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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

#271

Post by ardy42 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #117
tomp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Chi…

> 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. A factory in China is just as efficient as a factory in Spain. But if China has most of the factories, and supporting industries, and supporting education, etc. it suddenly becomes more efficient. But then if China decides it doesn't…

>> 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.

> A factory in China is just as efficient as a factory in Spain. But if China has most of the factories, and supporting industries, and supporting education, etc. it suddenly becomes more efficient.

But I'd argue that shouldn't be considered "globalization": there's nothing "global" about concentrating things in one country. It's just outsourcing.

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

#272

Post by addHocker »

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.

The whole diagou - parallel trader system - and lots of external companies, who usually buy cosmetics and milkpowder, where state instructed to buy masks & medical supplies en bulk, to ship back to china. All this, while the WHO claimed that nothing dangerous was going on and trade should be prohibited. The WHO should be disbanded and replaced by a organisation, with votes- based on public health track-records. All nations that didnt trust the whole setup and had there own warning systems in place (taiwan, south-korea, japan) did well in this crisis.

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

#273

Post by Mountain_Skies »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #53
remarkEon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a link detailing what happened between Canada and the US? My understanding of the 3M debacle is that they use a distributor model for their consumables, and essentially "wash their hands" of what their distributors do once they have product in hand - and in the 3M case, the PPE was just going to the highest bidder, regardless of national origin.

Not at all applicable in this case. Some federal authorities in the US attempted to halt some 3 million (or 500,000 depending on reports, it seems) purchased shipments destined for Canada from 3M. It was only the intervention at the highest level of the Canadian government that stopped this. It's worth pointing out that without Canadian nurses from Windsor who cross the border every day to work in Detroit hospitals,…

Which is why Canada keeps losing. Canada loses more than the U.S. does it they stop exporting pulpwood. The U.S. can replace Canadian forestry products easily. Canada can't find a new buyer so easily. Detroit makes up one fifth of one percent of the US population. Windsor nurses aren't going to set national policy for the United States. Chrystia Freeland keeps bargaining from positions of absurd weakness and gets the expected results. Not sure why any Canadian likes her but maybe they care more about the perception of eye poking than actual productive results for the Canadian public.

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

#274

Post by behnamoh »

lemontruth wrote: post #253
christkv wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people forget that they gave 48h warning before the lockdown happened causing a huge amount of what was likely infected people to flee.

It was 8 hours: "At 2 am on 23 January 2020, authorities issued a notice informing residents of Wuhan that from 10 am [..] residents of Wuhan were also not allowed to leave the city without permission from the authorities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns where is the 48h come from?

Creating a throw-away account just to prove to someone that China did something right...

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

#275

Post by keiferski »

chrischen wrote: post #245
surge wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, the WHO does, they even said this thing wasn't transmitted person to person. And they're supposed to be the authority everyone was saying to listen to.

The WHO technically said they were looking into it and that they had not confirmed it spread human to human. That’s totally different from “we have looked into it and can confirm it does not spread human to human.”

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China”

It takes some serious mental gymnastics to interpret this in any way other than the obvious one. This isn’t a philosophical discussion about the limitations of empiricism, it’s a tweet that goes out to millions of people from an organization imbued with serious authority.

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

#276

Post by mytailorisrich »

surge wrote: post #172
mytailorisrich wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's hypocrisy. At the time the vast majority of the cases in China were in Wuhan and Hubei, which had been put on lockdown with airports closed, but the rest of the country has much fewer cases. No country imposed full ban on travels with countries that had the number of cases seen in China outside Wuhan/Hubei. Whether this was the right or wrong decision to make is another issue. The same discussion c…

The much fewer cases thing was because doctors were being told to lie about the numbers or attribute it to viral pneumonia, they were carrying off bodies and quarantining sections of cities elsewhere too, you just had to look at WeChat to see it.

Can we please stop this?

HN sinks to the gutter every time China pops up as a subject and no discussion is possible, as seen from the reaction to my previous comment.

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

#277

Post by eanzenberg »

systemvoltage wrote: post #148
hkmurakami wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CCP does not understand that playing asymmetric games from business laws (booting Uber off of China for example), diplomacy and global influence, etc is damaging long term brand and goodwill. In this pandemic, democratic nations are suffering more than authoritarian regimes purely by choice - complete Wuhan style measures are unacceptable say in Sweden. This asymmetry is going to give a short term boost to China. Lon…

>>In this pandemic, democratic nations are suffering more than authoritarian regimes purely by choice

This is no evidence of this either. You can't believe what authoritarian regimes publish. They also are willing to shoot on site if they want to positive-COVID people. There are estimates that the deathtoll under CCP for COVID is > 10x what's reported, and will probably go up.

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

#278

Post by FooBarWidget »

keiferski wrote: post #275
chrischen wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO technically said they were looking into it and that they had not confirmed it spread human to human. That’s totally different from “we have looked into it and can confirm it does not spread human to human.”

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China” It takes some serious mental gymnastics to interpret this in any way other than the obvious one. This isn’t a philosophical discussion about the limitations of empiricism, it’s a tweet that goes out to millions of people from a…

And what is the obvious interpretation? Mine is ‘it is preliminary, so results can still change’ and ‘found no clear evidence does not mean evidence will not be found later’.

Or maybe we can agree that there is no such thing as obvious, and different people will necessarily have different interpretations, for better or worse.

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

#279

Post by FooBarWidget »

viklove wrote: post #232
henearkr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the WHO communication was proportionate to the current knowledge at the time of each of their interventions. First of all they said, when it was clear there was a problem "We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test." (and then Trump and almost everybody else did not want to hear that) And moreover they said more exactly, some time before the previous item, that "Preliminary investigatio…

The WHO is obviously in China's pocket. I mean they can't even bring themselves to use the word Taiwan in public communications.

WHO does not officially recognize Taiwan because the UN does not officially recognize Taiwan, and the WHO is a UN organization. It is as simple as that, got nothing to do with being in China’s pocket. If you don’t like that, pressure your government to recognize Taiwan, and pressure them to pressure UN.

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

#280

Post by used_noise »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #240
adventured wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of stakes. The Netherlands has no power and very few responsibilities globally. It's often easy to be objective about topics when your stakes are low and distant. How's that supposed Dutch calm looking when it comes to Italy and fiscal matters these days? I've been following that closely, they've been anything but calm, rational, objective. They're being emotional and subjective, making poor decisions,…

What you say may have some truth in it. However, does having a stake mean that it is okay to act overly emotional and occasionally throwing out rational analysis? I also disagree on one thing here: the claim that China is projecting power to the rest of the world, that is trying to conquer the world or becoming an American style militaristic empire. In my opinion this is pure projection (in the psychological sense).…

> They are not interested in controlling or occupying other countries, they just want to be able to do business.

How do you reconcile this with the political situation in Tibet?

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