China is the manufacturing superpower • Hacker News Board

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#11

Post by _1tem » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:04 AM UTC

> The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined.

Dubious claim. Military power is not measured in “spending”. Manufacturing is in fact a basis for modern military power, as it was the basis for US military power in WW2. The fact that China can produce 10k+ precisely controlled drone swarms in massive quantities and produces more hypersonic missiles and ships casts doubt on this claim.

Says the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons...

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#12

Post by echelon » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:05 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #10

The US can't even make cell phones any more. What would it take to get that capability back?

Moving it to Mexico, Vietnam, and India.

Mexico is ideal since you can ship partially assembled goods via truck or rail to and from Texas. It's easy to manage logistics and partnerships due to the close proximity.

The future of the US is Mexico.

Vietnam and India can absorb SEA manufacturing.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#13

Post by jkestner » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:05 AM UTC

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

The GGR measure suggests they have a self sustaining economy to some extent. This manufacturing capacity, even if it’s “only” a third of global capacity, is a danger to free societies. It’ll ultimately be used to force the CCP’s authoritarian control on Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and probably others. Unfortunately I don’t know what short term options there are to contain the CCP’s power and control over this…

“Wide and deep” is key here. Chinese manufacturing is hungry and way more competitive than in the US. Physical manufacturing in the US is geared toward the largest companies and the defense-industrial complex. If your products have any complexity to them (starting with electronics), a small company has little chance of getting access to good factories and pricing.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#14

Post by ipnon » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:05 AM UTC

advael wrote: post #3

Huh. For all the claims that US manufacturing is down, it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here, which I really didn't expect to see I'm no expert and of course I have no clue if it even makes sense to measure per-capita manufacturing share, and also assume a lot of other factors matter here - what kinds of things we're manufacturing, how much those produc…

You might be surprised to learn that manufacturing is larger industry in the US than our tech industry, or that our domestic oil industry is even larger. America produces more oil than any other country.

America was the world's factory for over a century. This dominance only ended around 2010, when China took the lead. It was our advantage to lose, and it was the result of deliberate political action. We offshored manufacturing, and treated China as a good faith trading partner, waiting decades for a cooperative international trade diplomacy that has not materialized to this day. All the while Beijing did everything in its power to enrich the Chinese worker, no matter the cost to outsiders. The results speak for themselves.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#15

Post by echelon » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:07 AM UTC

_1tem wrote: post #11

> The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined. Dubious claim. Military power is not measured in “spending”. Manufacturing is in fact a basis for modern military power, as it was the basis for US military power in WW2. The fact that China can produce 10k+ precisely controlled drone swarms in massive quantities and produces more hy…

It won't take long for China to catch up. And in a hot war, they're the ones who can rapidly rebuild.

Lots of reports say that Chinese military spending has exceeded our own if you account for their cheaper cost of labor and material goods.

China also recently (just days ago) flew two new sixth gen fighters. The US has yet to demonstrate one.

The tactical move for the West to counter is to move as much manufacturing as possible to other countries (Vietnam, India, Mexico) and hope that can put a dent in China's manufacturing flywheel. The Chinese consumer economy isn't robust enough to absorb all of the goods they manufacture (at least not yet), and without buyers the system would need to be scaled back.

Even if China was 100% a friend, you wouldn't want one country with this much outsized control over manufacturing. In the future this will be better distributed.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#16

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:08 AM UTC

advael wrote: post #3

Huh. For all the claims that US manufacturing is down, it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here, which I really didn't expect to see I'm no expert and of course I have no clue if it even makes sense to measure per-capita manufacturing share, and also assume a lot of other factors matter here - what kinds of things we're manufacturing, how much those produc…

[deleted]

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#17

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:08 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #10

The US can't even make cell phones any more. What would it take to get that capability back?

The US can make cellphones, its just not efficient for the US to make cellphones because the US’s comparative advantage is elsewhere.

What it would take for the US to make cellphones is direct subsidy to the (inefficient, and for that reason likely therefore doomed by the market without artificial support, since there is robust competition) US firms doing so.

Of course, not only would this cost the amount of the subsidy, but the amount of the lost opportunities in places where the US has comparative advantages foregone to provide the subsidy.

The question then is why would you want to do this?

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#18

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:14 AM UTC

elashri wrote: post #6

advael wrote: post #3

Huh. For all the claims that US manufacturing is down, it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here, which I really didn't expect to see I'm no expert and of course I have no clue if it even makes sense to measure per-capita manufacturing share, and also assume a lot of other factors matter here - what kinds of things we're manufacturing, how much those produc…

> it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here Ironically this will make Taiwan the manufacturing superpower if it is calculated per-capita. Which is the other china (I am just referring to the history of both PRC and Taiwan claiming to be the historical China successor). And the claims that US manifacruting is down is correct because it used to be much higher…

> (I am just referring to the history of both RPC and Taiwan claiming to be the historical China successor).

Semantics, but the ROC (Republic of China) claims Taiwan, along with the mainland and Outer Mongolia. It isn’t the case that Taiwan claims the ROC (although if the in power DPP decided not to be the ROC anymore, the PRC would probably invade since declaring independence from the ROC would be the same as refuting one China).

When the ROC/KMT retook Taiwan in 1946, they weren’t exactly seen as liberators. And when the KMT and a bunch of rich mainlanders relocated there in 1949, there were protests, genocide, and so on.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#19

Post by kayewiggin » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:16 AM UTC

advael wrote: post #3

Huh. For all the claims that US manufacturing is down, it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here, which I really didn't expect to see I'm no expert and of course I have no clue if it even makes sense to measure per-capita manufacturing share, and also assume a lot of other factors matter here - what kinds of things we're manufacturing, how much those produc…

1.) The article is from January 2024.

2.) Some of the data that it's based on is up to 2023. And some are up to 2020

3.) There has been massive movement of manufacturing out of China between 2020 and 2024. I won't provide the references here, as there are too many to mention, from Japanese/Taiwanese/South Korean/European/American companies. They are easily chatgpted/googled. Also the reason why Shenzhen and Guangzhou has suffered deeper drop of real estate price and employment.

4.) In 2024, Mexico was the biggest exporter to US. United States was the biggest exporter to Europe. US was the largest export destination of Japan.

5.) Trump's 60%-100% tariff on China will accelerate the exodus of manufacturing

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#20

Post by defrost » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:18 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #9

defrost wrote: post #5

Six nations manufacture at least 3% of the world total. China is followed by the US, Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea. Note how the world has changed. Only three of these are long-established industrial economies; the other three are newly industrialised economies. Four of the G7 don’t make the cut. s/ 3% / 63% /

It's not surprising: everyone is using the same manufacturing equipment now, due to free markets and trade. So it's only about numbers of workers.

Port capacity and equipment scale, willingness to engage in toxic processing, etc carry far more weight, IMHO.

China has a lock on various electronic production streams by having a lock on most of the rare earth processing and dealing with the low level radioactive waste by products.

One billion tonnes of raw iron ore per year flows from my state of Western Australia to China for steel production - the machinery, diggers, haul paks, massive trains, et al make that happen in a state with a population of only ~2.3 million or so with few of those in mining. 16x peak US iron ore production for steel with a workforce smaller than the US's at it's peak.

China didn't just fall into peak manufacturing capacity by a happy accident of many workers, they (for better or worse) made long term plans and stuck at them - including the reduction in population growth known as the one child policy.

Current Chinese pharma production is a truly bespoke behemoth - it has a massive capacity that can easily make small to order amounts, and again that's due to factors such as education and well automated pipelines.