Chain Reaction Podcast China Supply Dependency
The question addressed here is how healthy is the Western Economies' dependency on China as the 'workshop of the world'?
Waking up to reality- the world's dependency on China continues despite disruptions due to Covid19. China dominates manufacturing in electronic goods and in processing metals that are needed to produce batteries for Electric Vehicles (EV's) such as Cobalt and Lithium. China is regarded as a middle and upper income country according to the World Bank. China is responsible for over 30 per cent of all goods manufactured. China has 133 companies in the world top 500. China has a population of 1.4 billion and has trasnitioned rapidly from an agrarian society to industrial economy. It is now the number one economy overtaking the United States in terms of global market share. China has talented scientists that continue to improve and innovate technologies to support industry and the energy ecosystem.
China has committed to reach Net Zero Targets by 2060. China plans to increase its use of fossil fuel consumption up to 2030 and rapidly reduce that with clean energy up to 2060. China's entry to world markets in recent times began in 1978 as it opened up its closed economy. It contued to transition with entry to the World Trade Orgainzation (WTO) in 2001. During the past twenty years it has set about building ots resource base particularly in metals from the Central Africa Copper Belt – Cobalt in particular is such an important resource eminating fro the DRC.
China has been engaged in a trade war with the US during the past couple of years. This becasue it has access to US markets but continues to deny access to US companies. It also has ambitions to dominate the South East Asian region and continues to claim territories particularly Taiwan.