alt Hacker NewsCompletely agree Jiang Zemin spent the 1990s courting global capital.
The point is that it wasn't technology it was policy, on the Chinese and American side, that drove the China Shock.
This was also what a lot of anti-globalization people were say at the time. The pro-globalization people were saying not only is it good but it's inevitable. There Is No Alternative.
The anti globalization people were saying if it's inevitable why does it need all these policy changes, trade agreements, and bigwig conferences?
Those would be part of the mechanisms of inevitability (under that hypothesis). Globalization is a phenomenon at the human societal level, they would be predicting human behaviors, it's not like rocks and rivers were going to precipitate it. It's not like those singular events "changed everything" either, it's an accumulation of decades of social sentiments, purchasing decisions, etc.
This whole subthread is from like an alternate timeline where the world actually found out or agreed that globalization was bad and stopped or slowed it somehow? Did the US meaningfully take back manufacturing or something?
If globalization is not inevitable, what's the alternative?