[tynpeddler]

The west is slowly starting to realize something that China has realized for years; economic policy is not a question of economics but of geopolitical strategy. Free markets are nice in theory (and often in practice), but once you let in bad actors with the clout of a nation state, all the usual assumption behind free markets no longer apply. It's pretty disappointing that, based on what we now know, western economists aided China in gutting western industry under the guise of "China is just subsidizing the west, we'd be stupid not to take advantage." Even worse, we had already rejected that argument when applied to companies like Walmart, but for some reason we thought it would apply to whole national economies.

[sangnoir]

> The west is slowly starting to realize something that China has realized for years; economic policy is not a question of economics but of geopolitical strategy.

I do not believe that this is a recent realization - this goes back to at least the Dutch East India company (VOC). The foundation of the British economy were the vast resources of the British Empire (read colonies) for many decades.

[tynpeddler]

It's one of those things that the west knew and then forgot in the 90's after the cold war ended and we realized how great free markets were at improving people's lives.