China really, really doesn’t play fair on the global stage.

What does it mean to “play fair”? Who made the rules and what is so unfair about what China is doing? If it works why don’t we do it too?

It’s very likely that many parts of those vehicles are sold to these companies by CCP owned or partly-owned businesses, from the steel to the leather to the plastics, these cars are cheap for a reason.

So state owned industry is more efficient than privatized industry, is that what you’re complaining about? Then why don’t we in the West adopt the same model as China? Why don’t we nationalize our industries as well so we can provide our car manufacturers with cheap parts? Why is it “unfair” to have a better economic model? And what’s wrong with subsidies? Our states give out a ton of subsidies too, including to agriculture, fossil fuel, and yes the auto industry.

that’s why those tariffs exist, because if they do flood the market with cheap vehicles

This is fundamentally an anti-free trade position. I thought that’s what capitalism was about: whoever makes their product cheaper than their competitors wins in the free market competition, no? And if there’s a problem with the quality then the market will adjust for that. People who are short on cash will buy the cheaper but less qualitative products, while those with more money will be able to afford higher quality. Isn’t that how the free market is supposed to work?

Only…China’s EV’s aren’t even low quality, are they? They’re cheaper and they’re just as good or better. So what you’re saying is they’re simply outcompeting us. And because we can’t compete we need to shut them out.

Ok…well, i have no issue with that logic. Only please let’s apply it to the rest of the world as well. When developing countries can’t compete with Western industrial products, they should be allowed to tariff them as much as necessary or even shut them out entirely to support their own domestic production. You agree then that the WTO and IMF shouldn’t go to them and force them to open up their markets or sign free trade agreements?

it’s important that we’re not wholly enriching a foreign nation […] at the expense of our own.

When you agree to buy something you don’t just give the other party money for nothing. In return you get a product, presumably of equal value to what you paid. So isn’t your country being also enriched equally when it buys EVs? This is the liberal free trade theory right? If you freely agreed to a trade it must be fair. There is no such thing as an unequal trade in liberal theory. You’re not some kind of godless Marxist, are you?

In fact, if these vehicles are somehow “artificially cheap” (putting aside the little inconsistency that liberal economics doesn’t recognize the labor theory of value and instead maintains that value comes purely from exchange, meaning that a product is technically always worth exactly what you are willing to pay for it), then aren’t you getting an awesome deal? You get EVs that, according to you, are supposed to be worth more than what you paid for them since China is “cheating” and making them cheaper than they should be. Which means your country actually is getting richer in this exchange!

So what’s the problem? Isn’t having abundant, cheap EVs good for the people and good for the environment? Why do you want poor people to not be able to afford EVs?

especially one that has shown it is happy to clandestinely meddle in Canadian affairs

Ah yes, the old Yellow Peril McCarthyist tactic. Great choice. Always a sign of healthy politics and good social stability when your politicians and media start to foster an atmosphere of paranoia and accuse people of a different ethnicity of being spies, saboteurs and traitors to the nation. How dare the evil other interfere in our country when we have never, ever meddled in their internal affairs!

Canada would never support false allegations to discredit China’s government, or back separatists and violent mobs in order to destabilize China! Canada would never associate with opposition politicians in other countries whose government they don’t like. Never!

The difference is that the US does not recognize the concept of “win-win”. It is all zero sum games for them. In order for the US to gain someone else must lose. This is not the attitude that most other countries adopt.

So you prefer a more centralised state that is still beholden to the will of the populace.

China is actually a very decentralized model. Local government is very big in China and plays a huge role in social and economic development, as well as in how things are run on a day to day basis. In a sense it is not all that different to how the US federally delegates power to state and local governments, but i’d say China goes even further.

Local governments frequently compete with one another to outdo each other in development and cultural projects. This is a country of nearly one and a half billion people, with over fifty different minority ethnic groups, languages and cultures. The entire country being centrally run out of Beijing would be simply impossible.

I know it can be difficult to find good in-depth English language information on this subject, and doing this sort of research can be dry and boring at times, but if you really want to understand China i advise you to look into non-Western sources about how China actually works.

