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China is the manufacturing superpower

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Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#81

Post by renewiltord »

saturn8601 wrote: post #30
Animats wrote: post #10

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

They are trying: Purism is selling the Librem 5 USA at $1,600 From the site: "The Librem 5 USA has Made in USA Electronics with all fabrication and manufacturing done at the Purism facility. Individual components used in fabrication are sourced direct from chip makers and parts distributors. We use US companies with US fabrication whenever possible. Most distributors are based in the US with the exception of large in…

Usually a lot of "I would pay for a phone if it were made in the USA" people disappear once "here's a phone made in the USA" actually shows up. It's usually just bullshit.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#82

Post by defrost »

creato wrote: post #59
MaxPock wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42593404

Australia itself doesn't have the demand for that much steel internally - China does (and exports its excess production).

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#83

Post by fragmede »

aurareturn wrote: post #64
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.

>manufacturing plants the west built in places like Thailand and Vietnam What are these?

Apple https://asiamattersforamerica.org/articles/apple-exploring-m...

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#84

Post by renewiltord »

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…

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Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#85

Post by jhanschoo »

_kava wrote: post #70
pm90 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> liberal democracies would still want to contain the power of the PRC (and the cult of Xi Jinping) I am not Chinese but I still find this comment hilariously offensive and tone-deaf. I can say almost without a doubt that the US has a "tremendous" issue with cult-of-personality right now. But I don't see Chinese or other countries attacking or trying to "contain" this. The US is still treated as a nation, unified in…

Your comment immediately reminded of this Reuters story yesterday: "Supporters of South Korea's Yoon adopt 'Stop the Steal', hope Trump will help" https://www.reuters.com/world/supporters-south-koreas-yoon-a...

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#86

Post by forgetfreeman »

ipnon wrote: post #14
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 ma…

Point of Order: there was very little in good faith with the offshoring of manufacturing either in the domestic propaganda produced to drum up support for the initiative or the intention to dominate Chinese society with western consumerism.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#87

Post by curiousgal »

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…

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Did the U.S.?

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq...

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#89

Post by tivert »

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…

>> The US can't even make cell phones any more.

>> What would it take to get that capability back?

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

National security, obviously. Cell phones are a critical modern communication device, and whoever though it was a good idea to outsource that kind of thing political and economic rival was an idiot.

There's all kinds of accounts of past CIA/NSA daring-do where they used US-manufactured products to subvert rivals, and now we're going to get to be on the other end of that kind of thing.

Then there's the adding factor of it being kind of a good idea to have significant manufacturing capacity for the full-range of modern products located domestically or with allies in case the geopolitical SHTF.

You know, all that important stuff the market doesn't give a shit about, because it's a limited and imperfect system.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#90

Post by grecy »

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…

FWIW, I’m an Aussie who went back during covid for the first meaningful stretch in 20 years. Explored the who country.

I saw with my own eyes what you’re talking about and you are spot on. It’s depressing and sad to see how Australia can’t organize a free one in a brothel, is stuck in the past and has no real interest or plan on how to improve anything at all.

Their problem is life is pretty good, so they’re not interested in a bit of work to make it incredible. Like you said, a modest sovereign wealth fund could easily let every Aussie work 4 or even 3 days a week. Or more solar, or making use of all the uranium or one of dozens of things

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