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China is the manufacturing superpower

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71–80 of 315 posts

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#71
post #50

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…

It depends. We can say that China’s industrial policies are a kind of protectionism as well in that they are willing to pay for extra cost for domestic “national red supply chain independence” rather than relying on the “comparatively advantageous” western vendors. And they did get excellent results. Note that industrial independence is exactly the opposite of free trade and that has been a long sought national goal by China.

Regarding tariffs on China exports, the relatively fortunate position for the US is that the biggest components in consumer inflation index such as food, housing and energy are all either largely domestic produced or not dominated by China, which gives more room for the US to react. But the tariff could still harm the gross margin of the international enterprises and even SMBs, who are facing the immediate pressure of adjustment during the trade war.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#72
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]

If you get big enough, you don't have to fight.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#73
this is amazing and filled with facts that i wish everyone arguing the point that china cant overtake U.S. in economy or world superpowers would read. The facts are there, there is not much hiding around the corner, all of the true indication is in front of us. Yes. the article states U.S. still holds the title for world superpower by military size and capabilities. That's not to say that china cant catch up in no time with U.S. military. That's if they decide to do so. i would ask does the Chinese republic need to invest heavy in this sector in order to grow? Clearly not from the facts. in fact that's the very same thing we should have been doing all along.The U.S. has spent enormous amount of capital to fund wars and foreign relational activities.

China has a great way going about this. making friends with less developed countries that U.S. overlooked. China is looking for something specific. Just as U.S. is looking for something specific as well. To be totally honest I am not entirely sure what the U.S. is looking for when engaging with other countries, other than the same narrative for the fear of not having safety blah blah. This time that was spent on these adventures the U.S. cannot get back, while also injuring foreign relations.

there is a clear sign that the U.S. government is confused and has a gun with no-where to aim. All the policies and efforts are accelerating the U.S. into deterioration. The U.S. has some strong sector for the sake of this reply i will mainly say that attacking the top tech firms and industries with regulation will only push them out to more favorable grounds give new room for industries to form in more favorable grounds other than U.S.. the solution must solve the problem that brought the solution to existence.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#74

I bought two things recently: some temperature sensors for a smart home and some cable clips to hide some wiring under a cabinet. Both were mass produced in China and both shipped with 3M branded adhesive mounting pads. An apt and literal representation of global manufacturing — US made chemicals, Chinese electronics, one clinging to the other.

If one assumes that those 3M strips are authentic branding... I haven't come across a single tape that offered the expected brand quality.

When I visited China some years ago "3N" was also popular. Same logo font and color, but at least they tried to avoid blatantly infringing the genuine brand.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#76
post #57

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-ind…

This way of working is marketed as such by Chinese manufacturers. They will refer to it as something along the lines of: Made in South East Asia. Sometimes they produce the products in (e.g.) Vietnam, but more often than not, everything is done in China, then shipped to Vietnam for packaging or adding a "Made in Vietnam" label, and shipped out from there. Thailand is another upcoming player in this scheme.

Large companies are well aware of this and happily use their existing Chinese suppliers' SEA entity to avoid sanctions and tarrifs, or to show that they are moving away from having everything Made in China.

To be fair, only gullible or naive people could truly believe that products coming from any part of Asia are not made, controlled, or otherwise influcnced by the Chinese.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#77
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…

AU exported ~1.5-2 trillion (lazy chatgpt math) worth of iron ore to PRC in last 20 years... which is life changing sovereign fund size, for Norway (also ~2T), with 5 million people. Or UAE 1 million emraties. Qatar with 300k Qataries. Much less so for 25m OZs. Doesn't mean they haven't squandered what they have, but just to put scale in perspective.

Not to mention PRC steel employs like 3m people, about the entire population of western australia where all the iron ore is. Unless AU dumped 1/5 of their entire workforce, relocate millions of workers and families, they can't make enough finished steel products to fill PRC appetite. I think much easier and profitable for AU to double down on ore extraction and ship more $$$ than finished steel. That's where AU competitive advantage is. Otherwise buyers will look elsewhere, i.e. Brazil could have been expanding iron ore exports much sooner.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#78
post #57

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-ind…

> 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.

IIRC, a lot of stuff that's labeled "Made in Singapore" is/was basically that.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#79
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some don't, but many do. Does a 600k NVIDIA AI rack provide as much value as 600k worth of commodity solar panels, or 10,000 entry level mopeds? Most of the world (developing) benefits more from commodity widgets.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#80
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Certainly. The reality of the political situation though is that China is an authoritarian country ruled by the PRC, increasingly acting more like a dictatorship. While China’s economy, society and people have 100% the right to grow as much as they would like, those of us living in (sonewhat) liberal democracies would still want to contain the power of the PRC (and the cult of Xi Jinping).

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