China's manufacturing strength is creating more room for industrialization across the Global South instead of squeezing it, as the country continues to supply machinery and components to and make investments in developing economies, enabling them to build up their own industrial capacity, said analysts and business leaders.
Earlier this year, a report released by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank based in Washington, DC, claimed that China's continued dominance in low-skilled manufacturing is squeezing the capacity of developing economies, limiting their export opportunities, and leaving less room for them to industrialize and move up global value chains.
Analysts said the so-called "China squeeze" argument rests on the sole assumption that global manufacturing is a fixed pie, with every gain for China coming at the expense of another developing economy — a view that is completely at odds with the way global supply chains work.
Adam Tooze, a professor of history at Columbia University in New York, said the claim lacks a solid empirical basis, and instead turns complex global development challenges into a simplistic narrative that blames China and portrays its industrialization as a threat.
