Decoupling22 May 2023 15:30
Good article:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/decoupling-is-just-going-to-happen
These paragraphs caught my eye:
"Now, imagine you’re the executive of a U.S. company considering whether to put your factories and offices in China (or keep them in China). You see these numbers and read these articles and you realize that the risk of a war over Taiwan is not particularly low. Your next realization will probably be that all of your investments in China will be in extreme danger of being utterly vaporized on the day that the balloon goes up.
In that scenario, the very best outcome is that you’ll be unable to work with your factories and offices in China due to a communications blackout, and that you’ll face substantially more challenging conditions in China once the conflict end, including not being able to liquidate your investments and get your money out of the country due to capital controls.
A worse outcome — which seems not unreasonable, given China’s various other moves and general approach — is that your factories and offices in China will be abruptly nationalized, picked over for intel by the Chinese security services, and asset-stripped. (The worst-case outcome, of course, is World War 3.)"