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China is the manufacturing superpower

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Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#171

Post by ajax33 »

acchow wrote: post #66
ipnon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 US oil and gas industry has $240bn in annual revenues. This is about comparable to how much Americans spend at Apple (almost $200bn)

The number you quoted for oil and gas revenue is quite low.

ExxonMobil alone made $300 billion in revenue in 2023.

Even if you look at oil majors that only operate in the US - Marathon had $170 billion in revenue in 2023.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#172

Post by gruez »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #146
saturn8601 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is that because of US inefficiencies or that they can't subsidize the cost with spying? Both?

>or that they can't subsidize the cost with spying?

There's no evidence CCP is "subsidizing the cost with spying" when it comes to consumer electronics. Even when it came to telecom gear (during 5G rollout in developed countries), concerns were mostly theoretical.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#173

Post by whatshisface »

rainsford wrote: post #165
rat87 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That is a good argument from a purely economic perspective, but the ability of a country to manufacture things on their own is a long-term benefit to the country from a security and sovereignty perspective. It's hard to prevail in a war if a potential enemy is making all your stuff for you. China understands this very well,…

It's hard to prevail in any war in a post-nuclear age. Profiting from a war with China is a total fantasy, it would be the end of both countries, even if we had as little trade with them as with the Soviet Union.

The reason we are not manufacturing everything ourselves is that our incumbents refuse to allow anything to replace them, whether that is a more efficient company or a more able manager. They have the sway within the US to get what they want, and so things like patents and approval processes (which China does not have to the same degree, because for all of their flaws the government is more powerful there than the established manufacturers), will stop anyone from improving on GM within Michigan. The competition comes from within a country they can't determine the policy of.

Germany is suffering from a similar ailment. They are stagnating because for fifty years successive administrations have equated success with success of their majors.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#174

Post by doctorpangloss »

chvid wrote: post #99
csomar wrote: 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 example is what you seem to refer to; a solar panel reading made in Vietnam - assembled in Vietnam but by a Chinese owned company with all Chinese components. Another example is the iPhone reading made in China with a dollar value of 400 but the true value add in China is much lower as all the IP, profit margins, and high value components belong somewhere else. This means that even though these numbers look very…

People buy iPhones for their software, which is all made here. Otherwise all phones are black rectangles. The hardware isn’t that important.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#175

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cipher_accompt wrote: post #167
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also make the opposite argument. If you want to manufacture things in the US, the real estate costs too much because of artificial housing scarcity, the tax system favors international supply chains over domestic ones, the regulatory environment favors large incumbents over small/new companies, etc. And if you make it disfavorable to manufacture things in the US, you create the incentive for corporations to…

You're speaking my language. Incentive-based programming of behavior drives optimization for rewards. For example, giant anticompetitive firms dominating our economies create corporate environments that shape executives to prioritize short-term profits by exploiting their undue influence to inflate their own compensation. This behavior depletes natural wealth, sacrifices long-term opportunities to more competitive fi…

I feel like the biggest problems are legislative incompetence and corruption. You have people proposing laws without considering how people will respond to them, or choosing a "compromise" authored by the perpetrators of the original offense.

People say things like "corporate profits are too high, we need to tax them more" but the actual reasons corporate profits are high are lax antitrust enforcement and regulatory capture and the proposed tax increase would apply predominantly to domestic businesses, increase the incentives for offshoring and create even more advantage for large international corporations. But tax increases are popular in Washington because then they get more money to transfer to cronies, so it keeps getting proposed as a "solution" instead of solving the actual problems.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#176

Post by tokioyoyo »

bflesch wrote: post #158
mahirsaid wrote: post #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 ti…

You're showcasing the "false equivalence" fallacy - you're comparing apples to oranges. 1) Autocracies are fundamentally unstable and need extreme violence to prevent dissent and dissolution. Autocrats basically steal from people at the bottom who in turn are less incentivized to give their best performance. Democracies are much more stable due to acceptance by most people who live in them and much more fair sharing…

I generally agree, but “China is doomed because autocracy” has been on the media since 2000s. There’s been literally two new generations of people that have been born. The country seems fairly stable as of now.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#177

Post by greggyb »

acchow wrote: post #66
ipnon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 US oil and gas industry has $240bn in annual revenues. This is about comparable to how much Americans spend at Apple (almost $200bn)

I don’t think that you’re correct about US O&G revenue.

The US produces 13M barrels of crude and condensate per day: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61545

The lowest recent spot price is $69.5: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/PET_PRI_SPT_S1_D.htm

This tells you that annual production of just crude oil is > $300B/yr. The US also has plenty of downstream processing after production (https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_unc_dcu_nus_m.htm), which means that total annual revenue must be significantly greater than this.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#178

Post by _7acn »

I remember how until quite recently, the West viewed the East, particularly China, as a backward region. People would even dismissively use the term 'Chinese junk'. In a remarkably short time, that perception has completely flipped. Now it's the West that seems to be falling behind...

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#179

Post by audunw »

smcl wrote: post #91
mahirsaid wrote: post #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 ti…

> everyone arguing the point that china cant overtake U.S. in economy Surely nobody halfway serious is arguing that. The faction about to take power in the USA is tilting at the "woke ideology" windmill, talks openly of deporting a big chunk of the workforce and does not seem to understand how tariffs work. Even if you ignore all that, China has 4-5x the population (for now!) and is by all measures has a highly devel…

Chinas total population isn’t really that relevant for what their economy will end up looking like. China is essentially a handful of moderately wealthy coastal areas (perhaps comparable to USA in population but still far behind in GDP/capita) and a huge inland area of very poor people. There’s not much reason to think all those 100s of millions of people will become as wealthy as the average American or European any time soon. It’s not just demographics. Geography is a huge challenge as well. I don’t know if China will “fall back”. But stagnation seems very likely. If they backslide it’ll probably be due to some political turmoil, like what happened in when the Soviet Union collapsed. Nearly impossible to predict. If you look at what’s happening with regular people inside China, there does seem to be a sense that things are getting worse, not better. I have friends with family in China that said exactly that this New Year’s Eve.. There’s a lot of incidents with people driving their cars into crowds of people as a revenge against society, and other similarly worrying signs. Many factories are being moved out of China. It might not be enough to show up on statistics yet, but it’s a process that has undeniably started and will probably accelerate. China has a huge bet on batteries, EVs and solar panels to make up for what they’re loosing. That’s going really well right now. But I don’t think it’s a winning strategy long term. USA and EU seems to be wanting to protect their industries and on-shore or near-shore a lot of that stuff. The manufacturing of those things are highly automated. Eventually most of the materials will come from local recycling. China could get a very strong and balanced economy if they had a good strategy based on self sustainable local consumption, rather can just export. But I just don’t see that they’re taking that seriously. Most of the policies are still geared towards supporting/subsidising higher exports.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#180

Post by riskyingo »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #174
chvid wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example is what you seem to refer to; a solar panel reading made in Vietnam - assembled in Vietnam but by a Chinese owned company with all Chinese components. Another example is the iPhone reading made in China with a dollar value of 400 but the true value add in China is much lower as all the IP, profit margins, and high value components belong somewhere else. This means that even though these numbers look very…

People buy iPhones for their software, which is all made here. Otherwise all phones are black rectangles. The hardware isn’t that important.

cool, so no other country except US should buy that crap
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