“China would be wise to avoid going MAD in the trade war” | SCMP

If China tries to disrupt US supply chains by stopping exports of key intermediate products, there are things the US can do:

The most crucial intermediate good the US can withhold is advanced semiconductors. In April, the US banned the sale of such chips to the Chinese telecoms giant ZTE as punishment for the company's violations of US export rules. ZTE's operations were effectively shut down and had Trump not granted a reprieve, ZTE would not have survived.

The US could also order Boeing and United Technologies to withhold aircraft parts and jet engines on which China's large commercial fleet depends, effectively grounding many Chinese jetliners. The US could also forbid Google from offering support to Android smartphone software in China. All of this would impose much higher costs on China than on the US.

Yet the media is covering this as if it's a good option for China — BBC at least and just now. 

This article is rather good in the danger of a MAD strategy for China. Time is on the side of the US. Not, to repeat, that tariffs should have been the way to take this in. Still something good might come out of it all. What we don't need is for China to get on its high horse, all hissy and wounded or overweening pride. It's time for its vaunted pragmatism to shine.
LATER: the comments are pretty much anti the article and vitriolically anti American. They slam Pei Mingxin as being a would-be Gordon Chang with his China-doom scenarios. I’ve seen elsewhere that there are lot of pro-Beijing flunkies on the SCMP sites smearing the US wheeever they can. Given what we know of the legions on the internet censoring anything anti-Beijing, paid censors, why wouldn’t they also be on the pages of Asia’s largest and most independent English language newspaper. 

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The full article: 

China would be wise to avoid going MAD in the trade war
https://sc.mp/2PXDSVo

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