China was actually trying to heavily establish offshoring in the Philippines—but that has seemingly dried up with the increasing South China Sea tensions.
I've never sensed any real desire for China to offshore to the Philippines, given its military alliance with the US. Maybe they dangle the prospect from time to time to try to pry the Philippines away. They have much friendlier targets in Southeast Asia, with Thailand and Malaysia at the top of the list.
A lot of people don't know this but one of the strengths of China is their huge expat community all across Asia.
When Dutch people arrived in what is now Indonesia in the 16th century they ran into Chinese merchants- the only locals who could keep up their mercantile endeavours.
A massive portion of them have blood and political relations with HK and Taiwan, and the younger generations don't have the same level of attachment to China as older less educated Nanyang Chinese do.
You can see this in Singapore and Thailand, with Millenial/GenZ Nanyang Chinese who can't even speak Mandarin anymore and almost entirely consume Western media.
In Malaysia, PRC nationalism is stronger, but that's in reaction to horrid race relations between Chinese and Malays/Bumiputera due to policies like "Ketuanan Melayu", memories/experiences from the various race riots of the 1960s-70s, and also the insularness/otherness of the Chinese community compared to other communities in Malaysia.
Not only that, but the Philippines has a tiny manufacturing sector compared to other major SEA economies. [1][2] I wonder if grandparent was thinking of a different country.
> I wonder if grandparent was thinking of a different country
Nope! I was speaking of offshoring mostly in the services industry, not the manufacturing industry[1]. Things like call centers (as you linked.) Chinese companies like BBK use Philippines call centres to serve customers in English-language markets. Which isn't at-all uncommon—the US does the same thing—but China hadn't been doing much offshoring of any kind until the last decade, and the little they have done has focused almost solely onto the Philippines.
There's also something that you might not exactly call "offshoring", but it's a related idea. It's a combination of "exclave-building" and "foreign investment": Chinese companies responding to increasing levels of Chinese tourism in the Philippines by buying up Filipino companies (most visibly in the hospitality industry, but also everywhere from construction to finance) and modifying those companies to cater more to Chinese-audience interests; then, within China, promoting tourism to the Philippines — and specifically to those cities they've built up a presence within — to increase ROI on those investments. From a Filipino perspective, this was kind of a virtuous cycle, as it resulted in a lot of money being pumped into their economy. But this too has now sharply declined.
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[1] But why hasn't China begun to outsource manufacturing yet?
AFAIK, it's because the Chinese manufacturing sector has so much inertia — so much built up talent, so much invested CapEx, so many local partner relationships, so many achieved efficiencies of scale — that even if domestic labor prices seriously rise within China, it'll take a long time before companies are willing to bite the bullet and invest in moving any of that.
And it's also a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: if you first offshore some middle step of manufacturing, the rest of the manufacturing process would still be cheapest for you [with your existing China-based processes] to continue to do in China; so now you'll have to ship raw goods out to the offshoring country, and then bring processed goods back into China for finishing. And during that, you'll be in competition with "full-pipeline Chinese" companies that aren't bothering to do that.
IMHO I'd mostly only expect China to offshore steps that either exist at the beginning or end of a manufacturing process. Especially origination of raw goods, e.g. mining. Which would seemingly be the long-term goal of China's infrastructure investments in various African countries.
The English speaking call centers are probably better described as service imports than offshoring. There are no English speaking call centers based on the mainland to begin with. English speakers on the mainland would likely find much more lucrative opportunities than working in a call center.
The US government has put a lot of effort into isolating China from the Phillippines. It's just statecraft and covert influence campaigns, nothing to do with the moral supremacy of anti-imperialism.
This comment ignores the facts of Chinese naval activities that many of their neighbors, including the Philippines, are wary of. You can say that US diplomacy is taking advantage of these facts in a way you don't like, but pretending the facts do not exist makes it necessary for people who do know them to ignore you.
"Ignores" is a strong word, I did nothing of the sort.
The Phillippines has the opportunity to deal with their relationship with China themselves, or the US can whisper in the ears of its leaders to take certain actions, making promises to them that make the offer all but irresistible.
The way you framed your comment makes it seem like you think the Phillippines is what, too noble of a country to bend under US influence?
"Ignores" may or may not be a strong word, but it's certainly the most accurate one I can think of to describe what you did. You ignored it. As in you failed to account for what is called outside of China "the elephant in the room." Kind of odd that you find it triggering. It's almost as if you are not being entirely honest.
> It's just statecraft and covert influence campaigns
I'm sure that has something to do with it, but such campaigns are catalyzed by china's military aggression in the south pacific. Morality is an afterthought.
