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China's government has no particular need to be responsive to its people, and its history as a nation state dwarfs ours. In that sense, China has a much longer rope than the U.S. government does.

I love how you pointed out how their history as a nation state dwarfs ours.  My understanding is that outside of certain places, China was mostly a bunch of backwater villages, very very rural, very little innovation or technology.  I'm under the impression that there are still lots of places like that outside of the major cities.  

When we were little, they used to compel us to finish out plates by telling us that "people in china are starving!".  

Trump trade advisor Navarro is a doofus who sniffed too much white-out and says and advises dumb things in the area he's supposed to be an expert in, experts say
Trump trade advisor Navarro is a doofus who sniffed too much white-out and says and advises dumb things in the area he's supposed to be an expert in, experts say

FIFY

Well, if we take before ca. 1800 as "preindustrial", we did have some large cities functioning and quite a bit of art and science being done.  

I'd agree that many people back then lived in small villages globally.

Founded around 1325, the Aztec capital, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, was by 1519 among the largest cities in the world with a population of around 300,000 (although some estimates range as high as 500,000).

Well, the British had a pretty big empire for centuries. Europe had a lot of culture and innovation. China, one of the biggest countries and most populous, but what did they innovate ?  Gun powder ? 

Paper and spaghetti noodles also came from China.  Paper was a pretty big one.


Among the earliest inventions were the abacus, the sundial, and the Kongming lantern.^{[citation needed]} The Four Great Inventions – the compass, gunpowder, papermaking, and printing – were among the most important technological advances, only known to Europe by the end of the Middle Ages 1000 years later. The Tang dynasty (AD 618–906) in particular was a time of great innovation.^{[citation needed]} A good deal of exchange occurred between Western and Chinese discoveries up to the Qing dynasty.

Topical to earlier conversation this morning:

From a supplier of mine, about an hour ago.  (anecdotal, of course, but real nevertheless)

• We will be moving our manufacturing out of China, and into Thailand.  Estimated time for start-up is 90 days.
• We are cancelling the earlier announced May 15^th price file increase; instead we will apply a tariff surcharge line to invoice, adjusted to specific tariff percentages we paid out on items. 

Currently:

• we have good inventory at zero tariffs on blah blah
• we have very low inventory on blah blah, these are also zero tariffs, (this is shared inventory with Canada).