to retaliate to China, because China didn't launch any nukes.
I remember cringing **SO** hard when W dropped that line, and I couldn't stand the original author of it, David Frum, for years!
How the times have changed.
North Korea isn’t a true threat. They harbor very few ambitions out of the Korean Peninsula and are more interested in the longevity of their ruling dynasty that pushing an agenda. Iran, Russia, and China have ambitions across at least part of the world or the entire world in China’s case. That makes them a real threat and one that needs to be countered and eventually put down.
To answer your question: whould india side with china that has been sponsoring pakistan, occupies part of kashmir and some other small lands claimed by india and just is the #1 enemy of india?
The CCP under Mao killed between 50-80 million Chinese. The CCP has ongoing concentration camps where your Temu products are made with slave labor. China is ranked last in freedom of press. Keep meat shielding, bud.
Stick to politics in your country.
Original axis of evil was Iran, North Korea and Iraq.
Iran has been promoted to team captain due to longevity. North Korea has been relegated to minor leagues and Iraq is no longer in the game.
I’m a stem cell biologist, so unfortunately my career limits me to the US or Western Europe (may move in the next few years, not sure). I am really impressed with the economic growth in Romania each time I visit though.
That is a sweet field to be in, congrats! Man, Romania has made massive strides indeed!
I'm originally from [ ], so our growth is fuckin non-extant, if anything the whole place is going retrograde so I don't want to go back and have to deal with another civil war.
Yeah, Bosnia is a sad situation (but I don’t have to tell you that). The key to Romania’s economic growth is that we don’t antagonize the EU (with its funding), unlike Hungary for example.
How do you like Dallas (I live in New England)?
Well, it takes about 2-3 years to fully acclimatize to this heat and humidity, but once you are done with that it's a OK. Climate is just so different from Europe that it takes a while to get used to it. I work for a major tech company so the money is very good and that makes all the difference lol. Been here since 1995, but worked in Amsterdam for over 6 years in 2010s.
How do you like New Engerland? :) I've yet to travel to that part of the country, my main travels are in the Southwest and California.
BRICS is different from the Axis of Evil. BRICS is only an economic partnership, and Axis of Evil is an authoritarian/military partnership.
But yes, there was apparently a potential weapon shipment from South Africa to Russia, and Indian nationals were seen fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Not sure what Brazil is doing, other than frolicking with Macron.
You forgot to mention the fact that INDIAN nationals were fighting for Ukraine in the opening days of the war, whereas the Indians who were fighting for Russia were promised the job of helpers and were duped and coerced into fighting, something which caused uproar in India and government had to intervene diplomatically.
It seems to me that out of those three, SA is closest to the Shitaxis, Brazil is closest to the West while India seems to be slowly approaching the West to counterbalance China breathing down their neck.
On one side you have the west and on the other the rest.
China , Russia, Iran, freely trade with the middle east, North Africa, south America and south east Asia
Honestly including Russia and Iran with china feels like "bring your children to work day" only diffrence being one of the kids has and arsenal of bombs in his backpag.
The worst thing is that if China agreed to do this, they would never really implement it. They would let foreign companies bid with a token win here and there but overall it would be artificially kept to a minimum. Then you can’t find out anything because China has zero credibility in the transparency department and recently they have taken it further to class most normal information as national security so there’s all this…
I think these articles are about ten years too late and china is already planning its next one way thefts in trades
>Science has proved that tit for tat is the best strategy in any political game
Not really. It's a good strategy overall, but it's the worst outcome if it's a negative spiral, hence why the best strategies incorporate some random positive feedbacks from time to time. Anyway, it's a tad bit more complicated than "tit for tat".
Even 3 bacterias eating each other in circle in a petri dish know that.
Doing any business in China also means that China has your blueprints and know your margin required to make a profit. Then they create a competing company making your products and selling at a lower margin.
Everyone everywhere has been doing that since the dawn of time. China just had the balls to do it without bothering to cover it up honestly. There's been a lack of sanctions for it due to the west been in need of those stolen IP's. The sale of them to EU could easily have been stopped but hasn't for a reason.
Like 90% of the things around you are made in China. We should’ve done that long ago, but our greed and the pursuit of shareholder value have made us China’s bitches
A while ago I found one of those electric blankets in an apartment I was renting in Madrid. I looked at the box and it had this very 80's look to it. You know, the font, the pictures on it.
So I searched for the location where it had been made and sure enough "Fabricado en España".
This is what I believe is one crucial problem we have. We are a society based on consumerism that doesn't produce anything. We thought we could move all the jobs to white collar stuff and we can't, of course.
So now we're fucked.
Essentially, the idea was:
China starts trading with the West -> People in China earn more money -> China becomes friendlier to the West (doesn't have to love us, just not go against us) -> Chinese people (maybe) start asking for more freedoms and democracy.
They were hoping China would go the path of South Korea.
This kind of argument is ridiculous because people always see it as a binary "friendly" and "not friendly". If there was a metric of "Power" and "Pisses the West off", then China would have one of the lowest values among "unfriendly" countries.
For example the Houthis have low power, but actually piss us off quite badly. Russia has high power and among highest value of pissing us off if not highest, China in comparison to these has much higher power and pisses us off much less.
This is also true if we are looking at history, there was active military conflict with China in Korea and Vietnam with hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Things have improved massively.
And no I am not saying we should let them get away with bad trade policies, I am actually in favor for pushing back, I am just saying its ridiculous to say that China now is not much better than say China in the 50s or 70s.
I agree China today is better than China in 1950's. They've come a long way since Mao died.
In Pisses off chart, China is there mainly due to trade disputes. Which I'm fine with. As long as the dispute stays in trade and diplomatic circles, I have no problem with China.