> Unlike earlier psyop missions, which sought specific tactical advantage on the battlefield, the post-9/11 operations hoped to create broader change in public opinion across entire regions.
> ...
> Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”
>The US government has put a lot of effort into isolating China from the Phillippines.
Let's not forget that some of China's isolation is self inflicted. China's nine dash line map, claiming 90% of the South China Sea, only drove their neighbors into the US's open arms.
totally agree, you have to so naive to believe it's not US gov's influence that's maneuvering this behind the scene, just like in Japan, South Korea and other China's neighboring countries.
Confused about what point you're attempting to make here?
Political conflict with a trade partner obviously leads to reduced trade, no matter the parties involved. What part of that statement are you taking issue with?
> Looks like militarism and imperialism are not compatible at that crazy new 21th century world
Your faux confusion isn't really impressing anyone. Is the US, the most militarist and imperialist nation in the world by far at the moment, "compatible" with the "crazy new 21st century world"?
I've also yet to see any practical examples of Chinese militarism or imperialism. I keep hearing that it's going to start happening any day now, but then it never does. What I do see is the hegemon (the US) trying to take down a rising superpower via economic warfare, and by creating instability in the region - a typical behavior of a militarist and imperialist nation.
Hong Kong. Or the many "shadow CCP police" instances in other sovereign nations.
Or did you just conveniently ignore those? Just because they don't wear uniforms and march in lines doesn't mean there isn't power projection going on.
Its not faux. I'm genuinely asking what about the original comment you disagreed with. It didn't really have anything to do with what you're talking about, so, Im wondering what connection you're trying to make.
Do you think political conflict makes trade better, and are using the US as an example? It doesn't seem like you're disagreeing with the original premise, but rather just aggressively responding with a tangent.
You've pointed out what the US is doing. That's good, but you're clearly biased, so let me tell you two things that China is doing that is contributing for that instability you've mentioned: claims in the south china sea that no country would accept if it was done to them and a major naval build up.
You need two to tango and both the US and China are dancing right now. Anyone only blaming one side need to stop for a second, take their US or China tinted glasses, and look again at the problem.
> Anyone only blaming one side need to stop for a second [...]
When it comes to military coercion (wars, threats), and imperialism, it only takes one bad actor to cause problems.
When there are two sides, or three, it just means more actors willing to push around everyone else.
Albeit, they amplify each other. Their respective needs to dominate encourage each others' aggressive tendencies. And it is much easier to justify/ignore/repeat misbehaviors when there are other aggressors to point at.
The point I was trying to make (probably made a bad job at it) is that there is more than one bad actor in the Pacific and the person I replied to only blames one side.
Sure, the US has their bases there (many since WW2), but we can't blame the US alone when we also have China making threats and claims that scare the heck out of other countries. The US doesn't need to move a finger to have Taiwan or Philippines on their side... these countries know what they're up against and will, for obvious reasons, want to have a "big guy" on their side.
In a few years China will not only have US bases around them, but also a handful of countries that won't side with them on anything. And that's how the next version of the "Pacific NATO" will be created... the US will of course take advantage of it, but it could not exist without a China that makes overreaching claims, threats, and their huge military.
> it could not exist without a China that makes overreaching claims, threats, and their huge military.
Good point.
Year after year, China was outpacing the world economically in numbers and strategic position.
Their future appeared to have no ceiling.
But they self-sabotaged by reverting from quietly accumulating strength to loudly showcasing strength via consolidation & provocation.
Despite no pressing need, they amplified military risk, economic & technological friction, undermined trust & provoked intense global resistance. The strategic value they destroyed is immense:
Poof! The presumed “Century of China” looks very different now. More like another Cold War.
Take a look at a map of US bases around China and then try to find any Chinese bases near the US, and you’ll understand who’s “militarist” and who isn’t.
America has been sabre rattling about the South China Sea for two decades now, a sea named after China that China has sailed through for some 4,000 years.
Is it any wonder that China builds out a navy to defend waters off its own shores that America has crossed an ocean to patrol?
I'm not particularly anti-US, just an observer of the world and history in general. Post WWII the US has been number one and it wants to keep that crown despite China advancing faster than any other nation for the past decades.
Historically the South China Sea was named that in English because the British just sort of considered everything along the coast "China." This included Thailand (then Siam) and Taiwan (then Formosa). After Vietnam fell into separate kingdoms in 1533 France and Spain claimed ownership of a huge chunk of the waters for quite a long time until the Japanese imperialist era started in 1868. Chinese assertion of ownership came about after negotiations in 1953 when France said Vietnam had no claim on anything offshore and wouldn't let the Japanese return the Spratly Islands to Vietnam (then French Indochina) and insisted Japan hand the islands over to the French directly.
