Comment by pjc50
6 hours ago
> The west .. Boeing and Rolls Royce
Boeing is a US company. RR is, last time I looked, a UK company. "The West" isn't a coherent political unit.
Besides, this is the exact opposite of the FDI strategy of past decades. How far should the ban on overseas FDI go? Ban on investing in South America? Full capital controls? As you mention, passport confiscation (!) for key nationals? I don't think any of this would have worked for "the west" at any point past about 1970, or even post-WW2.
Airplane and jet engine manufacturing are literally defense industries.
Corporations operate at the discretion of the local government. Corporate charters could be revoked or threatened to be revoked to preserve national interests.
I'm not saying that I agree with or recommend the mechanisms that China uses. I'm saying that the West actually does have alternative mechanisms if it wanted to try.
As it stands, we are now under a ticking clock before China creates competitive, commercial and military airplane industry and begins to massively undercut Airbus and Boeing, and it was our own companies that wound the clock.