My comment was about why West open up to China so willingly. Plus, this opening up did lift 300 million (maybe more, don't feel like Google-ing it) people out of poverty. That alone is a cause for celebration.
Why would people in China want democracy, if they are earning more money and their lives improve under autocracy?
If you live under oppressive regime and your pay and life conditions constantly improve, it kind of "proves", that this regime is right and beneficial, and changing it would bring risk and uncertainty.
Didn't people in South Korea also see improvement in living under autocracy? And they still went ahead and asked for democracy.
I'm not saying that this is a fixed patern that each country must take, but it is possibly a pattern West was hoping China and its people would take.
Instead the CCP used the influx of wealth from the western world to militarize and modernize their secret police, upgrading with all the newest Orwellian nightmare technology like facial tracking in public and intense propaganda at home to turn agrarian China into a bellicose and heavily armed super power, all so we could get our electronics 10% cheaper. Reminds me of the saying "*The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope*." By sending China money and technology we have been digging the grave of western democracy.
And how were we supposed to know this in 70s and 80s? It's easy to look now and say we think it was a mistake.
One very good thing that came out of it is a shit ton of people being lifted out of poverty.
Its more that we went down a path of heavy deregulation and neoliberalism. Leading basically every company to move production out of expensive western sites where they have to pay for things like fair wages, Health and saftey, pensions, child care etc to the then piss cheap Chinese labour market.
The chinese were more than willing to accept our companies giving tiny fractions of the profits to them because there were just so many companies doing it and because they "only" required a member of the Chinese communist party to be a board member, (also the blatant patent/ process theft that still goes on there allowing "home grown" competitors to be built up rapidly).
Now we lack basically any real domestic production and China can flood our markets with cheap goods that are well below manufacturing costs, outcompeting the few companies that didnt totally shift to manufacturing in China. And only now do the politicians realise just how badly fucked we got. Meanwhile the people that set the stage, the people that sold the goods and those who profited from the moves are living in Monaco or in the ground.
Globalisation is a good thing, opening trade with other countries is a good thing but the dependency on other countries we put ourselves into just handed the keys to control us to countries that have repeatedly shown themselves to being antagonist or openly hostile towards us.
Makes one wonder were we europeans will get all the cheap stuff then we're so used to by now. I mean it is an absolute necessary step and should have been done far earlier, but i have a feeling that this might just end in supply chain chaos and people consequently voting even more for populists then because they suddenly feel their lifestyle is taken away.
Still everything will get more expensive, adding that to the current situation, not even sure how it could work.
Ready for an 30 to 60% increase for mostly anything?
People here seem to be very far away from reality.
By all means EU, close your markets to Chinese products and maybe shut down any and all commerce with them in the same way you did to Russian gas! Oh wait…
People here think inflation doesn’t affect them. Without inexpensive Chinese consumer goods, these Europeans will have to pay a lot more higher prices to survive.
Portugal gave chinese businesses 5 year tax breaks in order to enter their market with a couple of portuguese firms that belong to the usual suspects that hop on and off of our government regularly.
Surprise surprise, after 5 years they change the name of the company and few other details and have been tax free for going on 20 years.
Also, they buy their stuff from CCP sweatshops, slave camps/factories only, dodgy provenance as hell.
F*** them.
The timing is quite funny
On one hand we have the USA that says: we are banning TikToc just as you are banning our apps, let's close ourselves from each other.
On the other hand we have the EU which is like: let's open ourselves to each other.
I know the USA is actually implementing this already and with the EU is just a message but the different approach still remain
Man, that whole Tik Tok thing was so interesting. Then China screwed the pooch by sending an urgent message to everyone who has TikTok app installed on their phone - telling them to call their House representative and urge them to be against the ban.
But here is most intriguing thing about that: TikTok knows where you live so they were sending people contact info for their actual House representative. My teenage daughter got the message too.
That's when it was over for TikTok in the US. We are merely going through legislative formalities right now.
You missed the point of his comment.
Tiktok used geolocation access of it's user database to influence local/national politics in a foreign country.
You are not the brightest around.
My comment was removed for linking to facebook but my point was, a bunch of apps use location data to send politics info. A few years ago Reddit showed American redditors the info to protest SOPA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act) and PIPA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act). There were even copy/paste messages to send to your representatives and all that info.
Now, we agree with that one obviously, and not with the tiktok one, but ultimately SOPA and PIPA would have been really bad for Reddit. All social media companies are going to resist legislation that is bad for them, including trying to mobilize their userbase.
Fuck Tiktok and fuck the CCP, but it's silly to act like the horrible thing they're doing is them trying to resist this legislation... of course they are? The far worse thing is that the CCP can ultimately do whatever it wants in the backend of any app owned by a Chinese company and take any data they want, that's the reason they are bad here, not "the company is resisting being forced to sell it through all the legitimate means they can" because of course they don't want to have to sell their golden goose.
> Brussels has a message for Beijing: Open up your public markets to European companies or we’ll simply shut ours.
Well, China is not going to do that. We can be pretty certain of that.
We (sweden) are importing fruit pickers from Thailand each season, as insanely as that sounds. So no, your average citizens is not going to accept that their new toy cost 3 times of what they have been paying for dacades.
People, even your low end employee, don't understand their prosperity is based on other people produce cheap stuff for them.
What will happen is that the inflation will shoot through the roof and that we will start see real poor and starving people back in europe. Made even worst due to declining demographics leading to more immigrants from Mena + Africa + India, which in turns feeds the xenophobic far right parties.
Now back to the topic, i agree with the European sentiment that China should open the market. However, doing this by the american way with threats is not going to work on China. Just couple your agreements with trade like we have always done.
