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Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

bloomberg.com

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Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#31

Post by hahamrfunnyguy »

ShinTakuya wrote: post #15
tren-hard wrote: post #5

So Japanese companies move operations to China because it's cheaper, leaving Japanese jobs behinds. Those businesses profit from cheap labor, emissions, and materials. Now Japan is subsidizing their return to Japan with $2.2 billion. I really hope the US doesn't adopt this (narrator: they will). It's a slap in the face to tax payers.

While I agree in part that it's not fair, I would argue against the idea that jobs were lost in Japan. Maybe temporarily lost, but in the end economically you end up finding another way to contribute value and be paid. Moreover the companies can't be blamed for taking the most profitable route. It's up to the governments to regulate.

I disagree. Many of the jobs that left Japan and the United States in the 80's and 90's are not coming back - they've already been replaced by robots. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Cashiers, accountants and drivers are all being replaced by robots and automated systems. These jobs are going away and aren't going to be replaced by a comparable entry-level job. This automation is picking up pace now and will only continue.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#32

Post by te_chris »

muro wrote: post #13
jennyyang wrote: post #4

At the very least, medical supplies and drugs manufacturing will get pulled back into each country. The 3M spat between Canada and the US makes it abundantly clear that in a time of true crisis, you can't even trust your closest friends when something terrifying happens to the world like this pandemic. Whether it means all manufacturing will move away from China or if it means that they will spread it globally, is an…

Taleb describes this well: globalism allows for optimization (cost, efficiency), but increases risk. To reduce risk, add redundancy (locally).

Sorry, trying not to nitpick, but you mean Globalisation, not globalism.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#33

Post by magicsmoke »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #22
systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Actually this pandemic has shown some true colors of many nations. 1) US trying to unsuccessfully hoard supplies, issues with the German testing company 2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine. 3) European countries are in-fighting for supplies. Switzer…

> 2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine. Allow me to disagree with this one. I see people questioning China's motives on helping other countries, but in my opinion this is a baseless and overly cynical view of things, not truth. People want to buy int…

Considering this is an English site, most of the participants here are probably from the Anglosphere which, being led by the US, would tend to mistrust China. It's interesting how you mention that as Dutch and European, you don't have the same level of mistrust. Without a measure of how China is viewed, not just in the Anglosphere, but in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Islamic world, Central Asia, and other cultural and linguistic spheres that a typical native English speaker wouldn't be able to communicate with, it's really hard to tell how effective China's soft power moves are.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#34

Post by TeMPOraL »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #14
systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Actually this pandemic has shown some true colors of many nations. 1) US trying to unsuccessfully hoard supplies, issues with the German testing company 2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine. 3) European countries are in-fighting for supplies. Switzer…

Nations exist to protect it's citizens. So yeah, as they should, each country is prioritizing their own needs before exporting any surplus to other countries. The challenge is no one really has any idea how much of the supplies they actually need. It's interesting to me that you find this surprising or view it as bad behavior.

> It's interesting to me that you find this surprising or view it as bad behavior.

It's not surprising in the sense that it fits the definition of a "nation state".

It's surprising because one would think that in XXI century, people understood that global problems require global coordination; competition of selfish actors fails spectacularly in such cases.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#35

Post by throw4547 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Actually this pandemic has shown some true colors of many nations. 1) US trying to unsuccessfully hoard supplies, issues with the German testing company 2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine. 3) European countries are in-fighting for supplies. Switzer…

> There are some good stories too, especially the sacrifice of the healthcare workers

What is good about that? They are terrified to come to work.

This heroism stuff is just bullshit so we can shame people who refuse to die.

After crisis is over, there will be no financial compensation (overtimes, hazardous environment, no protective equipment).

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#36

Post by throwawaysea »

hkmurakami wrote: post #12
systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Actually this pandemic has shown some true colors of many nations. 1) US trying to unsuccessfully hoard supplies, issues with the German testing company 2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine. 3) European countries are in-fighting for supplies. Switzer…

I personally enjoyed the hypocrisy of China initially requesting Nations to not "overreact" and close borders to its travelers (mid February), then proceeding to do exactly this towards these same nations (mid March) when things became worse overseas.

