A lot of clothes do come from Bangladesh and Vietnam - but yeah, it’s more raw and intermediate products that come from low-GDP-per-capita nations these days.
This is, I think, probably quite a deliberate choice by China. I think their goal is to fundamentally capture as much international manufacturing as possible and be the factory of the world, which functionally gives them tremendous soft power over pretty much every other nation. For example, even US-manufactured munitions are made using components and materials from China, so if the US went to war with China, they could cut off the US’s supply and significantly impede their ability to manufacture munitions.
That’s just pure speculation, though. Occam’s razor would suggest they just want to do trademaxxing, which is also their official stance - though they wouldn’t put it in quite a succinct way, I suppose.
A lot of clothes do come from Bangladesh and Vietnam - but yeah, it’s more raw and intermediate products that come from low-GDP-per-capita nations these days.
This is, I think, probably quite a deliberate choice by China. I think their goal is to fundamentally capture as much international manufacturing as possible and be the factory of the world, which functionally gives them tremendous soft power over pretty much every other nation. For example, even US-manufactured munitions are made using components and materials from China, so if the US went to war with China, they could cut off the US’s supply and significantly impede their ability to manufacture munitions.
That’s just pure speculation, though. Occam’s razor would suggest they just want to do trademaxxing, which is also their official stance - though they wouldn’t put it in quite a succinct way, I suppose.