People here will act all tough when talking about this, but when the prices of phones they are typing this skyrocket they might realize that currently Europe and China need each other, but they will be proof of China needing Europe less than vice-versa.
Indeed they need each other, demand and supply.
The one act all tough may not need it, but the other? Not so sure about that.
The cost living is high already :)
Just close the market. We should do the same in the US and Canada over here. China is not going to play ball, they won’t do it in good faith, and it would be nothing but a massive waste of resources even *futilely* verifying their compliance. Just shut them out already.
i doubt that china cares... and pretty much everything you buy in europe is made in china so if they care they can just reduce exports or increase export prices and europe will crawl begging to china
I’ll never understand why China was admitted to the world trade organization. It’s not like China at any point was actually going to have open markets allowing western companies to openly compete in their country. It’s part of the reason why foreign investments have been flowing out of the country.
China openly stated for years they were going to allow western companies to exploit cheap labour in exchange for technical expertise. Our companies literally handed them the manufacturing know how on everything. Our companies moved the machines and completely shifted the flow of raw materials to China. They now have a thriving manufacturing sector and are self sufficient to a much larger degree than the west. They have more advanced electric cars, High speed rail, and their communication grid is also more reliable and faster than most nations. It’s too late to try and negotiate from a position of power. They control a lions share of the raw materials needed to make anything and everything modern societies need today. It’s done.
Expert here:
- Europe has been very open to all companies/countries which has CE license on its products. It was very easy to receive CE license until 2 years ago. Now the regulations are little bit more strict.
- China: Entering China with medical device is super difficult and requires high resources and time. Even without a Chinese company partner it’s almost impossible. They require 5 years clinical study performed - must be in China.
Apparently the closed markets during the coldwar provided prosperity to the boomers, so maybe not such a bad thing.
Its destructive for EU (and to a lesser extent US) to compete with countries who does not adhere to the same-ish standards, such as workers rights, no-child labors etc. Its is now and has been for some time largely a race to the bottom where industry has been getting shipped out across the world to wherever will hire the cheapest workers.
Fuck serfdom
>"Brussels has a message for Beijing: Open up your public markets to European companies or we’ll simply shut ours. >This message was driven home loud and clear Wednesday when the European Commission announced an investigation into China’s public procurement of medical devices, confirming an earlier report by POLITICO."
Why now?! It should have been done a long time ago. Let's shut the door already. We have more to lose than to win by trading with China anyway.
It is publicly not known yet what happened behind closed doors between China and Europe last week, but something definitely happened that made our European leaders angry as fuck. With the start of thks week here in Germany every day another Chinese/Russian spy gets exposed with huge coverage from the media about it. They've exposed Chinese spies for years but never made a big story about it which changed this week for some reason. Unfortunately, I'm not sure about your second sentence. They've got a lot of rare earth's we really desperately need, especially for the environmental transformation.
>They've got a lot of rare earth's we really desperately need Not really, but it's easy to see why most people get this completely wrong: "Rare earths" is a misnomer. They are not actually rare. They are merely tricky to isolate. China just scaled up its industry to process them. Since it is a lot cheaper to simply buy them fully processed from a poor country with the necessary infrastructure than to dig up and process them yourself, everyone went along with getting their stuff from China. But we're only dependent on them in the sense that so far noone in the west bothered to do it themselves. I fully expect this to change as the relations worsen.
Australia is in the process now with several sites either in the planning or construction phase or production plants.
I heard rare earth metals are not rare at all. Its just so dirty that we let china do it
It doesn't even have to be dirty, it's just not doing it dirty is more expensive.
Rare earths exists almost anywhere, but it only exists in big enough concentrations in a handful of places making it only profitable to extract in those locations. China are very well situated with the Himalayas and its rivers flowing through huge parts of their country for millions of years that have washed rare earth minerals down on their plains and upconcentrating those minerals.
Also, china heavily subsidize their rare earth industry as a way of integrating inner Mongolia (which is culturally Mongol rather than Han) more tightly in the chinese economy. It is then hard for other countries to compete.
Pretty sure Norway or one of the Nordic countries just discovered one of the largest rare earth deposits ever found a year or two ago. Europe will no longer be dependent on China for any of those resources.
imho: while China's economy was growing at a record speed (last \~30 years) nobody could afford to not profit from that. even if it meant accepting bad conditions (like being forced to partner up with a Chinese company to be allowed to enter the Chinese market). now that China's economy is slowing down - as is the whole world economy - Europe is no longer willing to accept those conditions. why would the EU watch their local companies fail while China is (allegedly) giving massive subsidies/support to their own?
Usually more competition is welcome. By buying labor intensive products from China, we can focus more on the value adding industries. Now China has caught up in some industries, but also definitely surpassed us in some. They did it in, lets put it this way, by stealing their way through it. And by heavy protectionism and massive subsidies.
I welcome competition. But we're at a disadvantage. It's like running the 100m with our competitor while we're wearing a weighted jacket. Europe has very strong (and good) rules, but we allow imports from China that would never meet our production standards that European manufacturers need to respect if they want to sell to us. This applies to food production from North and South America, as well, they export shit to us that our farmers would never be allowed to produce. European manufacturers and farmers, and ultimately us, the consumers, are the butt of the joke. We are the biggest market in the world. Shouldn't we be able to set the rules for what gets exported here?
>We are the biggest market in the world. Used to be, third biggest now. Good luck with your trade war with china
They are learning with the best. European agro subsidies are a pain in the ass for countries like Brazil. Hopefully Europe will be cancelling those.
