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China is the manufacturing superpower

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Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#31

Post by fakedang »

defrost wrote: post #20
anovikov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, dig…

I can't help but say that Australia is basically the stupidest country on the planet (at least amongst Western democracies, since one could say modern Russia is stupider, but that's a whole another cultural debate). It's like the degenerate alcoholic who's willing to prostitute their mother for a bar tab. A country so blessed with some of the most important natural resources, a country whose geography is synonymous with the word abundance. But nah, they'd rather sell themselves out to the biggest foreign bidder, even if they are from their biggest regional rivals. While Norway and the UAE enjoy the fruits of their resources through strong welfare systems enabled by a resource-driven economy a fraction of Australia's, Australia sold itself so hard its own citizens have to buy from foreign corpos.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#33

Post by coliveira »

echelon wrote: post #15
_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…

> Even if China was 100% a friend, you wouldn't want one country with this much outsized control over manufacturing

It's not up to the US to decide this. China is the largest car market. It is also the largest car producing country. It is the largest manufacturing country. It also has the largest number of consumers in any country, and this market is still growing. It has the largest number of engineers. The numbers play in China's favor.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#34

Post by advael »

kayewiggin wrote: post #19
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…

Again, I really don't feel qualified to weigh in on most of these matters, though I will say that I generally do prefer direct citations if you'd like me to take the epistemic credibility of a claim more seriously than any other thing someone on the internet said (in other words, saying "go look it up" provides no more additional credibility than simply making the statement, and is thus kind of pointless, and in fact you take a not insignificant epistemic credibility hit for my purposes by suggesting that asking an LLM for factual information should be taken as a reliable source)

That said, it's interesting to see how the supply shocks of a global pandemic can shift these kinds of relationships. It doesn't surprise me that Mexico, being a huge source of food for the US, is the largest exporter to it. What I do wonder is how much exports pertain to manufacturing relationships. Like in the case of Mexico -> US, I think we wouldn't count e.g. stuff we buy for the produce section to be manufactured goods, but that would still count toward import/export numbers. Does this apply to other things too? Do things like IP count?

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#35

Post by coliveira »

klipklop wrote: post #22
echelon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The irony is in a world war China would likely take over the manufacturing plants the west built in places like Thailand and Vietnam to assist China in the war effort. Further bolstering their war time production.

Let's not even talk about Taiwan, which will be the first target, and its plants will all produce chips for Chinese products.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#36

Post by devmunchies »

Animats wrote: post #10

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

I think it's less capability and more the cost of goods. You can't compete with items that are half the cost to produce in east asia.

Manufacturing was always going to move to where it costs less.

It's bad for a productive american economy but it's a prisoner's dilemma so you can't blame businesses or consumers.

The government is the only party that had the power to do anything. it's 100% an economics problem.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#37

Post by wumeow »

coliveira wrote: post #35
klipklop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is in a world war China would likely take over the manufacturing plants the west built in places like Thailand and Vietnam to assist China in the war effort. Further bolstering their war time production.

Let's not even talk about Taiwan, which will be the first target, and its plants will all produce chips for Chinese products.

Those plants will 100% be destroyed/disabled in the event of an invasion.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#38

Post by coliveira »

dragonwriter wrote: post #17
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 subs…

Producing real things is not just a matter of money. You need know-how and supply chains. These things left the US at least 10 years ago. It can get them back, but the costs will be staggering, and it would need to compete against China and other Asian countries.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#39

Post by defrost »

fakedang wrote: post #31
defrost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, dig…

I can't help but say that Australia is basically the stupidest country on the planet (at least amongst Western democracies, since one could say modern Russia is stupider, but that's a whole another cultural debate). It's like the degenerate alcoholic who's willing to prostitute their mother for a bar tab. A country so blessed with some of the most important natural resources, a country whose geography is synonymous w…

> Australia is basically the stupidest country on the planet

Too right.

> It's like the degenerate alcoholic who's willing to prostitute their mother for a bar tab.

Ahh, so you are Australian then.

> even if they are from their biggest regional rivals.

How is China a regional rival? Australia has koalas, China has Pandas.

> While Norway and the UAE enjoy the fruits of their resources through strong welfare systems enabled by a resource-driven economy

Australia also has welfare, high living standards, high life expectancy, good health, etc.

> Australia sold itself so hard its own citizens have to buy from foreign corpos.

Ahhh, so Norway and UAE have their own home built computers, TV's, and EV's, etc then?

You have some points, but you're trying to edge lord a bit hard there mate.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#40

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wumeow wrote: post #37
coliveira wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not even talk about Taiwan, which will be the first target, and its plants will all produce chips for Chinese products.

Those plants will 100% be destroyed/disabled in the event of an invasion.

Those plants depend on a lot of imports for spare parts and raw materials, even if China took them over tomorrow somehow intact with with the people to operate them, they would be out of commission in a month or so.
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