The language used to describe and name things is vastly more powerful than people give it credit for. Just because the British were lazy in their administration and named it after something else nearby doesn't mean that the entire sea belongs to the current Chinese state.
> Is it any wonder that China builds out a navy to defend waters off its own shores
"Off its own shores"!? Is that what the kids are calling it these days? [0]
As an "observer of the world", I suggest checking exactly how much and how far the PRC has been claiming exclusive ownership over waters that are closer to their neighbors' shores. (Neighbors with their own ancestors who probably did even more sailing.)
I found a map from a deleted Reddit account with a lot of replies about how there aren't any US-controlled bases near China. It even had one in China. I'd like a link to an accurate map since I couldn't find one.
From the list I can see on Wikipedia, all of the nearby bases are in Korea and Japan.
More useful might be a map of US forces near China, not caring about who owns the base. And some comparable maps from the last 50 years to see how it's changed over time.
Most bases have been there since before you were born (probably) and before China was a rising power.
In any case, my point is that you only attribute fault to one side, when you have the other side making claims and starting to flex in front of smaller countries. Let's cut the BS here, that is not China playing nice and promoting stability.
It also doesn't take much to understand that the smaller, way less powerful countries that feel threaten will try to find allies. Who's the other big guy in the Pacific? Of course they want the US to be near them and on their side in case shit hits the fan.
This reminds me of Russia, which invaded Ukraine to keep it under their control, but then is surprised to learn that their actions made Ukrainians dislike them even more and are shocked that other countries that could rushed to join NATO. People like you course blame the US alone, missing the fact that NATO would crumble (like it was already happening) if Russia didn't make weekly threats about nuking European cities or actually invaded their neighbours.
See, the problem with this is that he never did threaten that. It's CIA propaganda. Indeed such a threat would make zero sense even logically, since from the standpoint of China (and the US State Department) Taiwan _is_ China.
The US's official public position on the One China Policy is a diplomatic front for the benefit of US relations with the PRC. The US maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan through the American Institute in Taiwan, an organization owned by the US government and staffed by members of the state department.
Xi Jinping opened the Chinese Communist Party's twice-a-decade National Congress on Sunday by pledging to never renounce using force to take control of Taiwan
Chinese President Xi Jinping has met former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou and said that outside influence cannot stop the “family” reunion between Beijing and Taipei....Beijing views the self-ruled island as a province that must be reunited with mainland China, and it has not ruled out using force to assert its claims to Taiwan.
China's "reunification" with Taiwan is inevitable, President Xi Jinping said in his New Year's address on Sunday, striking a stronger tone than he did last year
Chinese President Xi Jinping bluntly told President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided
I don’t see anything in any of this that contradicts my claim, although I can see how you were misled by the wording. “Never renouncing the use of force” is not the same thing as “threatening to use force”. Put bluntly, all China has to do to reunify with Taiwan peacefully is grow its economy and wait for another decade for the bottom to fall out here in the US. And yes, it is inevitable that they will reunify, and almost certain that it’ll happen without bloodshed unless the US makes them believe unrealistic things about an island right next to an industrial colossus 60x the size being able to somehow “beat China” militarily with or without our “help”. I pray to god Taiwan doesn’t believe this because it’ll be utterly and completely destroyed otherwise. Shit the US couldn’t even beat the Taliban or Houthis. What makes anyone believe that it can even pose a significant threat on the other side of the world?
The idea of reunification is less popular than it's ever been in Taiwan since Taiwan's Nation Chengchi University started polling in the late 1990s. What you don't seem to understand is that unification is most supported among the older generations in Taiwan. With time, Taiwan will only become less open to the idea of reunification as the older generations die off. Currently less than 10% support the idea, down from nearly 20% two decades ago. You've likely never met a Taiwanese if you believe the Taiwanese population is open to the idea.
The US has also never engaged with the Houthis, except to protect marine shipping. There was never an attempt to "defeat" them by the US.
This is more of what I'm talking about. It's evident you've never talked with a Taiwanese. The younger generations of Taiwanese don't oppose the idea of reunification because they don't like China, due to this idea of US propaganda you have, but because they don't feel Chinese, due to living independent from the PRC for their entire lives. Have you ever asked yourself why they would care to entertain the idea of "reunification" to a country they had never been a part of?
Approximately 1 million victims (mostly civilian) just in this century, with trillions spent on wars. Multiple continuous wars since WW2. Iraq (2x), Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti. Multiple proxy wars on top of that. Need I continue?
