> Haier, TCL and Lenovo are all small. And they're all new competitors
> in mature industries with cutthroat margins.
These are multibillion euro firms with globe-spanning operations. And tailgating the majors is precisely the pattern which worked so well for Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Central Europe. Copy from the best, learn from the rest.
> SMIC is primarily the
> extension of Taiwanese capital into China, the CEO is American, and
> where do they get their capital goods from? Godson is a couple
> generations behind state-of-the-art, although impressive nonetheless.
Two points: first, China's CPU tech *is* state of the art. What they lack are the manufacturing and fab skills. Second, Taiwanese capital is very much under the control of Taiwan's own extremely effective developmental state.
> China has made great strides in lots of fields, but unfortunately the
> rate of advance among the foreign firms they now have to compete with
> has been quicker.
This flies in the face of China's export earnings, which are colossal.
> Well, since China is predominantly rural, if you only look at the
> cities, the best you can come up with is a half-truth.
Eh? Rural growth in China has been impressive. Not as fast as the coast, but impressive nonetheless.
> None of the other East
> Asian developmental states had such a large 'hinterland' to deal with.
Taiwan had a huge rural sector in the 1950s, so did South Korea. Most Japanese citizens didn't live in urban regions until 1965. All the developmental states had highly effective and quasi-socialistic land reform programs.
> And I see no reason why the Chinese authorities
> would want to do anything to rock the boat.
I'm not arguing that they would. I'm pointing out that the US and China are surprisingly interdependent, and that the traditional theses of neocolonialism can't explain what's happening in the East Asian semi-periphery.
-- DRR