About China.

There's a growing sense that we ("the free world", western countries + usual friends like Japan, Oz, etc) are about to enter a cold war with China, though, following the COVID-19 debacle.[1] The CPC's ultimate responsibility will likely define the magnitude of that (which may range from mild such as tariffs, to hard e.g. Soviet era, passing by sanctions of various degrees, forbidding companies to even trade let alone joint-venture in China, etc).

Independently of diplomacy, the particular conditions of a pandemic seem to call for less dependence on foreign powers, at least on a continental basis (some capacity for autarky on a temporary basis).

Independently of the above, history shows that out of the 16 last times there was a shift in world's first GDP (here US → China), no less than 12 led to war.[2]

Again independently, the general sentiment towards China has deteriorated faster than ever in 2019 (before crisis), due to the White House posture notably (trade tensions, mutual racism/xenophobia).[3][4] This went even lower recently.[5]

A key factor notably, in my opinion, is that anti-China sentiment used to be correlated with age: people over 50 were more likely to have such a view, while younger categories held a more favorable view; but recent events are likely to sway the opinion across the board. Anyone old enough to have a political opinion isn't likely to "forget" COVID-19 or "forgive" wrongdoings in the matter if responsibility is proven in the public eye.

There is little substance to redeem any of these facts, I'm afraid.

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A personal take on this [Disclaimer: opinion still in flux as information comes in. Strong conviction, but loosely held.]

I don't see how China doesn't lose most of their international credibility in this affair. Once global production and logistics flows are restructured to take China out of the equation (it'll take years, a decade at least I think), it will take an even longer time to come back, if ever (other superpowers, more worthy of trust, may emerge in a generation's time). It will cost the world a lot, may prolong the depression much more than if we looked the other way, but deaths in the 6 figures (possibly an order of magnitude more by then, even two...) is simply unacceptable, reason enough to do it, to isolate them and take the collective hit. We can take it, the combined power of the world minus China is still overwhelmingly capable to drive growth. There are tons of candidates where investment will flock to fund factories, and some of these will come back 'home' for a number of strategic sectors.

I'm afraid China's economic appeal has all but collapsed for this generation (next 10-20 years). I don't think most people realize it yet, but the pile of arguments for a cold war is damning, historically aligned with most precedents, and actually a rare occurrence of too much at once.

(Let us pray there was no malign intent towards the world, for that would likely remove the "cold" adjective above.)

China may just have lost its shot at becoming the world's "leader", and it seems they only have themselves to blame, as their lack of transparency and their negligence for human life are cold hard choices they still keep making, some 30 years after Tiananmen. We hoped China was ready and could change, we thought it would evolve towards a more trustable partner, but instead it maintained its internal dystopia more strongly than ever, and actually engaged actively in trying to change us (remember how, very recently, they were trying to force the NBA and so many corporations to essentially bend to the CPC's propaganda... needless to say, that ship has most likely sailed for good). If we needed a reminder (apparently we did), authoritarianism kills.

So this:

> But good luck with that, since China is a massive trade partner and every country is turning a blind eye to them imprisoning people in concentration camps and harvesting organs. It’s unlikely The States are going to have a change of heart anytime soon.

Seems incredibly anachronic to me. It was true in 2019, but that world is now over, for good.

I agree with everything else you said.

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[1]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3081601/co...

[2]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/

[3]: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/08/13/u-s-views-of-c...

[4]: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/12/05/attitudes-towa...

[5]: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-public-opinion-toward-c...