[astebbin]

If this were true, surely it would be in China's best interest to cease its many protectionist trade policies immediately. On the contrary, protectionism seems to work well when other countries are willing to put up with it, either for access to your workforce or access to your markets.

[roenxi]

You might want to check the 'work well' part of that. The average American has 4x times more than the average Chinese national, even after ppp adjustments. I couldn't quickly find figures for the median, which I'd refer to use. China's net migration is also negative.

It seems highly reasonable that China would be doing better if they toned down their protectionist policies.

[ben_w]

On the other hand, China’s GDP PPP per capita has gone up by a factor of 5.294 between 2000 and 2016 (source: WolframAlpha), so even if it is being held back by protectionism, that doesn’t look like a major part of the story.

[makomk]

I've noticed that this idea that trade tariffs hurt the country applying them is often brought up when the US applies tariffs, but doesn't seem to get so much play in the press when talking about China's tariffs. Instead, they're generally treated as some kind of ingenious Chinese masterstroke that only hurts the US, even when they're on key food supplies. It's like powerful folks have some ideological or commercial reason why they don't want the US to impose tariffs, and arguments are invoked or discarded as necessary to push for this.

[olalonde]

Yes it would. It still has a long way to go but China had a massive economic boom after Deng Xiaoping largely liberalized the economy. Hong Kong and Taiwan are still far ahead of course.