This is true. A Chinese state bank will loan you a couple million to setup a factory with few questions asked. Loan repayment will be repeatedly deferred until you can find customers. The risk is comparatively low.
As you noted here in the US getting financing to start a small business of any kind, let alone loans to invest in manufacturing is predatory or downright impossible.
The US Government could easily setup a system like for student loans: money for factories and machines without having to jump through a billion hoops, defer payments until you can find some customers, and a department dedicated to retooling the factories that don't make it and handing them to someone else to try again.
We'd need to include more investment in making automation profitable at smaller scales for those starting out but look at anything else (solar, computing) and you can see how scale could lower the cost.
Instead I guess we'll use tariffs to start a trade war.
FWIW it is unfair that countries like China impose tariffs on our products and restrict our ability to operate without a "local partner". But the current effort is ham-fisted at best.
As you noted here in the US getting financing to start a small business of any kind, let alone loans to invest in manufacturing is predatory or downright impossible.
The US Government could easily setup a system like for student loans: money for factories and machines without having to jump through a billion hoops, defer payments until you can find some customers, and a department dedicated to retooling the factories that don't make it and handing them to someone else to try again.
We'd need to include more investment in making automation profitable at smaller scales for those starting out but look at anything else (solar, computing) and you can see how scale could lower the cost.
Instead I guess we'll use tariffs to start a trade war.
FWIW it is unfair that countries like China impose tariffs on our products and restrict our ability to operate without a "local partner". But the current effort is ham-fisted at best.