[spopejoy]

> "Does foreign investment ... make workers better off?" ... "Yes, vastly."

This argument didn't survive the 2010s, the elephant graph argument has since been thoroughly trashed as the rentier-class propaganda it always was.

China is not some meek recipient of Western wealth but instead a canny operator to the benefit of their upper classes and rulers, outsmarting the rest of the world for not the first time in human history. The West is the tail, not the dog here; foreign investment was there for the taking in a shortsighted race to the bottom.