Comment by DiogenesKynikos
18 hours ago
Most of the Chinese domestic market is open to foreign competition. The areas that are closed off are those that are politically sensitive: publishing (including social media) and banking.
As for dumping, Chinese goods generally sell at a markup abroad, which is the opposite of dumping. Chinese tokens cost more abroad. Chinese cars cost several times more in Western markets than in China.
"Dumping" is when Chinese companies beat Western ones on the free market. If all claims of Chinese government subsidies on basic products were true, China would've gone bankrupt multiple times already.
You're being beaten by a Chinese company? Why improve your own process when you can just lobby for sanctions and tariffs instead!
Most of the time its just low labour costs and no environmental reg. Its really that simple
At least in the case of solar and EVs, it's a case of western countries preferring to protect their existing cashcow industries rather than invest to build the industries of the future.
For a brief second, Germany was in a position to become a solar power global player. But our conservative government was more interested in protecting their local, bad industry. Including destroying forests for coal all projections said we would never actually need.
From a EU perspective similar could be said about the US market - no strict worker protections, lobbying, and a general "capital first" mindset over the users/people (see GDPR etc).
That does not explain DeepSeek, nor does it explain the car industry.
The main advantages the Chinese car industry has right now are: they lead in battery R&D, production is highly automated, they iterate quickly, Chinese work culture is extremely competitive and things get done fast, and the Chinese state has policies to promote EV adoption, so there's a huge domestic market.
Note that the last point is different from subsidies to car manufacturers. Cities made it difficult to get license plates for ICE cars. The government encouraged the massive buildout of charging infrastructure. And it used consumer rebates, like California did.
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The US spent decades transferring manufacturing, capital, and know-how to China, while Chinese students trained, and excelled, at elite Western universities. Why are people surprised that China eventually became capable of competing with the US?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/07/hostile-powers... these students?
Hostile spy agencies are now as focused on infiltrating western universities and companies as they are on doing so to governments, according to the former head of Canada’s intelligence service.
David Vigneault warned that a recent “industrial-scale” attempt by China to steal new technologies showed the need for increased vigilance from academics.
“The frontline has moved, from being focused on government information to private sector innovation, research innovation and universities,” he told the Guardian in his first interview since leaving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which is part of the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing alliance with the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
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> Chinese goods generally sell at a markup abroad, which is the opposite of dumping
Dumping is selling goods below cost.
Usually because government is subsidizing part of the production. I don’t believe the word “dumping” is used for the similar process when Venture Capital is subsidizing it, but using the same term would make sense.
Price at home vs abroad does not matter.
Price at home vs. abroad is key. The term dumping comes from the idea that a company that sells profitably in its home market dumps excess production abroad at below cost.
This is not what is happening here. Chinese manufacturers are making a large profit off every car they sell in Western markets. As I said above, they're selling these cars at several times the price they charge in China. Unless you believe these cars are being sold at just 30% of cost in China, there's no way Chinese companies are selling below cost in the West.
> Dumping is selling goods below cost.
Chinese cars are not sold below cost in Western markets. So it is not dumping.
> I don’t believe the word “dumping” is used for the similar process when Venture Capital is subsidizing it,
I've been doing so for years. How about you join me today. I already see two other users doing the same, so there'll be at least 4 of us.
It's blatantly dumping, whether the source of the money is directly the government (those in power) or VC (mostly US billionaires (trillionaires?), in other words, those in power) is a trivial implementation detail.