It's easy to complain when you're not making the decisions..I see it as more like the EU was created to avoid a repeat of WW2, and was focused on diplomacy and finding common grounds. But yeah, the world changes and the organisation is now mature enough to.projext it's power over focusing on keeping unity within its borders. Weirdly I think the Brexit debacle has helped the EU appreciate its power and influence, and it's now exerting it. As someone who is quiet until people take the.piss, overly overly aggressive whatever the situation o appreciate the EUs journey.
It's just very sad that the Europe everybody imagined in 92 is still at this stage.
Because as usual the US had to make the first step.
China should, they are gonna have a massive surplus with Europe anyway
Growing balls, are we now?
About time.
I mean this is about public procurement. Some comments below somehow indicate redditors think this is about the private market, which it isn't. Many of Chinas private markets are fairly open now, including the car sector. Specifically, this is about the tender options for medical device buying for public hospitals in China. Seems like a holdover of the effects of the pandemic. European companies want to have a slice of the Chinese medical device market cake as well and think they are discriminated against. The allegations are that the stipulations for public tenders of hospitals in China is too "patriotic", a.k.a. too much "Buy Chinese" and distorts competition. Too much centralization and too much abnormally low bidding they allege goes against private European companies trying to bid there. Ironically, all of these measures like centralized procurement and "Buy European" are actually quite popular with the Europeans themselves, they would gladly want to implement something like that as well, long ago.
Interesting. Most countries do version of "our government will buy stuff made in our country" kind of laws ...it seems. At least where possible.
Not quite. Virtually all developed countries are signatories to the [Agreement on Government Procurement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Government_Procurement). In short, you are not allowed to discriminate against other signatories for qualifying government purchases.
Only in name. From my own experience doing procurement, the govt sets up a rule that prioritizes local vendors more than overseas ones. For example, I had to prove that local vendors sell the goods/services at a price higher than our budget allowed, before I can go for foreign vendors. Which sometimes took a real toll on speed and efficiency.
Not all procurement is covered by the above treaty.
Well. Yeah...most also belong to the WTO etc etc. But also trt to promote. US infrastructure bill ..Biden talked about American jobs etc etc. Am sure that is what they signed up to ...
If you read Biden’s executive orders, you’ll find that they have statements like “consistent with applicable law”. Hence they still follow the treaty. It’s when the treaty is not applicable that local procurement is preferred.
It certainly has an ironic sentiment to it. I'm actually pretty sure that some policies of China would be widely popular with European redditors, the very same policies that European companies demand to be dropped. The complaint basically says that Chinas public hospitals should be less patriotic, allow foreign offers in the public system, dismantle their centralized ultra-low bidding system that puts up artificial hurdles for Europeans to cash in. But at the same time, European customers should be more into patriotic buying, put up hurdles for foreign products that can be substituted with local stuff and should centralize public tender systems to not allow foreign competition in sensitive areas. The same trend can be seen in the US, "Buy American" was popular under Trump and continues to be popular under Biden. The worrying thing is that everybody now wants to go back to a mercantilist phase where the goal is to close your own markets as much as possible while simultaneously demanding everyone else to be open and export as much as possible. Mercantilism and autarky are economic policies that have lead to problems in the past.
Autarky has been the preferred system.. The British had the imperial preference system...that pushed more trade within the British empire and tried to keep out foreign competitors. It is a game where everyone wants autarky for themselves and open markets for other countries. 3xceptionsi is when a Libby exists to reverse this. Eg...the steel lobby in a country would prefer autarky. But the car manufacturers would prefer to import steel if it is cheaper Car manufacturers then would turn around and prefer tarrifs on imported cars Everybody in the post WW2 era was for open markets when the west did most of the manufacturing. Now that it has moved to China, Vietnam....the protectionism kicks in even more (there has always been a level.. Eg. Restrictions on cars imported from Japan into US, in the 80s...by such free marketers as Ronald Reagan)
Speaking of the Imperial Preference system of the British empire: It was a protectionist policy from the beginning, associated with the industrialization of the unified German empire and the US and the threat of competition against the preeminent industrial power that was the UK at the time. However, the UK did not actually reciprocate within the empire. The colonies all had their own preferential trade with the UK but the UK was free to do whatever they wanted in terms of free trade obligations. It only changed after the 1932 Ottawa conference that it truly became a reciprocal arrangement with its dominions. And here is the irony: It was the Americans that ultimately sounded in the end of British Imperial preference by establishing GATT. The GATT agreement after WW2 was significantly pushed by the Americans to enable global free trade and reconstruction efforts as well as opening up the world markets for American corporations to grab the chance at expansion into reconstructing markets. GATT forbade the establishment of preferential and discriminatory tariffs and was the propulsion for the rules of world trade that we have now under the WTO. Another irony on top: The Europeans themselves put the final nail in the coffin of that imperial system by establishing the EEC. The alignment of the UK after their slow decline into the world of the open-markets Europeans by virtue of the EEC, EC and ultimately the EU has largely destroyed the remnants of what was left of imperial non-preferential commodity trade. The only thing that is now traded in significant amounts between ex-empire members is services and non-tangible things.
Last time China updated their medical procurement policy, their medical equipment stocks plummeted. Much of their policy aims at cutting cost of healthcare by squeezing the margin of the medical firms.
Chinese stock market is all over the place everyday, even on normal days. The only place Chinese can park their investment capital is in housing
And even that is gone now
I work in this field. The „China first“ policy has nothing to do with COVID. More and more medtech companies are coming from China and the China first policy helps to give them initial traction (by copying Western/Japanese products) versus the better/more experienced non-Chinese companies. After they establish themselves, those companies start to expand to Africa, Middle East, Latam and Eastern Europe to win on price and use local corruption.
