Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China is the manufacturing superpower

cepr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 315 posts

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#51

Post by csomar »

buckle8017 wrote: post #43
_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…

[flagged]

It's personal/relative, but I'd consider both the Korean and Vietnamese wars to be China's proxy war after their CCP war with the Kuomintang. They did pretty well on well (Vietnam) and preserved the status quo on the other (Korea).

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#52

Post by baxtr »

maxglute wrote: post #46
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…

Gross production is sales $$$, it's not actual output of widgets. I imagine if measure gross production by some units of stuff made, PRC would be far ahead.

Maybe true. But how do you get quality into the equation.

Is all the garbage on temu/shein also part of the gross production KPI? I couldn’t care less about these cheap plastic widgets.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#53

Post by deepsun »

maxglute wrote: post #46
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…

Gross production is sales $$$, it's not actual output of widgets. I imagine if measure gross production by some units of stuff made, PRC would be far ahead.

Yes, but $$$ is the currently the most accurate metric of "units of stuff" by their usefulness. At least there's no other widely used metric. So $$$ is the most correct way to measure the output.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#54

Post by maeil »

rat87 wrote: post #50
wakawaka28 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to protect wages in the face of competition that works for 1/10 to 1/3 the rate is to institute protectionist policies. That has also been unpopular because there's money to be made in offshoring as well. Americans are getting the worst at both ends, and only experiencing short-term benefits of having cheaper goods.

Some people don't like protectionism because in the long term it's worse for both countries. You have a short term benefit of protecting a handful of jobs in exchange for vastly more expensive goods for everyone as well as more expensive inputs to your other products undercutting other local industries. Protectionism is popular because the benifits for the few are visible while the downsides are diffuse but add up. A…

> Some people don't like protectionism because in the long term it's worse for both countries.

I keep seeing these statements on here and they're utterly misleading. Protectionism is a spectrum. It is practiced by every single country. It's a very bold assumption to make that if every country would completely eliminate everything resembling it, this would benefit everyone. The opposite is very likely. There are numerous cases of protectionist policies where the country instituting them very clearly benefited from them, even in the long run. I have spent more than a decade in two countries, each having been on a different part of the protectionist spectrum since many decades ago. It is clear as day that the more protectionist one has, throughout, continuing to this day, seen very large benefits from this policy, larger than the benefits from the less protectionist country.

We really need to stop propagating this myth among the educated in the West, it's just as harmful as "trickle-down economics" used to be before it became common knowledge that it's a fairy tale.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#55

Post by rat87 »

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.

Invading Thailand and Vietnam would likely lead to a military alliance of them US, Japan, the Philippines, Australia and possibly South Korea. If they just want Taiwan at least for now it seems like a bad idea to get all the other countries to enter the war

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#56

Post by rat87 »

coliveira wrote: post #38
dragonwriter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many of those Asian countries are our allies. If you want to argue for weapon or dual use stuff like drones that's one thing but I don't see how making cellphones help. Also we do make real things both physical and non physical

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#57

Post by csomar »

One thing people are not aware of and am curious of how big it really is: China manufacturing laundry. Essentially, goods are manufactured in China, then laundered to a third-party country and then exported to the US/EU. This come in two flavors, legal laundry where the local manufacturer satisfies the conditions; and illegal one where bribes are paid to pass goods.

> https://antidumping.vn/eu-chinabike-duty-hits-indonesia-mala...

I come from a country that does this. Massive deficit with China vs. an equivalent surplus with the EU. Weak manufacturing base that essentially import Chinese, does some packaging and then export it back.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#58

Post by mcmcmc »

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…

As with anything it’s useful in context, but it does discount the labor force advantage China has in pure population numbers.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#59

Post by creato »

MaxPock wrote: post #42
fakedang wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have another market for them where they can sell 1 billion tons of iron ore a year ?

They could process it themselves and consume or export those higher value materials

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#60

Post by janalsncm »

buckle8017 wrote: post #43
_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…

[flagged]

Even if that were true, it would only be an interesting bit of trivia rather than a fact with predictive power applicable to the present.

The article discusses the unprecedented rise of their manufacturing capabilities, currently unmatched. It’s not clear how information about preindustrial China would be applicable.

Post reply on HN