> immense supply chain options.

so this begs the question - why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense? My unresearched answer is that the gov't policies of the west doesn't induce it, while china's gov't does (which includes targeted subsidies, tax incentives and state driven finances).

The "hidden" cost is that the workers in this supply chain isn't as well paid and isn't as powerful as the workers from the west (there's no unions in china for example).

> why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense?

They used to be. Since roughly the 80's, policymakers have decided it is better for the shareholders to outsource most of that industry overseas to China and India and etc, where the labor is cheaper.

Note that workers and especially union members actually have every incentive to keep that production domestic, but shareholders and CEOs profit when they can cut labor costs and the typical Western consumer values cheap products more than the health of domestic industry.

Western industries have been supported by subsidies, tax incentives, bailouts, low interest rates, and a dozen other things from the gov't but the same policies reward outsourcing and financial engineering more than actual production capacity.

> why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense?

The US explicitly chose to be a service economy. China explicitly chose to be a mercantile economy.

The US can absolutely switch paths, it will just take a long time and will require pushing millions into poverty. But we're on track to do it.

40+ years of deliberate policy choices to prioritise growth through finacialisation rather than domestic industrial production

The West (with particular emphasis on the USA) got infected with this insane ideology that the best way to restore democracy to China would be to "corrupt" them with capitalism. Hence open them up to international trade, allow joining WTO etc. With prosperity the people would demand democracy.

You can also see this in the German approach to energy trade with Russia.

This toxic idea needs to be put to bed. All it did was feed and enrich foreigners at the expense of locals and create supply chain dependencies that made themselves hostage.

There are lots of reasons, but also, having 1.4B people under the same government that has more-or-less aligned strategic goals help. Like supply chains within Japan, from what I've seen and experienced, are pretty strong. However, the options will always look smaller compared to a gigantic organism across the pond.

The beneficial owners of the US economy sold our industrial manufacturing base to the Communist Party of China because the price was good. China got our hard power and US capital owners got to break the back of the US labor movement. A win-win deal for the ages.

The West only represents a minority on this planet. China alone has 1 billion people.

The last 200 years has been an aberration and it is currently in the process of being corrected.