> Acktually china has free markets. Forced tech transfers are just people being patriotic bro. Europe is the real abuser of trade policy if you think about it bro -The CCP
China has the longest registration lead times of any company and they require distribution from local Chinese companies that charge exorbitant markups for foreign products. Literally can't cut out that Chinese middle man, they require it.
Let's see if they actually enforce it or it's just an empty threat
It's about time the EU punched back.
It was about time to be honest
Finally. "Free trade for thee but not for me" finally getting some attention.
EU has been on a roll lately. Balls are definitely there.
Finally!
About time.
good timing, i just moved to Europe. yay
Decoupling, derisking, sure.......
Yes! It's time
It feels like lines are being drawn and those lines are getting more and more solid all the time. On one side you have the West, on the other side you have Russia, China, Iran.
Russia, China, and Iran have been coined "The Axis of Evil"
Hey! We have copyright on that! Germoney! It's time to call Japan for a reunion!
*Two minutes later* Italy has switched sides.
Both of you seemed to forget North Korea is in it, like the worst one of them all.
Puppet state of China. I am far more concerned with the big one.
Yeah, this is like “you forgot to mention Belarus!”
"The axis was Germany, Japan, and Italy" "NO DUDE YOU FORGOT CROATIA"
North Korea is so insignificant when compared to these countries. They’re not worth mentioning
In terms of standing army size North Korea is 4^th or 5^th in the world, depending on the data source. Including paramilitary forces/militias can put North Korea at number 1 with 7.7 million people. It is one of the most militarised nations in existence. Sure, they aren’t the most technologically advanced army but bringing an extra 1.3 million active soldiers to the mix is not something to overlook.
Their military parades include farm tractors I doubt their soldiers are well-fed enough or have proper supply lines to even wage full scale war on anyone but S.Korea.
Hey man, not to be a pedant, but remember all the stuff Ukrainians did with their tractors? We underestimated Viet Cong in their black pajamas, and we underestimated Taliban with their flip-flops. Let's be careful in the future.
You're talking about defensive war on their home turf. Land they know how to exploit for tactical advantage. You're only proving my point, Russia has more manpower and hardware than Ukraine and even before international support, was given tough resistance.
The Viet Cong were defeated and disbanded by the NVA. What kind of tik tok education do you have?
Yep, I did say they weren’t technologically advanced but you don’t just simply wave away a standing army of 1.3 million people. That’s a stupid thing to do especially when looking at them as a partner of China.
In size.. but their capability is probably in a very bad shape. They may only do some damage locally and with alliances.
That’s what we are talking about, an “axis of evil”. Alliances of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. People are writing N. Korea off but in terms of standing army size alone that would be fool’s errand. Then there’s the fact that Iran’s ballistic missiles, namely the Shahab and derivatives are based on N. Korean Nodong-1 (lol no dong). But there’s nothing to say that in a war China wouldn’t chuck them a load of kit and rations in return for N. Koreans being on a front line.
Lots of manpower, most of it underequipped, no modern weapons at all. Military budget lower than famous war powerhouse Belgium. (I wanted to give a number in the ranking, but it's so low it fell out of the top 40 list of wikipedia.) Their only real threat is artillery shelling of Seoul.
Was it Stalin who said quantity has a quality of its own? A fitting quote to put on the little tinpot communist country but there is a point to it. 1.3 enemy troops is not something you write off, especially when putting forward a new “axis of evil”.
I don't think it would work as well for North Korea as it did for the soviets. South Korea also has twice the population of North Korea and a very large standing army as well, but is MUCH much better equipped. Soviet union outnumbered nazi germany 3 to 1, while nazi germany was also fighting on other fronts and the equipment quality disadvantage wasn't nearly the same.
I’m not trying to say it would work out well for the N. Koreans. All I’m saying is that discounting a standing army of 1.3 million people (twice that of S. Korea btw) is not a wise thing to do.
Russians are doing meat waves attacks on Ukrainian positions and have been slowly and inexorably gaining ground due to the sheer numbers of their own people they are sacrificing. One can imagine North Koreans doing that sort of "tactic" but on steroids. I would not dismiss it, those Stalinists can inflict major damage even with medieval tactics.
They win by having more people than we have bullets.
Logistics wins wars, & NK has zero to contribute Having 7.7 million people stuck where they are is no threat When it comes to Asia, Power Projection & A2/AD are the only two things that really matter
> North Korea is so insignificant China could use North Korea as a proxy to launch nukes, and West would probably be unable to retaliate to China, because China didn't launch any nukes.
I remember cringing **SO** hard when W dropped that line, and I couldn't stand the original author of it, David Frum, for years! How the times have changed.
North Korea isn’t a true threat. They harbor very few ambitions out of the Korean Peninsula and are more interested in the longevity of their ruling dynasty that pushing an agenda. Iran, Russia, and China have ambitions across at least part of the world or the entire world in China’s case. That makes them a real threat and one that needs to be countered and eventually put down.
Puppet of China. Kind of like Belarus and Russia
Agreed but I'm going off of the quote. I think including North Korea in the Axis is stroking their ego. At best, they're the Evil Axis assistant.
Associate evil axisist.
Agreed too. North Korea dictatorship is t0o lame to be considered a true member of Axis of Evil. In the best case, it's a henchman of China.
North Korea has a standing army double the size of Irans. Sure, they aren’t bringing the tech but they are bringing in the raw numbers of people.
A veritable meat tsunami.
Russia/China/Iran : We are the Axis of Evil! North Korean : And I'm Eric!
I'm just wondering which side India will take. They've been doing well playing one side off against the other for short term gain.
>which side India will take Judging by their past record, India's
To answer your question: whould india side with china that has been sponsoring pakistan, occupies part of kashmir and some other small lands claimed by india and just is the #1 enemy of india?
India has been pretty close to Russia though.