It is a very complex society, not perfect by any means, but one that cannot be reduced to the simplistic caricature that is painted of it in Western media.

from what I’ve seen it’s not a state known for complete freedom of speech

Neither is any western “liberal democracy”. The last year has shown us this very clearly with how the pro-Palestinian movement has been treated and how aggressively pro-Palestinian speech has been suppressed.

Speech is tolerated only so long as it does not pose a threat to the status quo. You are free to have any opinion you want so long as you don’t act on it in a way that threatens the interests of the ruling class.

This is the same in every country, China included. The difference is that in the West the ruling class are the capitalists and imperialists. In a socialist society the ruling class is the working class and it is their interests that the state protects first and foremost.

when you said “liberal democracy” I took it as a democracy where personal freedoms (speech, privacy etc) are respected

I have already addressed the issue of speech. As for privacy, that concept has become a joke in the US with how ubiquitous surveillance is. Corporations and the government work hand in hand to constantly surveil you.

Have we learned nothing from Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA? They have backdoors in nearly all the tech you use and corporations regularly steal your private data. Most of the time they do it for commercial purposes…until the state decides that you pose a threat, and then all that data is used against you.

And Europe isn’t far behind. Your privacy has long since been eroded under the pretext of fighting crime and “terrorism”. People point out the presence of cameras in China, but do you know for instance that the UK has way more CCTV cameras per person than China does?

But at a more concrete, material level, what “personal freedoms” exactly are the Chinese people lacking? What is it that you think they should be able to do but aren’t? I mean:

• They can open a small business if they please.

• They can go on holiday and travel, both inside and outside China.

• They can go out to clubs and restaurants, see a movie, go to a concert… they can do pretty much every recreational activity you can think of.

• They can buy almost any product known to man, because China produces essentially everything.

• They can own their own house (and most of them do, unlike the country where i live) and even a plot of land if they live in a rural area.

• They can form/join social clubs for virtually any interest they have, such as music, sports, dance, etc.

• They can practice their cultural and religious traditions.

• They can express their opinion about how the government is run, and they can even participate in it at various levels if they wish. Anyone can become a party member if they study and pass the tests.

The list goes on. But perhaps even more important than the things they are free to do is what they are free from:

• They have peace and safety. They are free from fearing to walk the streets at night.

• Food is affordable. Housing is affordable. Healthcare is affordable. Higher education is competitive but also quite affordable. These are also forms of freedom: freedom from the kind of crushing economic pressures that so many people in the US and other Western countries now feel.

• Public transportation is modern, extensive and generally affordable, which gives them freedom of mobility without having to own a car to get around. It also increases their economic freedom as greater mobility means more options for work.

• They have a very low crime rate, so they are largely free from gang violence and drug addiction.

• They have a very low, almost non-existent rate of homelessness, thanks to a combination of various policies such as poverty alleviation, government housing initiatives, and the absence of perpetual property taxes.

• There is very little police violence and a high level of trust in society, so they are free from many of the fears that people in other countries constantly live with.

• And they are generally free from the crippling levels of debt that people in the US have. In fact one of the things that western liberal economists regularly complain about is that Chinese people tend to have “too much” savings.

So then what real, material freedoms are they lacking in your opinion?

at least to the point no one really complains about it

People do complain about it. A lot. They are simply ignored because they have no power. University studies have shown that in the US the majority public opinion on a given policy has essentially no bearing on whether or not it is implemented. Instead the adopted policies reflect almost exclusively the will and interests of the donor class, of corporate and financial power.

As a result virtually all western governments have extremely low approval ratings. The US is actually one of the ones with relatively more approval (still very far from a majority) due to the high degree of political polarization of its society. European governments are even less popular. They regularly stay in power for years and years with at best 20-30% approval ratings, or worse.

Not the case in China. In China the government regularly conducts polls and studies to figure out what the population actually wants. And most of the time they listen to them and do their best to implement it. As a result, the central government of China has an incredibly high approval rating, easily over 90%, the highest in the world even according to Western studies.

There is much that can still be improved, and the Chinese people are very vocal and critical when they see problems. It would be very naive to think it is some kind of utopia, but one thing that the majority of Chinese people agree on is that they are on a very positive trajectory. They have hope for a bright future. Can we in the West say the same?