China will neither decline nor be eliminated, but there will be hardships from now on and - it would be very bad to have any kind of key reliance on them.

China threatened to pull rare earths from the menu which is how they beat Trump in the trade war, among other things which were not going to be sustainable aka farm stuff.

They want to take Taiwan eventually and that will cause potential confrontation.

So the key to China is that it just can't be a lynchpin for anything.

Major trading partner - yes.

Key partner for anything - no.

The US is already a material player in Chips, outside of Trump's 'knee jerk' and reactionary instinct based on 1980's geopolitics and stupid understanding of trade (aka 'importing = getting ripped off', or 'other people doing similar things = stealing from us') ... it does make sense to have material domestic capabilities.

The only place that can be more or less trusted to not play hard shenanigans is Europe. They will do their own regulatory things, and play rough with exports, but they would not threaten something hard.

Europe has underplayed the value of ASML etc..

China has also flipped from 'Quiet and Bide Time' to the opposite, and are not a nice geoplitical actor in their direct environs like S. China sea, although are relatively 'neutral' on most other things.

Best thing is to a) have 'reliable domestic capability' b) learn to build stuff, if not labour intensive ways c) don't depend on sketchy places for key things d) moslty carrots, have a big stick when needed.

China will never 'play fair' in terms of what we would consider 'fair' - they have their own views of everything - that's fine - but it just means has to be manaaged.

Also China should not have any access to data or popular social media / entertainment etc. TikTok must be locally managed, and strong data sovereignty rules also apply.

More of a 'good fences make good neighbours' think with them.

See former Aussie PM Rudd on 'Strategic Guardrails' - he has a good understanding.