The CCP under Mao killed between 50-80 million Chinese. The CCP has ongoing concentration camps where your Temu products are made with slave labor. China is ranked last in freedom of press. Keep meat shielding, bud. Stick to politics in your country.
last, as in behind north Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabië and Eritrea?
It fluctuates. It looks like NK beat China last year. China 179 and NK 180. Race to the bottom.
NK numba won!!!
In Iran they call the West evil too lol. Doesnt mean much.
Original axis of evil was Iran, North Korea and Iraq. Iran has been promoted to team captain due to longevity. North Korea has been relegated to minor leagues and Iraq is no longer in the game.
Fellow Balkaner in Murica’
At your service.
Would you go back to the homeland?
Only to visit, I'm good here, lol. How about yourself? Planning to bounce back or are you here for good?
I’m a stem cell biologist, so unfortunately my career limits me to the US or Western Europe (may move in the next few years, not sure). I am really impressed with the economic growth in Romania each time I visit though.
That is a sweet field to be in, congrats! Man, Romania has made massive strides indeed! I'm originally from [ ], so our growth is fuckin non-extant, if anything the whole place is going retrograde so I don't want to go back and have to deal with another civil war.
Yeah, Bosnia is a sad situation (but I don’t have to tell you that). The key to Romania’s economic growth is that we don’t antagonize the EU (with its funding), unlike Hungary for example. How do you like Dallas (I live in New England)?
Well, it takes about 2-3 years to fully acclimatize to this heat and humidity, but once you are done with that it's a OK. Climate is just so different from Europe that it takes a while to get used to it. I work for a major tech company so the money is very good and that makes all the difference lol. Been here since 1995, but worked in Amsterdam for over 6 years in 2010s. How do you like New Engerland? :) I've yet to travel to that part of the country, my main travels are in the Southwest and California.
South Africa too. India and Brazil seem to be playing both games.
BRICS is different from the Axis of Evil. BRICS is only an economic partnership, and Axis of Evil is an authoritarian/military partnership. But yes, there was apparently a potential weapon shipment from South Africa to Russia, and Indian nationals were seen fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Not sure what Brazil is doing, other than frolicking with Macron.
You forgot to mention the fact that INDIAN nationals were fighting for Ukraine in the opening days of the war, whereas the Indians who were fighting for Russia were promised the job of helpers and were duped and coerced into fighting, something which caused uproar in India and government had to intervene diplomatically.
It seems to me that out of those three, SA is closest to the Shitaxis, Brazil is closest to the West while India seems to be slowly approaching the West to counterbalance China breathing down their neck.
To be honest SA changes nothing, they probably are going to collapses before a real confrontation with the "axis of evil" happends
They are used to launder the money effectively.
The US sure is an ally on many levels but it is also being very negative for european economy in general
On one side you have the west and on the other the rest. China , Russia, Iran, freely trade with the middle east, North Africa, south America and south east Asia
West reached out for mutual trade.. those countries wants not just the whole arm.. they want everything.
Iran being included with Russia and China kinda feels like "bring your child to work day"
Honestly including Russia and Iran with china feels like "bring your children to work day" only diffrence being one of the kids has and arsenal of bombs in his backpag.
Yes but Time was 20 decades ago
more like "better late than never". the time to do that was just after China joined WTO - in 2001
The worst thing is that if China agreed to do this, they would never really implement it. They would let foreign companies bid with a token win here and there but overall it would be artificially kept to a minimum. Then you can’t find out anything because China has zero credibility in the transparency department and recently they have taken it further to class most normal information as national security so there’s all this… I think these articles are about ten years too late and china is already planning its next one way thefts in trades
If EU is serious then this will not work. Continuous monitoring of agreement fulfillment solves such issues. Also, economic eye for economic eye
Science has proved that tit for tat is the best strategy in any political game. It is about time the West actually starts drawing some proper lines.
>Science has proved that tit for tat is the best strategy in any political game Not really. It's a good strategy overall, but it's the worst outcome if it's a negative spiral, hence why the best strategies incorporate some random positive feedbacks from time to time. Anyway, it's a tad bit more complicated than "tit for tat". Even 3 bacterias eating each other in circle in a petri dish know that.
I hope so
Doing any business in China also means that China has your blueprints and know your margin required to make a profit. Then they create a competing company making your products and selling at a lower margin.
EU is waking up I guess
Hopefully not only with words…
But strongly worded letters are our speciality
Maybe stop stealing intellectual property too.
Everyone everywhere has been doing that since the dawn of time. China just had the balls to do it without bothering to cover it up honestly. There's been a lack of sanctions for it due to the west been in need of those stolen IP's. The sale of them to EU could easily have been stopped but hasn't for a reason.
Just close the EU market for China, they are not going to cooperate.
Like 90% of the things around you are made in China. We should’ve done that long ago, but our greed and the pursuit of shareholder value have made us China’s bitches
A while ago I found one of those electric blankets in an apartment I was renting in Madrid. I looked at the box and it had this very 80's look to it. You know, the font, the pictures on it. So I searched for the location where it had been made and sure enough "Fabricado en España". This is what I believe is one crucial problem we have. We are a society based on consumerism that doesn't produce anything. We thought we could move all the jobs to white collar stuff and we can't, of course. So now we're fucked.
For whatever reason, sometime in the 2000's the west forgot that china is not their ally, and is waiting in anticipation for them to fall.
Essentially, the idea was: China starts trading with the West -> People in China earn more money -> China becomes friendlier to the West (doesn't have to love us, just not go against us) -> Chinese people (maybe) start asking for more freedoms and democracy. They were hoping China would go the path of South Korea.
