EU producers of steel, aluminium, cement, etc. are already paying a fee for the emissions they produce. This is one reason why global trade is hopelessly distorted as only a few countries have a serious stance towards climate change. As this COP has shown, these are mainly countries form Europe, Latin America, and some Island countries. China as the world’s worst polluter is clearly not among these countries as we see once again.
Yes. As Natalia Zubarevich, professor of the Department of Economic And Social Geography of Russia of the Moscow State University, predicted in June 2023 about the Russian economy: ‘There Will Be no Collapses, but Rather a Viscous, Slow Sinking into Backwardness’
I liked her statements back then and have been remembering them whenever I read reports like this one on the Russian economy. The interview is more than 2 years old, and with hindsight we now must say that Professor Zubarevich seems to have foreseen everything. I never heard of her before but she must be a very good economist.
Some time ago there was a similar discussion in another thread, I did a brief research back then and post this with little edits as it fits here, too.
Western nations have already begun to diversify away from China, in their supply chains as well as in in raw materials. I admit that no Western country has arrived where it may want to be in its ‘de-risking’, but we must also look at China’s dependencies.
To name an example, China depends on imports for its supply of zirconium, a little-known critical mineral. Australia is the world’s largest producer and supplies China with 41 per cent of its imports, as China has already admitted.
The West also accounts for a high share of China’s imports of other important goods, such as some foodstuffs, certain raw materials, and other products. If we look at China’s import/export ratios, we see it is 65:1 for ores, slag, and ash, and with an import share of almost 50 per cent the West holds a high leverage in this sector.
Chinese import/export ratios for mineral fuels is 8:1 (although the Western share is below 20 per cent here as the majority comes form emerging economies), but for grain it is 21:1, for meat it is 36:1. (I hope that the West will never use food as some sort of ‘trade weapon’ - as China has been doing - but I am not sure.) There are may similar examples in the industry.
China is almost unilaterally dependent on ‘aircraft and spacecraft machinery and parts thereof’, an important product group. Although the import/export ratio is quite low (2:1), the western share of Chinese imports is some 97 percent, according to the German Economic Institute (opens pdf – German source). This category displays China’s highest import dependency on the West, and there is practically no substitution by alternative trading partners, and in China there is only a small degree of substitutability possible through an expansion of domestic production.
[If interested, EU-China and other trade data with relevant links can be found here.
Also, Europe is an attractive market as China’s EU export are rising - making a decisive contribution to the Chinese GDP.
So I don’t say that the EU or the West doesn’t depend on China, but I say that China depends also on the West if we look at the data of highly complex global supply chains. It’s certainly not a straightforward one-way dependency as conventional reporting (influenced by China?) make it seem in my opinion.