SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: America did not lose to China. America lost to Washington.

https://x.com/OopsGuess/status/2089518305560420555

𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦

Foreign Affairs just spent an entire article saying, in polite establishment English:

America did not lose to China. America lost to Washington.

Chinese firms became global leaders in EVs, batteries, robotics and advanced manufacturing.

America’s response was not to compete harder.

It was to hide behind tariffs, bans, security reviews and increasingly hysterical definitions of “national security.”

Europe lost to comfort.
America is losing to protection.

Chinese companies grew up under pressure:

brutal domestic competition, price wars, tariffs, sanctions, export controls, technology blockades, supply-chain attacks.

Washington kept expecting China to kneel.
China kept adapting.

Every attempt to cripple Chinese industry became another stress test.
Every stress test hardened it.

Meanwhile, American firms are increasingly protected from the very competitors that would force them to improve.

Protect a tiger long enough and eventually you get a house cat.

That may work inside a fenced domestic market.

But what happens when that house cat goes abroad and meets companies that have spent twenty years fighting for survival in every market on earth?

Protection can preserve market share.
It cannot manufacture competitiveness.

Chinese firms were forged by pressure.
Western firms are being insulated from it.

And sooner or later, the difference shows.

Foreign Affairs now admits those barriers are hurting U.S. competitiveness, isolating American consumers from frontier technology, and risking turning the United States into “an island of legacy firms and practices.”

And the funniest part?

The proposed solution is:

learn from China.

Let foreign competitors in.
Impose strategic conditions.
Localize production.
Train workers.
Force domestic firms to compete.

In other words, Washington spent years calling China’s industrial strategy “unfair” only to discover that its own alternative was simply:

self-harm with a national-security logo.