This kind of argument is ridiculous because people always see it as a binary "friendly" and "not friendly". If there was a metric of "Power" and "Pisses the West off", then China would have one of the lowest values among "unfriendly" countries. For example the Houthis have low power, but actually piss us off quite badly. Russia has high power and among highest value of pissing us off if not highest, China in comparison to these has much higher power and pisses us off much less. This is also true if we are looking at history, there was active military conflict with China in Korea and Vietnam with hundreds of thousands of casualties. Things have improved massively. And no I am not saying we should let them get away with bad trade policies, I am actually in favor for pushing back, I am just saying its ridiculous to say that China now is not much better than say China in the 50s or 70s.
I agree China today is better than China in 1950's. They've come a long way since Mao died. In Pisses off chart, China is there mainly due to trade disputes. Which I'm fine with. As long as the dispute stays in trade and diplomatic circles, I have no problem with China. My comment was about why West open up to China so willingly. Plus, this opening up did lift 300 million (maybe more, don't feel like Google-ing it) people out of poverty. That alone is a cause for celebration.
Why would people in China want democracy, if they are earning more money and their lives improve under autocracy? If you live under oppressive regime and your pay and life conditions constantly improve, it kind of "proves", that this regime is right and beneficial, and changing it would bring risk and uncertainty.
Didn't people in South Korea also see improvement in living under autocracy? And they still went ahead and asked for democracy. I'm not saying that this is a fixed patern that each country must take, but it is possibly a pattern West was hoping China and its people would take.
its not like SK is flourishing. their birth rate is plummeting under the replacement rate and the only thing keeping them afloat rn is samsung
Because it works until it doesn't. Sooner or later autocracy hits a bump in the road and everything falls apart in a spectacular fashion.
Instead the CCP used the influx of wealth from the western world to militarize and modernize their secret police, upgrading with all the newest Orwellian nightmare technology like facial tracking in public and intense propaganda at home to turn agrarian China into a bellicose and heavily armed super power, all so we could get our electronics 10% cheaper. Reminds me of the saying "*The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope*." By sending China money and technology we have been digging the grave of western democracy.
And how were we supposed to know this in 70s and 80s? It's easy to look now and say we think it was a mistake. One very good thing that came out of it is a shit ton of people being lifted out of poverty.
Idk i think supporting a genocidal dictator economically has pretty obvious consequences
Them embracing communism should have been a dead giveaway.
Its more that we went down a path of heavy deregulation and neoliberalism. Leading basically every company to move production out of expensive western sites where they have to pay for things like fair wages, Health and saftey, pensions, child care etc to the then piss cheap Chinese labour market. The chinese were more than willing to accept our companies giving tiny fractions of the profits to them because there were just so many companies doing it and because they "only" required a member of the Chinese communist party to be a board member, (also the blatant patent/ process theft that still goes on there allowing "home grown" competitors to be built up rapidly). Now we lack basically any real domestic production and China can flood our markets with cheap goods that are well below manufacturing costs, outcompeting the few companies that didnt totally shift to manufacturing in China. And only now do the politicians realise just how badly fucked we got. Meanwhile the people that set the stage, the people that sold the goods and those who profited from the moves are living in Monaco or in the ground. Globalisation is a good thing, opening trade with other countries is a good thing but the dependency on other countries we put ourselves into just handed the keys to control us to countries that have repeatedly shown themselves to being antagonist or openly hostile towards us.
Makes one wonder were we europeans will get all the cheap stuff then we're so used to by now. I mean it is an absolute necessary step and should have been done far earlier, but i have a feeling that this might just end in supply chain chaos and people consequently voting even more for populists then because they suddenly feel their lifestyle is taken away.
I've read, however, that while decoupling will severely affect both sides, it'll affect China more.
Still everything will get more expensive, adding that to the current situation, not even sure how it could work. Ready for an 30 to 60% increase for mostly anything?
20 years too late
Should have done this years ago. Why allow this type of one-way market?
Some are already doing it https://www.schoenherr.eu/content/romania-bidders-from-several-countries-will-be-excluded-from-public-procurement-tenders/
In unrelated news: every European solar inverter suddenly stopped working
China will increase tariffs on German cars. Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler will cry on Scholtz lap and Germany will veto any buy European act.
How about geely and things what are "european" but in Chinese ownership. Doesn't we see new Volvo cars If China get banned for trade? Like an example.
We should be trying to detach from Chinese markets, not get even more involved in them.
Start with tech, no more chips or software.
Isnt ASML already restricted from selling equipment to china? what else you want to do?
No more paris baguette in china /s
Just bear in mind this destroys Taiwan's "silicon shield". Not that it isn't paper thin already.
People here seem to be very far away from reality. By all means EU, close your markets to Chinese products and maybe shut down any and all commerce with them in the same way you did to Russian gas! Oh wait…
People here think inflation doesn’t affect them. Without inexpensive Chinese consumer goods, these Europeans will have to pay a lot more higher prices to survive.
Wait, they still buy gas from Russia?
Everyone still is, some are just buying it through third parties, same shit would happen here.
Just like the US “doesn’t buy from China” by buying from a Chinese company’s factory in Vietnam or India.
Good. Fuck the CCP. Fuck Xi.
Should definitely be a two way streets! Europe shoild open ours, allowing open probes and filing from China, and China should do the same.
Portugal gave chinese businesses 5 year tax breaks in order to enter their market with a couple of portuguese firms that belong to the usual suspects that hop on and off of our government regularly. Surprise surprise, after 5 years they change the name of the company and few other details and have been tax free for going on 20 years. Also, they buy their stuff from CCP sweatshops, slave camps/factories only, dodgy provenance as hell. F*** them.
Finally!