Not just China but the WHO, who recommended no international travel restrictions very late into this crisis (https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/who-advice-for...), then ignored Taiwan’s requests in favor of Beijing propaganda and claimed the virus does not transmit between humans (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-05/taiwan...), and has repeated failures seen in their response to other health crises (https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-china-in...).

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#37

Post by tomp »

jennyyang wrote: post #4

At the very least, medical supplies and drugs manufacturing will get pulled back into each country. The 3M spat between Canada and the US makes it abundantly clear that in a time of true crisis, you can't even trust your closest friends when something terrifying happens to the world like this pandemic. Whether it means all manufacturing will move away from China or if it means that they will spread it globally, is an…

To be honest, I don't understand what efficiency gains this kind of globalization was supposed to bring anyways... A factory in China is just as efficient as a factory in Spain or USA.

Obviously, cheaper workers work for less, but that's not exactly efficiency, (1) more a question of fairness, (2) can be done domestically (low-cost immigrant workers) and (3) there's plenty of cheap workers worldwide, not just in China.

Another potential advantage could be, factories are closer to natural resources, but it seems to me that that's not as much a question of efficiency, as it is of lax (enforcement of) environmental standards. Which I personally don't see as a net gain, even if it results in cheaper production.

The only real advantage I can see is concentration of skill - e.g. people say that you basically have to develop electronics in Shenzhen, there's simply not enough talent in the US and EU - but I wonder if the efficiency gains are offset by innovation losses. Again, IMO it would be better to have a local high-skilled population of engineers & entrepreneurs.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#38

Post by TeMPOraL »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #30
jennyyang wrote: post #4

At the very least, medical supplies and drugs manufacturing will get pulled back into each country. The 3M spat between Canada and the US makes it abundantly clear that in a time of true crisis, you can't even trust your closest friends when something terrifying happens to the world like this pandemic. Whether it means all manufacturing will move away from China or if it means that they will spread it globally, is an…

> China will have more incidents of pandemics for sure, because they haven't learned from the last one, and they won't learn from this one. I disagree. They took many months to report SARS to WHO, yes. But this time, reporting to WHO took ~5 days. It was discovered by dr Zhang Jixian on Dec 26, then reported to WHO on Dec 31. Then it took them about another week to sequence the genome and share it with the world. Plu…

> Plus the whole lockdown shows that they obviously made plans beforehand.

And the hospitals. Not even China can just one day decide, out of the blue, to build two large-scale specialized hospitals in 10 days. Having that capability requires recognizing the need for it and preparing beforehand - which is another thing they've learned from the past pandemics.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#39

Post by guug »

Even if japan (or any other country) manages to pull production back within its boarders, wouldn't China still be more competitive due to cheaper labor/supply chain costs?

IMO, the reason why companies outsourced their production to china still holds today. Companies pulling out will be at a competitive disadvantage against companies who don't.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#40

Post by xenocyon »

atonse wrote: post #24
systemvoltage wrote: post #9

Actually this pandemic has shown some true colors of many nations. 1) US trying to unsuccessfully hoard supplies, issues with the German testing company 2) China trying to use soft power, but the whole drama feels fake. It is good that they are sending supplies (often faulty and not up to the quality, see dutch story around this) but it doesn't feel genuine. 3) European countries are in-fighting for supplies. Switzer…

As it should be. A nation's government should ABSOLUTELY put its citizens over everything else. Not sure what you would have them do instead? What is happening is unfair to some, but the individual governments are doing exactly what they should be doing, valuing their people above all else.

Some things are a zero sum game, some aren't. Vaccine IP is absolutely in the latter class. You want everyone in every country to be vaccinated, and you absolutely don't want to be poisoning and derailing this universal goal by talk of putting up national barriers around vaccine IP.
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