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Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

asia.nikkei.com

371–380 of 598 posts

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#371

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Maybe to help explain what I think you are getting at. A year or two ago, you had senators preaching about how we needed to stop china's slave labor of the uighyurs. Okay, fine, I agree with that. But what about the horrible labor practices American companies rely on in central Africa where there, slavery also exists? The people who say bad China about labor practices have their blinders up to our allies who use the…

So your point is that you can’t call out an instance of slavery unless you call them all out? That doesn’t make sense to me. You should be able to highlight an issue without someone retorting “what about X?”, which is literal whataboutism. Everybody is a hypocrite on almost every issue. Take a major issue like climate change. Almost every human in the U.S. and Europe has massively large carbon footprints. Does that m…

Again, the point was never that you have to be perfect, it’s that it’s shouldn’t just happen to perfectly align with Americas foreign policy agenda.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#372
post #310

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I can hire a person here (UK) to do something for £x/hour or £y/unit. I can perhaps hire a person in say Vietnam to do something for £x/n/hour etc. I don't do this personally but we should explore the possibilities. The thing about capitalism is it is capitalism. You should drive costs down and profits up. Ideally you don't kill people on the "journey" but hey that's what laws n that jud, errr judiciary ... ... cops/…

NZ is where you want to hire remote staff. Our wages are low and so is our dollar. We speak the same language and have a very similar culture. The time zone is an issue but remote workers normally will do strange hours to make it work. The more people do that the better life gets here in NZ so I'm a big fan. Our exports are mainly agricultural and tourism. Neither are high earners.

Sounds like expensive version of the Philippines :)

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#373
post #358
post #321

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> 99% chance the people complaining about labor conditions are doing so on a made in China phone. 99% of everyone has a phone made in China, does this mean it's not possible to complain about the state of the world we live in?

Not while you are literally voting with your dollars to preserve that status quo.

Especially when said iPhone assemblers aren't even complaining about their work conditions as much as some clueless American... if one is going to complain, complain about one's own conditions, or something one actually knows about...

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#374
post #336

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99% chance the people complaining about labor conditions are doing so on a made in China phone. Let’s be honest, people complaining about labor conditions have a pretty weak understanding of economics and what is actually going on with regards to these factories. China isn’t stupid. They weaken their currency specifically to bring in the cheap labor jobs to lift the poorest to a slightly less poor tier. Unless you re…

>99% chance the people complaining about labor conditions are doing so on a made in China phone. Is there any other option? Don't stop people from complaining about lead in the water supply, just because they have nothing else to drink.

I'd be willing to bet that many who complain about "labor conditions" being too poor would still rather preserve a $200 discount on their phone instead. But having come from poverty, most people complaining about labor conditions on behalf of poor people have never experienced poverty themselves. It's possible for a capitalist society to have actors that willfully exploit people, but it is not the default that simply employing the poorest people equates to exploitation. People are just whiny that jobs are being lost to someone poorer.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#375
post #365
post #357

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Measure this stuff in decades. Once they catch up with the 17th century, things will look up a bit. They're still stuck in 641CE

> Once they catch up with the 17th century I wish people would have more empathy for Afghanistan instead of berating them. They’ve just been through 20 years of foreign occupation and a decade of being used as a battlefield for a proxy war not long before that.

Removing fundamental womens rights is a very odd way of coping with the after effects of foreign occupation and battlefield effects. That aside, the revenge killings are concerning. After that, I support development of a modern Afghan economy as you would see from my original comment. Nothing about it was berating.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#376

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Because the EU respects the One China policy (like virtually every UN member) and because the EU does not have hundreds of military bases surrounding China.

Thats such a cop-out, the US doesn't respect the one china policy any differently to the EU. And no one is threatening China in anyone shape or form. Your argument holds as much weight as Russia using NATO as an excuse.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-china-taiwan-us-military-...

Doesn't seem like USA is respecting anything.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#377
post #347

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If AF was smart, they'd partner with battery makers to value add instead of just shipping lithium out as-is. Better to build value. And, many dry inhospitable places are productive in the right terms, if you understand them. Look at the bone yards: Making good money, letting birds park there.

If Australia were smart; same thing.

Totally. Despite the successive governments (state and federal) obsession with mines and sell direct from mining, the treasury, business development, industry and labour unions as well as business sector (not mining) continually beg for help to re-boot the industrial capacity to value-add that mine stuff.

The problem is, the miners can't be made to do this. It demands huge capital investment they have low to no motivation to fulfil.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#378
post #148

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With no chips to repair the john deere tractors? Yeah food won't happen.

We produce lots of chips now, and soon we're going to be producing enough for ourselves.

If that were true USA wouldn't care about Taiwan.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#379

I'm interested to know to what extent this is just assembly of parts imported from China, or whether the real control over things like the M1 chip assembly, secure element, logic board, etc. are also moved to Vietnam? Seems like that's the secret sauce / real proprietary stuff that tells you whether the high value is moving too. (or maybe that is not even in China either) And do they have the surrounding parts + engi…

https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp... Ctrl+F 157 from PRC, other countries rarely break 30. Vietnam has 21 suppliers, most of whom also has (likely primary) PRC operation. >engineering ecosystems One presumes still need PRC to to build things first and work out kinks - so far only matured manufacturing lines are shifting out of PRC.

That is only on the surface, you then have to look at companies that are listed elsewhere but are actually Chinese ( A Chinese company listing its HQ somewhere else ), or completely owned by the Chinese Investment.

You then look at rest of non-Chinese owned companies, how many of those are completely dependent on Chinese customers ( If 60%+ of your revenue are from China ) or dependant on Apple ( given this is an Apple Supplier list ) where Apple has a tendency, habit or even a strategic mindset to help Chinese companies into their supply chain as part of its diversification, or cost reduction.

And if people ( as few on HN are already doing ) continue to think Apple relying on Taiwanese company called Foxconn. You may want to do a search on Luxshare or more commonly known as ICT. And see how it started and Tim Cook’s opinion on it. Dating back to 2016.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#380
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many of us would be more supportive of outsourcing manufacturing to developing countries if their government aligned more with Western ideals. The fact is many countries, like Vietnam, are still "developing" because they have authoritarian governments that have been oppressing their population to some extent keeping their labor cheap while stunting their economic potential. We see the problems with this situa…

> authoritarian governments that have been oppressing their population to some extent keeping their labor cheap to think labor being cheap is the work of the communist party is pretty ridiculous. Authoritarian or not, no government benefits from their citizens being poor (capitalism does). The problem with authoritarian governments is that they are incapable of raising income, not that they do that by intent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_korean_famine

> no government benefits from their citizens being poor (capitalism does)

Why do you make this incredibly stupid claim?

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