Pursuing greater self-sufficiency also comes with other risks that are harder to quantify. When the pandemic spread, for example, nearly every nation in the world turned inward, closing borders to try to keep the virus out. No country did it more thoroughly than China, which has now kept its borders shut for more than two years in what was, at least for a time, a successful strategy to keep out COVID-19 infections. But the pandemic coincided with China’s move away from its decades long embrace of the global economy to pursue greater technological autonomy, in part to encourage national innovation and reduce dependence on the United States and other Western countries. It is often a small step from prudent self-sufficiency to damaging attempts at autarky.
My War on Globalism 26
