Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#331

Post by Mirioron » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #37

jennyyang wrote: post #4

At the very least, medical supplies and drugs manufacturing will get pulled back into each country. The 3M spat between Canada and the US makes it abundantly clear that in a time of true crisis, you can't even trust your closest friends when something terrifying happens to the world like this pandemic. Whether it means all manufacturing will move away from China or if it means that they will spread it globally, is an…

To be honest, I don't understand what efficiency gains this kind of globalization was supposed to bring anyways... A factory in China is just as efficient as a factory in Spain or USA. Obviously, cheaper workers work for less, but that's not exactly efficiency , (1) more a question of fairness, (2) can be done domestically (low-cost immigrant workers) and (3) there's plenty of cheap workers worldwide, not just in Chi…

>The only real advantage I can see is concentration of skill - e.g. people say that you basically have to develop electronics in Shenzhen, there's simply not enough talent in the US and EU - but I wonder if the efficiency gains are offset by innovation losses.

This is why a factory in Spain or the USA is not as efficient as one in China (or vice-versa). Institutional knowledge has to be built up over time. You can't just start a factory in a place with no skilled labor for it. It's going to be way too expensive.

Just look at the US and compare to the EU. The EU has very few influential (or large) tech companies. The US has many of them. There's clearly some kind of concentration going on there and some of it probably is due to skill and thus efficiency. It's not that individual European developers are necessarily worse, but rather that as a collective (for some reason) they don't produce the same results as Americans do. I imagine that the same applies to factories.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#332

Post by christkv » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

FooBarWidget wrote: post #283

behnamoh wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a throw-away account just to prove to someone that China did something right...

Because HN and the english speaking world is usually so anti-China, that people who are neutral of China get angry responses or are downvoted badly. Note: I am not even saying supportive of China; even being neutral is already considered unacceptable or lunacy by many people. Things are so bad that many people are afraid to speak up for China using their own identities. I used to be one of those people who were afrai…

You have bought into the CCP is China bullshit. Without the murdering CCP China could have been Taiwan. Instead you are a new country with 70 years of history that only occupies the space of the great historic nation of China.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#333

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #312

elliekelly wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways it decreases risk though, too. The risk of war, specifically. The US and Chinese governments are far from friends but our economies are much too interconnected to allow either side to instigate too much of a disagreement. For the most part globalization is good but the pandemic has certainly highlighted the value of strategic redundancy or at least an emergency plan B.

The economist Norman Angell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell ) published a highly influential book, The Great Illusion , making this exact argument. In 1909. It has, let’s say, not aged gracefully.

Empirically, I'd say it's doing very well.

The world has more trade than ever, and fewer wars than ever.

If you're referring to WW1, lowering a risk and completely eliminating it are different things.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#334

Post by frank2 » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #325

smacktoward wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist Norman Angell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell ) published a highly influential book, The Great Illusion , making this exact argument. In 1909. It has, let’s say, not aged gracefully.

The problem with this argument is ignoring the counterfactual cases: the wars that have not occurred, that would have occurred otherwise. Europe was mired in endless wars for millenia. It's now in the longest stretch of peace in centuries and, by sheer coincidence, at its highest levels of trade. In the rest of the world trade has steadily risen and wars and deaths from wars have fallen steadily. Correlation might no…

I suggest that the third factor is US policy.

Before World War II, Britain had its trading empire, France had its empire, Japan had its empire, etc. Oceanic trade between nations not in the same empire ran a high risk of the cargo simply being confiscated or destroyed by one of the imperial navies. A key pillar of the US's strategy in the Cold War was to use its naval supremacy to prevent the return to the imperial trading system; in other words, it extended to nations an offer of the ability to trade freely on the world's oceans in exchange for that nation's joining the US in opposing the Soviets.

The United States also suppressed wars. For example, the 2 nations that arguably had the most powerful pre-WWII militaries (Britain and France) allied with Israel to attack Egypt after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, but the United States, worried that the Soviets could enter the conflict, threatened Britain and France with economic sanctions unless they withdrew, which they did.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#335

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #100

elliekelly wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways it decreases risk though, too. The risk of war, specifically. The US and Chinese governments are far from friends but our economies are much too interconnected to allow either side to instigate too much of a disagreement. For the most part globalization is good but the pandemic has certainly highlighted the value of strategic redundancy or at least an emergency plan B.

Isn't WWI the usual counterargument to globalization reducing the risk of war? Or were the countries back then not interconnected enough ?

"Reducing" and "completely eliminating" are very different things.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#336

Post by Mirioron » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #68

jennyyang wrote: post #4

At the very least, medical supplies and drugs manufacturing will get pulled back into each country. The 3M spat between Canada and the US makes it abundantly clear that in a time of true crisis, you can't even trust your closest friends when something terrifying happens to the world like this pandemic. Whether it means all manufacturing will move away from China or if it means that they will spread it globally, is an…

There was a spat btwn Sweden and France too. A Swedish company kept masks in a French warehouse and wanted to ship them home because they finally needed them. France blocked it till it eventually relented.

To explain: a Swedish company warehoused millions of masks in France. Two million of these masks (million each) were supposed to be sent to Spain and Italy. France had confiscated all of these masks. It took two weeks of pressure by Sweden (and other EU countries) for them to release the masks and for them to finally be sent to Spain and Italy.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#337

Post by tly_alex » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

christkv wrote: post #209

bigpumpkin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false, by the time they shut down movement out of Wuhan, the airport was closed. There were, however, people who already left Wuhan who then left the country. There were also repatriation flights out of Wuhan.

I think people forget that they gave 48h warning before the lockdown happened causing a huge amount of what was likely infected people to flee.

Total false claim.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#338

Post by tly_alex » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #57

FooBarWidget wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I did. Not even kidding. You get it when you generally behave like a good student at school. Maybe you associate it with something else (probably Mao mass murdering or w/e) but most Chinese see it as a pretty normal school thing.

Correct, you get it when you show loyalty to ccp.

Stereotypes like this is just unbelievable in this days and in HN.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#339

Post by smacktoward » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #325

smacktoward wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist Norman Angell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell ) published a highly influential book, The Great Illusion , making this exact argument. In 1909. It has, let’s say, not aged gracefully.

The problem with this argument is ignoring the counterfactual cases: the wars that have not occurred, that would have occurred otherwise. Europe was mired in endless wars for millenia. It's now in the longest stretch of peace in centuries and, by sheer coincidence, at its highest levels of trade. In the rest of the world trade has steadily risen and wars and deaths from wars have fallen steadily. Correlation might no…

Europe fought the two most destructive wars in the history of the world in the three decades immediately following the publication of that book.

I guess you could argue that things could somehow have turned out even worse than that, but that feels like a reach.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#340

Post by Mirioron » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

castratikron wrote: post #237

tanilama wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving back to Japan is particularly not appealing anyway, Japan is having a severe labor shortage due to rabidly aging population. And 2.2B is surely not enough to persuade firms anyway on national scale, might work on targeted industry however.

Maybe an attempt to get some of the 500k+ hikikomori back into the workforce could be made. A majority are working age men.

I don't think this is likely. It's a societal problem with no real fix. If people don't feel like they're part of society then the government is unlikely to be able to fix it. It becomes even harder when those people are more or less okay with what their life is like.