China's manufacturing industry is changing the global political and economic ecology

There is no doubt that China's peaceful rise has become a new situation and a new trend after the development of human history has entered the new century.

In the momentum of China's peaceful rise, the sudden emergence of China's manufacturing industry and its effects have only recently begun to receive widespread attention.

During the two sessions in Chinese mainland in March, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi questioned the United States when talking about Sino-US relations at a press conference: "If the United States is nervous and anxious when it hears the word China, where is the self-confidence of a major power." The phenomenon described by Wang Yi is indeed true, as long as we look at the various unreasonable sanctions adopted by the United States against China in recent years, and if we look closely, we can also find that the tension and anxiety of the United States in the face of China have been increasing with the times.

Six or seven years ago, when the United States discovered that China's Huawei's smartphone sales had surpassed Apple's in the United States, it relied on the fact that high-end chips were still superior to China's, and it made a heavy hand to comprehensively restrict the export of high-end chips to China.

Almost at the same time, Huawei's 5G communication equipment competitiveness has far surpassed that of Western players, the United States immediately banned Western allies from buying Huawei, resulting in a lose-lose and multi-lose, but also decided to form a separate 6G alliance, trying to avoid a direct confrontation with China on 5G, and to open up another battlefield to resist China.

Huawei's 5G communication equipment is far more competitive than Western players.

Later, that is, recently, China's new energy pure electric vehicle BYD entered the Geneva Motor Show with a mighty division, and at this moment, Western industries, including Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and Ford, either stopped the electric vehicle plan that has been developed for several years and invested tens of billions of US dollars, or promoted or slowed down the progress, simply put, it is directly lying flat.

From the ineffective high-profile suppression of chips to the stubborn resistance to 5G communication equipment to the simple abandonment in the face of new energy vehicles, we can clearly see the changes in the United States and the West in the face of Chinese competition, from self-confidence to frustration to helplessness, which reflects the "tension and anxiety" described by Wang Yi. Unfortunately for some Western countries, including the United States, this may be just the beginning.

China's new energy pure electric vehicle BYD enters the European market.

Recently, Richard Baldwin, a leading economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the United States, published a detailed research report that convincingly validated China's unrivaled position in the global manufacturing sector through a series of charts and data analysis, and emphasized that attempts to substantially decouple the world economy from China, a manufacturing superpower, are not only difficult, but also have far-reaching and irreversible negative impacts on the global economy.

Baldwin pointed out that after decades of industrialization and the implementation of reform and opening up policies, China's manufacturing industry has become the largest in the world, and covers the entire industrial chain from basic raw material processing to high-end technology manufacturing. He described China as a "super-manufacturing power" because the United States is the only military superpower in the world today, and its military spending is more than the next 10 countries with the highest military spending.

According to the (latest) 2020 global manufacturing share data released by the OECD, Chinese mainland's manufacturing output value accounts for 35% of the world's share, ranking first, followed by the United States (12%), Japan (6%), Germany (4%), India (3%), South Korea (3%), Italy (2%), France (2%), and Taiwan (2%). It can be seen that only 6 of these countries have a share of more than 3%. Of these six, only three are old industrial economies (the United States, Japan, and Germany), and four of them (Britain, France, Canada, and Italy) were not selected by the G7. Such an image has vividly depicted the dramatic changes in the global economic landscape in just a few decades, and has also added another powerful footnote to the "rise in the east and the fall in the west", of course, the core of which is China.

Chinese mainland's manufacturing output value accounts for 35% of the world's total, ranking first.

Not long ago, everyone's impression of the industrial powers was none other than the United States, Japan, and Germany, but in the latest 2020 data of the OECD, it can be clearly seen that China's manufacturing output value has accounted for 3 times that of the United States, 6 times that of Japan, and 9 times that of Germany.

With such a background understanding, it may be easier for everyone to understand China's recent performance in various fields, in addition to Huawei, BYD, TikTok, etc., there are also large aircraft C919 that have been commercially operated, and wide-body C929 that has been developed in development, of course, high-speed rail, grand space programs (moon landing, Mars exploration, International Space Station), and the fourth aircraft carrier and long-range strategic bomber, H-20, etc.

It's no wonder that Baldwin would conclude his study by emphasizing that China is now the world's only manufacturing giant, with a broad and deep industrial base that can help China gain a competitive advantage in almost all areas. Undoubtedly, this situation and trend will also have a far-reaching impact on the global industrial, economic, social and political ecology in the future, which deserves great attention.

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The author is a well-known commentator on Phoenix TV)