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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

#341

Post by smacktoward »

frank2 wrote: post #334
jacques_chester wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this argument is ignoring the counterfactual cases: the wars that have not occurred, that would have occurred otherwise. Europe was mired in endless wars for millenia. It's now in the longest stretch of peace in centuries and, by sheer coincidence, at its highest levels of trade. In the rest of the world trade has steadily risen and wars and deaths from wars have fallen steadily. Correlation might no…

I suggest that the third factor is US policy. Before World War II, Britain had its trading empire, France had its empire, Japan had its empire, etc. Oceanic trade between nations not in the same empire ran a high risk of the cargo simply being confiscated or destroyed by one of the imperial navies. A key pillar of the US's strategy in the Cold War was to use its naval supremacy to prevent the return to the imperial t…

Or rather, it was the nuclear “balance of terror” that emerged between the US and the USSR. Neither of those powers wanted to risk a confrontation that could turn into World War III, so they both had a strong incentive to limit their own ambitions and to restrain their allies/client states.

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

#342

Post by apostacy »

nybble41 wrote: post #225
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…

> cheaper workers work for less, but that's not exactly efficiency It is efficiency, really, because it's making better use of an underutilized resource. Over time, of course, the price of labor evens out because the resource is no longer underutilized. > more a question of fairness If it's fairness you want, telling companies to hire locally isn't going to cut it. That's the opposite of fairness, really—you would be…

> If it's fairness you want, telling companies to hire locally isn't going to cut it. That's the opposite of fairness, really—you would be subsidizing local workers whose wages are already higher at the expense of foreign labor that has more need for the income.

It sounds to me like you're saying that it is unfair to strangers that you would help out your family first before helping them.

Most countries do subsidize local workers and industry. Should it be another way?

The United States actually does heavily subsidize foreigners for the benefit of the rich and powerful, at the expense of its citizens. Most work visa programs are an example of this.

This is the problem with the globalist mindset. Chinese workers are ultimately working for China. Chinese companies are always inclined to help Chinese people and the Chinese government. So telling domestic firms to be neutral in national loyalty is essentially telling them to be loyal to China.

A government not pressuring firms to hire and buy locally is deeply unfair to the point where I would argue it is a dereliction of their duty to the people.

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

#343

Post by remarkEon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #260
remarkEon wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. The rest of the world was acting with the (false) information that China, and the WHO, were putting out there - including that there was "no evidence of human-to-human" transmission. So perhaps when you say it's "not China's fault", this is technically true in the sense that it's the fault of the rest of us for taking what were obvious lies at face value.

At the end of January, it was obvious that it's a severely infectious disease. On 22th of January WHO agreed that there is evidence of human-to-human transmission[0]. By the end of January, the virus was in Italy. By mid-February, it was clear it's going to be a problem for the West. By the end of February, it was obvious to anyone with half a brain and access to a spreadsheet that this is going to be a devastating g…

>At the end of January, it was obvious that it's a severely infectious disease.

>By mid-February, it was clear it's going to be a problem for the West.

Which I'm sure is why it took the WHO until March 11th to declare it a Pandemic. This entire timeline reads like a corporate CYA exercise. Which tracks, since it was created yesterday.

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

#344

Post by z2 »

christkv wrote: post #332
FooBarWidget wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because HN and the english speaking world is usually so anti-China, that people who are neutral of China get angry responses or are downvoted badly. Note: I am not even saying supportive of China; even being neutral is already considered unacceptable or lunacy by many people. Things are so bad that many people are afraid to speak up for China using their own identities. I used to be one of those people who were afrai…

You have bought into the CCP is China bullshit. Without the murdering CCP China could have been Taiwan. Instead you are a new country with 70 years of history that only occupies the space of the great historic nation of China.

From the armchair--I think China is rather hard to govern, and if you study its dynastic history, most existential challenges tended to come from popular revolts from within. Also, the Republic of China's Nationalist Party-led government isn't much older and was no saint for most of their existence. After being ousted to Taiwan in 1949, they kept martial law on the island for almost 4 decades, and famously imprisoned over a hundred thousand perceived enemies of the party, executing thousands during the White Terror. Political and democratic reforms that did emerge in the late 80's were not guaranteed. In a way the same pressures emerged concurrently in the mainland and we know how that turned out.

Edit: The "CCP is China" issue is a great point, and I wish that the distinction between government, nationality, culture, and race could be made a lot clearer (speaking as an American living in the US who is ethnically Chinese). What's personally distressing is how easily the media and politicians here leap from 'China lies and steals,' which is a debatable topic from a political science perspective at least, to 'The Chinese (people) lie and steal,' which is a subjective take on motives. Not sure if that's what you were talking about but wanted to get that out there...

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

#345

Post by boznz »

willyt wrote: post #330
TeMPOraL wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't WWI the usual counterargument to globalization reducing the risk of war? Or were the countries back then not interconnected enough ?

Back then every component of a battleship, the most powerful and advanced weapon of the time could be built independently by Britain, France, Germany, Italy, USA, Japan etc. Today, there are very few weapons systems that do not depend on allied countries for a critical component. E.g. it is quite well known that Britain's nuclear powered subs use US reactors and US missiles, but even the steel plate for the hull is l…

If a half-arsed backward place like N Korea can produce ships , rockets and nuclear weapons I am pretty sure the UK could pull it off.

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

#346

Post by Gibbon1 »

smacktoward wrote: post #312
elliekelly wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways it decreases risk though, too. The risk of war, specifically. The US and Chinese governments are far from friends but our economies are much too interconnected to allow either side to instigate too much of a disagreement. For the most part globalization is good but the pandemic has certainly highlighted the value of strategic redundancy or at least an emergency plan B.

The economist Norman Angell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell ) published a highly influential book, The Great Illusion , making this exact argument. In 1909. It has, let’s say, not aged gracefully.

> It has, let’s say, not aged gracefully.

It's aged wonderfully. The Europeans proved its premise in spades between 1914 and 1945.

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

#348

Post by jeffdavis »

I think a better way to look at this is not as domestic supply chains, but diversified supply chains.

There may be reason to encourage domestic, especially for certain kinds of things, but I don't think it needs to be a huge push into trade isolationism. There are lots of industrialized countries we can do business with, and lots of countries with lagging industry that might be improved with increased trade or investment in whatever industry they do have.

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

#349

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#350

Post by AzzieElbab »

tomp wrote: post #37
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 Chi…

What about US based 3m workers going on strike at unfortunate moment?
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