Umm.. merrily bombing the middle east ? There are occupation bases in Syria merrily looting oil. And selling $20 billion in weapons to bomb the middle east even more. Americans seem to have blinkers the size of titanosaurs and a "I cannot see it" attitude when it comes to their military.
Merrily is a slightly biased way of putting it I would say, but ok, it does happen, one can dispute why.
Looting oil in Syria, I didn’t know this, do you have a source?
Now, we are comparing, right, so let’s list what china is doing, shall we?
Invading multiple neighbouring countries? Check. (Isn’t that the definition of imperialism?)
Exterminating populations considered hostile? Check.
And I’m not even talking about Africa, where “colonialism” wouldn’t necessarily be an exaggeration.
I do think that, today, China is the most imperialist.
The US is far from a model, mind you and Europe also did significantly more horrible things in the past, but I’m talking about today.
Which nations has China "invaded" recently ? Kindly elaborate. Please note that the U.S. has occupation bases in both Iraq and Syria presently. U.S. military and intelligence has directly and in-directly killed more tens of thousands of civilians within the last decade in the middle-east. (I won't even go into the Syrian war sponsorship since whatever Obama did is "old news" to Americans now)
Looting of oil - there are several sources. But if you don't believe them - find a Syrian on telegram and ask him.
It was reasonably well reported that Delta crescent energy extracts oil from occupied Syrian oil fields - of-course passed off as propaganda in helping the Kurds in the U.S. media.
Hello, Yemen ? The full sanctions block and complete intelligence analysis, weapons and targeting given to PMC's and "allied" forces causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people ? This was an extraordinary extermination of the civilian population that got black-holed in the U.S. media. Of-course any time the population resisted, they got bombed - even weddings.
China's imperialism is orders of magnitude lower than the U.S. Its like comparing a ravaging T-Rex with a stubborn mouse.
PS: The U.S. has now merrily resumed bombing Yemen again since the last few months. Yes, I use the word "merrily" because executives of the American military sector are happy about this. Utterly no bias there, just point-blank honesty.
And again, I’m not saying the US are not imperialists, and they were the most imperialists for a very long while, but I really think China beat them. They still have less means to their imperialists ambitions, but their ambitions are by far bigger than these of the US nowadays.
In the end the conversation is a bit ridiculous, they are both very much imperialists, and it also depends on how you measure it. Russia is, from a political point of view, probably even more imperialist, they just have less means. The ratio means/ambitions of china is what put them at the top of this very sad list for me.
I didn’t know about the syria oil fields, I can’t even say I’m surprised though.
Please do not conflate territorial disputes with "invasion". When has China started bombing their neighbors - or any other nation for that matter ? At-least their territorial disputes are with the the nations neighbouring them and not nations across the world.
Well, the recent US claim of national ownership of the Artic seabed and Bering sea in contravention of long-established conventions of UNCLOS is even more imperialistic. But, hey, its OK when Americans do it.
Same with India before 2020 - China used to be India's largest FDI partner before the Galwan crisis.
After that, the Indian government "persuaded" Chinese players to sell off their Indian assets to Indian, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, and American players instead.
4 years later, the GlobalTimes - which was extremely provocative against India - has started pushing out content arguing that India should begin reopening it's economy to Chinese players.
I swear a lot of wars get started by guys like Xi who after seizing power internally try to seize power externally and it often ends really really badly for the host country.
Seriously, the leader of Germany in the 1930's, Stalin, Putin, Saddam Hussein, now Xi. All seized power domestically and then couldn't help themselves when it came to neighboring countries.
Is it me or is this one of those, only other people we don’t like do bad things.
You’d need to generalize the pop science to the British, French, Spanish and portugues empires then address the genocide of indigenous tribes by America, Canada and Australia
Obviously this is heated topic, but did it ends really bad for USSR under Stalin rule (until his death)?
I mean it was bad for many citizens but other areas were actually ok-ish considering war destructions.
I’m not trying to make point about Stalin. Just trying to find if this is really a rule, but my historical knowledge is pretty limited. Intuitively I feel any overpowered political entity end up like shit. But interesting to see real data.
If you ask the Russians the Brezhnyev rule was the best (stability, stagnation), with Stalin trailing him (won WW2, rapid industrialization). If you ask westeners, Khrushchev (space race, reforms) and Gorbachev (glasnost).
You could imagine an alternate universe where Stalin gets dysentery and dies. The USSR tells Ribentrop to f'off. And then joins the allies declaring war on Germany when Hitler invades Poland.
Also I forgot to add Mussolini and his designs on Greece, Balkans, North and the Horn of Africa.
