THBT India should substantially ease restrictions on Chinese trade and investment

Last Update - Wed Oct 16 2024

Tobi Leung: 82 


United Asian Debating Championship 2023 ROUND 7 (UADC 2023)

IR

GOV

GW

INTRODUCTION

PROVERB

“there's no faster way to get burned than staring into the dragon's mouth and no more embarrassing way to get burnt than doing it twice”


Can be replaced with honestly anything



(1) The first question I want to ask is why is China an unreliable and dangerous trade partner ?

I want to flag from the beginning that proposition does not clear their initial burden of proof 


The gov side didn’t tackle one of our main points 


 burden of proof: When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.



Accomplishes two things:
a) It’s something they should have clarified even if we(opp) didn’t point it out 

b) Creates a foundational pillar for Gov’s case and rebuts it 


We point out that China is particularly dry of capital because a whole host of internal crises and failed (O)BRI Investments have left it illiquid


Summarizes their’s (Opp) main response  


So it doesn't matter if they can offer you long-term debts because what it's not about the time Horizon by which you can pay back it's that China has no money to give you 

Somewhat circulatory and avoids the main question.

Can be Improved by: 

The loans are given out in "phases"


Refutes Gov’s claim that Chinese loans are better as they can be paid back much later compared to Western Investment  


Meta Debating 

Their strategy and response is to debate in parallel. Counter assert a

bunch of reasons why the West is weak to which weaken a certain infinite number of reasons why the West is strong 



The way you can resolve this issue then is through three different metrics from me 


Tells the judge how to break this deadlock

A) first compare the extent and likely speed of recovery

Analysis

so yes the US is facing some inflation it has that much more under control it has non-hostile

and rapidly growing Tech sector that has largely been unaffected by the inflation and even unaffected by the pandemic to a great extent


The US is less affected by global financial hurdles 


Impact

All of this is to suggest that all of the mechanisms available to the US are such that it's going to be able to recover faster and  much quicker than China can at a more reliable rate 


B)The second way to compare this is to talk about risk 


1st Claim
Unreliable Capital even if China has it, is infinitely worse than a smaller but steady stream of capital from the West 


East VS West investment


Reason
because of the massive opportunity cost of a collapse and……..

Potential negative impact from of an economic collapse 

Example 

if you want to talk about intuition here think about it when SVB failed it was immediately bought out 


Analysis

because there is a robust and diversified network of banks in the US which continue to keep the money flowing whenever Grant failed every major Chinese Bank was affected because they were all exposed to the same volatile property market 


 Reasons why US is better at handling financial pitfalls than China 

Impact

so it is a structural risk of contingent that China hasn't made significant steps towards improving


2nd Claim
but the second thing to note is about political risk

Analysis

let's say the best case happens and you are able for some Indian firms to

infiltrate the Chinese market the problem with that is that there's a limit to success in China the CCP is never going to let acute growth such a size that you will be able to reasonably compete with its national champions even

if you are the biggest cell phone provider in India you will never be allowed to get to the same scale as Huawei and that's the problem with

Chinese Capital it's volatile and subject to the whims of the CCP that you have far less control and transparency


3rd Claim

over the third weighing metric here is to talk about the nature of investing we answer the question they don't which is

what will the Chinese money go into when they say well it's not a debate about protectionism because then you can just

protect the sectors that are important the problem with that is that those are the sectors that Chinese money would flow into so if you are going to protect every sector that's important every sector with potential then it's not clear why China has any incentive to invest in you the more reasonable framing here is that you would have to

make some concessions let China come into your Tech Market let China come into your manufacturing Market even if

those markets have the potential to expand and be massive in the future these are the kinds of concessions that

we explain are particularly dangerous to make especially when China's interests through a large degree overlap