Comment by woodpanel
20 hours ago
We shouldn’t.
Not just because of the assumed security issues (good point though).
But even w/o these,
- I rather have some European or American conglomerate gathering unnecessary data about me driving, than just hand it over to the Chinese state
- Buying Chinese means destroying our own base, as this market has been actively stealing IP for decades (BYD or Xiamoi just being copycats of Porsche); good luck winning piracy cases in Chinese courts
- unfair financial restrictions for redeeming returns on foreign investments fueled much of China‘s growth - and still persist
- western/asian manufacturers are de-facto not competing with mere manufacturers but the Chinese state itself since (almost?) all Chinese manufacturers are State-Owned-Companies
Now that is not to say that China‘s rise is not commendable and deserved, it is indeed. I‘m rather arguing for playing the same game as they are.
The part I don't get is, why shouldn't Western companies be able to out-compete the Chinese state at mass-producing cars?
My whole life, I only heard about how much better private companies are than governments at making products. How could we be suddenly behind?
OK, Xiaomi and BYD are state-backed private companies. But what advantage does the state-backing get them, exactly? How is it better than the familiar state-backed advantages western companies have (like regulatory capture, tax breaks, tariffs, or TBTF bailouts)?
The Chinese government can subsidize them. But that's just moving zero-sum money around; it might give them a boost in cars, but it must come at a cost to semiconductors, robotics, solar energy, raw materials, defense, or other things like that.... in theory at least? So why does it feel like they're somehow subsidizing every sector at the same time?
I thought private business competing in a free market would always out do a centrally planned economy with state owned enterprises.
We've been told that in the West since Reagan, when we decided to forget all the advantages of a Keynesian economy.
So the actual concept of having an industrial strategy was and is considered against all economic orthodoxy in the West.
BYD is not a "copy" of Porsche, they hired European designers, Xioamoi made mobile phones before they started making cars.
The problem of China appropriating intellectual property has been known for decades, but access to the market was considered more important. The governments and industries could have decided that the market was less important and stopped transferring technology, but they didn't.
Chinese IP has been developing on its own at an accelerated pace now.
Most of the technology in Western vehicles is using chips built in Chinese or Taiwanese fabs and if China wanted to subvert the vehicle supply chains in EU or US, I'm sure they could.
> I rather have some European or American conglomerate gathering unnecessary data about me driving, than just hand it over to the Chinese state.
Why? Conglomerates in my own country are in a much better position to use any data they have about me in a way that harms me than China is.