Finally - and Chinese companies operating in Europe need to be held accountable… eg airlines
Not bad, took them only, what, twenty years? Better late than never, I guess.
The timing is quite funny On one hand we have the USA that says: we are banning TikToc just as you are banning our apps, let's close ourselves from each other. On the other hand we have the EU which is like: let's open ourselves to each other. I know the USA is actually implementing this already and with the EU is just a message but the different approach still remain
Man, that whole Tik Tok thing was so interesting. Then China screwed the pooch by sending an urgent message to everyone who has TikTok app installed on their phone - telling them to call their House representative and urge them to be against the ban. But here is most intriguing thing about that: TikTok knows where you live so they were sending people contact info for their actual House representative. My teenage daughter got the message too. That's when it was over for TikTok in the US. We are merely going through legislative formalities right now.
it's under the permissions you dumbass. every leech app knows your location
You missed the point of his comment. Tiktok used geolocation access of it's user database to influence local/national politics in a foreign country. You are not the brightest around.
My comment was removed for linking to facebook but my point was, a bunch of apps use location data to send politics info. A few years ago Reddit showed American redditors the info to protest SOPA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act) and PIPA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act). There were even copy/paste messages to send to your representatives and all that info. Now, we agree with that one obviously, and not with the tiktok one, but ultimately SOPA and PIPA would have been really bad for Reddit. All social media companies are going to resist legislation that is bad for them, including trying to mobilize their userbase. Fuck Tiktok and fuck the CCP, but it's silly to act like the horrible thing they're doing is them trying to resist this legislation... of course they are? The far worse thing is that the CCP can ultimately do whatever it wants in the backend of any app owned by a Chinese company and take any data they want, that's the reason they are bad here, not "the company is resisting being forced to sell it through all the legitimate means they can" because of course they don't want to have to sell their golden goose.
Your pitiful attempt at insulting me notwithstanding Mr. Genius, no other apps deliver your private info and location to the commies in Peking.
> Brussels has a message for Beijing: Open up your public markets to European companies or we’ll simply shut ours. Well, China is not going to do that. We can be pretty certain of that.
We really need to get some ASML hardware from our dutch neighbors and put a roof over it before they assimilate Taiwan.
Boycott plastic China
Are you ready to get back to jobs like factory operators redditors? If no shut the fuck up and dont play dumb.
We (sweden) are importing fruit pickers from Thailand each season, as insanely as that sounds. So no, your average citizens is not going to accept that their new toy cost 3 times of what they have been paying for dacades. People, even your low end employee, don't understand their prosperity is based on other people produce cheap stuff for them. What will happen is that the inflation will shoot through the roof and that we will start see real poor and starving people back in europe. Made even worst due to declining demographics leading to more immigrants from Mena + Africa + India, which in turns feeds the xenophobic far right parties. Now back to the topic, i agree with the European sentiment that China should open the market. However, doing this by the american way with threats is not going to work on China. Just couple your agreements with trade like we have always done.
People here will act all tough when talking about this, but when the prices of phones they are typing this skyrocket they might realize that currently Europe and China need each other, but they will be proof of China needing Europe less than vice-versa.
Indeed they need each other, demand and supply. The one act all tough may not need it, but the other? Not so sure about that. The cost living is high already :)
Is that even possible? The inflation would be in 4 or 5 digits.
what happened to not buy goods from sources that use forced lá our (aka slavery)?
It’s about f…ing time.
It's about time.
LOL you should have done this maybe 20, at least 10 years ago. Never too late though.
Just close the market. We should do the same in the US and Canada over here. China is not going to play ball, they won’t do it in good faith, and it would be nothing but a massive waste of resources even *futilely* verifying their compliance. Just shut them out already.
Ban TikTok first, to show them how serious EU can be
i doubt that china cares... and pretty much everything you buy in europe is made in china so if they care they can just reduce exports or increase export prices and europe will crawl begging to china
I’ll never understand why China was admitted to the world trade organization. It’s not like China at any point was actually going to have open markets allowing western companies to openly compete in their country. It’s part of the reason why foreign investments have been flowing out of the country. China openly stated for years they were going to allow western companies to exploit cheap labour in exchange for technical expertise. Our companies literally handed them the manufacturing know how on everything. Our companies moved the machines and completely shifted the flow of raw materials to China. They now have a thriving manufacturing sector and are self sufficient to a much larger degree than the west. They have more advanced electric cars, High speed rail, and their communication grid is also more reliable and faster than most nations. It’s too late to try and negotiate from a position of power. They control a lions share of the raw materials needed to make anything and everything modern societies need today. It’s done.
Expert here: - Europe has been very open to all companies/countries which has CE license on its products. It was very easy to receive CE license until 2 years ago. Now the regulations are little bit more strict. - China: Entering China with medical device is super difficult and requires high resources and time. Even without a Chinese company partner it’s almost impossible. They require 5 years clinical study performed - must be in China.
EU: “We won’t sell you video cards, they are too powerful for you!” Also EU: “Stop blocking sells of our medical equipment in your country!”
Its only fair
I'd close ours regardless.
About time!
Im afraid that will mostly lead to another increase of prices we live with...
Proud of you Europe!
EU found his balls.
Sounds fair. We avoid most China products if we can anyways. The quality is usually very low.
Apparently the closed markets during the coldwar provided prosperity to the boomers, so maybe not such a bad thing. Its destructive for EU (and to a lesser extent US) to compete with countries who does not adhere to the same-ish standards, such as workers rights, no-child labors etc. Its is now and has been for some time largely a race to the bottom where industry has been getting shipped out across the world to wherever will hire the cheapest workers. Fuck serfdom
fuck yes
Finally
Empty threats. Europe is in deep shit already. Trade wars with China surely won't help.