> China wants the US economy to flounder.

Why would they possibly want their largest customer to flounder?

I think lot of Americans overestimate how much China needs them. (Understandable, I suppose, since the UK made a similar mistake vis-a-vis the EU about 10 years back.)

From a Chinese perspective I expect China’s largest customer is China. These days it’s actually kind of wild how many Chinese consumer products aren’t (and won’t be) available at US retailers. And a lot of them are quite good.

For a while now China’s wanted to reduce its dependence on the US for a variety of reasons. And undermining the US tech industry, whose products the US government likes to use as a cudgel, may serve that goal quite nicely.

It is largest customer for now, but they try to boost internal consumption as well as diversify client-base. US is also competitor, so China is interested US to fade at least in competitive areas.

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