Live data from Hacker News

Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

bloomberg.com

391–400 of 464 posts

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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the laws they need to figure out. Domestic pangolin use is illegal, so they just illegally import it

It baffles me. China has zero issue eliminating the slightest threat to the party. From book sellers in Hong Kong to religious minorities to the great firewall, no job too big, no threat too small. But apparently eliminating wet markets was unpopular and thats a no no. It worked when they did it after SARS. It saved a shit tonne of lives, it brought them one step closer to being a first world nation. But now its impo…

> I don't know why they won't do this

The number of Chinese (still a minority) that want to eat exotic meats greatly outnumber the Chinese who want to read dissident books or use Twitter instead of Weibo.

Censorship is not very unpopular there, but diet restrictions would be.

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

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over time, of course, the price of labor evens out because the resource is no longer underutilized. The price would have evened out if labor could cross borders as freely as the goods that it produces - then it would flow to areas where it's in high demand. But with borders and immigration controls and different laws (esp. environment and labor) in different jurisdictions, it's not really a free market. Instead, it…

> The price would have evened out if labor could cross borders as freely as the goods that it produces. Not really, if that was the case for ex, everyone doing similar jobs would be getting paid the same in US or EU. I am not saying things dont get evened out to an extent, but people are harder to move than the goods they produce.

True. Still, though, it's drastically easier to move within a single country (or economic area like EU), then it is to move across the border with immigration controls - even if moving across the border is much closer geographically. You can bet there'd be a lot more Chinese workers competing for jobs directly in US if they could.

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

#393
post #229

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…

No. The WHO constantly downplayed this pandemic and kowtowed to China to the point of disgracefully delaying calling it a pandemic and then playing catch-up when individual countries started ignoring the WHO and implemented their own measures. Then the WHO switched gears and complained that the countries were doing too little too late. They've been almost completely worthless in this crisis.

There is no downplaying in "test test test". That could not be farther from downplay. The emergency sense is vibrant in their declaration. Previous declarations were done with a lack of scientific knowledge.

Btw only South Korea did "test test test". And that succeded very very much.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

but the only reason this statement would come out is to refute any rumors that its spread person-by-person.

So its implied. They cant confirm anything but they need to refute that its spread through humans

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, WHO is heavily influenced by China; here is an interview with a senior WHO official who was asked about Taiwan - he simply hangs up the phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM

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. If you disagree then you gotta take it to the UN. The poor guys at the WHO just want to focus on fighting diseases, and yet everybody is trying to use them for political agendas. If I was that guy I would be inclined to shut down too.

you could still recognize Taiwan exist without saying its a separate entity.

Especially important when they actually are the one handling the issue the best way possible. The way he act is truly abominable. Its like Taiwan is in a separate dimension that didnt exist in this reality, and anything they did didnt happen

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did quite well for its author though. It appears he got a Nobel Prize in 1933. Maybe he was pulling the illusion thing.

The book didn't argue that the war wouldn't happen, only that it would be economically disastrous for everybody involved, and thus to choose to go to war is foolishness, since everybody is strictly worse off than they were before - i.e. there are no absolute winners. Countries did go to war anyway, and, exactly as predicted, it was a disaster for all of them, proving the point.

Most people think WW1 was so bad because people kept killing each other (with machine guns, artillery and poison gasses). Less so because they severed their commercial ties.

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A global government would have led to a more uniform response, but arguably that's exactly what we don't want in a crisis like this. Each nation was able to react differently, and those different responses have provided us the closest thing we have to controlled experiments. Those experiments have allowed us to understand the spread of this disease better.

The global response is pretty uniform (almost every country following the same strategy). But it was too slow, and too uncoordinated in the sense that different countries enacted their protective measures at different times, with little to no warning to others, resulting in unnecessarily severe disruptions of the supply chain.

We're all following the same strategy now because of the countries that didn't follow that strategy taught the rest of us what not to do.

Imagine if a world government had responded the way China did. That is, lie about the problem until it gets too big then forcibly lock people into their homes. What reason do we have to think that a world government would do anything different?

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

#398
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Not everyone makes purchasing decisions based on price alone. My wife is into vintage things as a hobby. She says the demand for anything "made in USA" has gone through the roof in the last five years simply because people don't want to support Chi…

> China knows this, which is why it has factories in both the E.U. and the United States filled with Chinese laborers churning things out so they can be labeled "Made in {$anywhere_but_China}." Can you mention one major factory in the US with Chinese laborers?

Define "major."

There have been a number of articles in newspapers about this, including in a city where I lived recently. They set up entire self-contained communities.

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

#399
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China knows this, which is why it has factories in both the E.U. and the United States filled with Chinese laborers churning things out so they can be labeled "Made in {$anywhere_but_China}." Can you mention one major factory in the US with Chinese laborers?

Define "major." There have been a number of articles in newspapers about this, including in a city where I lived recently. They set up entire self-contained communities.

More than 1000 employees.

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you blame them? It was cheaper to outsource than automate, so why wouldn't they have outsourced?

I can't blame them, just like I can't blame a company for becoming a monopoly. We need to regulate them like we do with antitrust, worker's rights, and other things. The free market unabated is terrible for humanity.

It's worse then that, we all live in a socialist society, it's just a corporate socialism. A free market would be a fantastic start. There is a real lack of competition and innovation in our socialist model.
Post reply on HN