Our eggs in one basket
As lockdown easing continues and we look to return to some sort of normal, there will be lots of questions that need to be answered.
One such question should be right up there near the top, but it will probably go unheeded – what to do about China?
Ignoring the fact that the pandemic originated from there, the pandemic has proven beyond all doubt just how reliant we are on China for so many of our goods.
Just think of the things we couldn’t get when exports dried up, even the face masks we relied on to protect ourselves came from there.
Pretty much everything that we take for granted was in short supply and the reason being – we didn’t make it ourselves.
Of course, people will point out that the Chinese make gods quicker and cheaper than we or pretty much anyone else can.
But if this over-reliance on China continues, we leave ourselves open to shortages of essentials further down the track.
This time, the problem was health-related, next time it could be political.
Let us trade with China, by all means, but as the old saying goes, we should be wary of putting all our eggs in one basket.
The sleeping dragon has long since woken up and is still flexing her wings and political might.
Trump, for all his many faults, recognised the potential threat, particularly economical, than China posed to the USA.
We would be wise to start once again manufacturing some of the essentials we might one day need, even if we have to pay a bit more for them.
We’ve been bitten once, let’s not be bitten twice ... by the dragon’s teeth.
Michael Jones, sent via email.
“We’ve had a bad year, let’s make the next one better."