Any company should definitely be planning for the inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner.

If not caused by politics, then by demographic crash.

▲ mywacaday an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I'm curious why you think China will decline or be eliminated, I always thought that China was a reliable as a production/trading partner and that they planned for decades ahead with programs like Belt and Road Initiative unlike western politics that only looks as far as the next election. Very open to correction on this though, thinking about it not sure what formed my opinion on this.

▲ azinman2 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It’s foolish to be completely dependent on anyone else, no matter how stable the CURRENT situation is. We’ve seen this with the gulf countries and Strait of Hormuz, China with rare earth metals, Ukraine with grains, etc. Once China goes to take Taiwan all bets are off…

▲ jorts an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Their aging population will pose an extremely serious problem in the coming decades.

	▲	dhx 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If demographics are a problem for chipmaking in China, then it's good to compare against key chipmaking countries. To compare, 2024 (UN) fertility rates (highest-lowest):[1] `US: 1.62 Japan: 1.23 China: 1.02 ROC: 0.86 ROK: 0.75 (where an increase to 0.8 in 2025 was cause for celebration, as is a predicted increase to 0.85 by mid 2026)[2]` Alternatively (and perhaps accounting for migration etc), UN 2024 forecasts population differences in these countries between 2024-2050 as:[3] `US: +10% Japan: -16% China: -8% ROC: -6% ROK: -12%` [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer... [2] https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/01/24/IVHGRT... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_...

▲ actionfromafar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The Belt and Road initiative is a nice try, but it's not a roaring success. The flaws of democracies are easy to see because of the openness, and whatever goes wrong usually do so over a long time. Dictatorships go wrong in more dramatic ways.

▲ adityamwagh 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Labour is one part of the equation. China has really well-designed supply chains and economic zones, where getting access to related components just means walking/driving few minutes down the road. They have made huge strides in robotics as well, so the argument for demographic collapse is weak IMHO.

> inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner

I don't think this will happen anytime soon, that companies will need short-term planning.

▲ pjc50 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Over what timescale? Is the presumption that China, the country of one child policy, will do nothing about the problem?

	▲	xienze 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Is the presumption that China, the country of one child policy, will do nothing about the problem? I don't think they're foolish enough to invite the entire third world into the country to bolster low birth rates like the west does. So that leaves doing it the old fashioned way, which is a slow ship to turn around.