Financial Times: "China is making trade impossible"

There is nothing that China wants to import, nothing it does not believe it can make better and cheaper, nothing for which it wants to rely on foreigners a single day longer than it has to. For now, to be sure, China is still a customer for semiconductors, software, commercial aircraft and the most sophisticated kinds of production machinery. But it is a customer like a resident doctor is a student. China is developing all of these goods. Soon it will make them, and export them, itself.

Ah yes, China does not want to import anything, which is why we slap them with export controls, bar them from buying chips and other things that they wanted to import, and brag about how we are going to "decouple" from China. Perhaps there is a causal relationship at play here? Perhaps China has seen how the imperialist West weaponizes import dependence for geopolitical blackmail and unilateral sanctions?

This whole discussion is incredibly reminiscent of the situation that existed between Britain and China prior to the Opium Wars. Britain was importing tons of goods from China: tea, porcelain, etc. while the only good that they could export to China was silver, because the Chinese didn't need anything that the West made. The difference? Unlike China back then, today's China has become militarily unassailable.

Now you can understand why the Chinese people reacted so patriotically to the 80th victory anniversary parade. The Chinese military is the only thing that stands between the Chinese people and the destruction and plunder of their country by envious imperialists who cannot stand to see any country be truly self-sufficient and independent.

Conclusion: If you don't have anything to offer China, that's your problem, not China's problem.