China scrambles to stem manufacturing exodus as companies leave • Hacker News Board

Re: China scrambles to stem manufacturing exodus as companies leave

#51

Post by baybal2 » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

the_resistence wrote: post #50

baybal2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese manufacturing industry is already the most automated and robotised in the world. Chinese factories did not stand still for the last 10 years when accommodating the rising wages was their biggest trouble. This is very obvious to anybody working in the industry. The popular image of the industry being all about "sweatshops" is completely wrong.

Not from my vantage point, I have many young contacts at companies in Shanghai. Lot of job cuts and putting 3 workers' efforts onto the head of the last remaining 1. Plenty of manual labor left...

Ever been to factories of Chines white goods manufacturers? Haier, Midea (technically same Haier), Gree, Noritz and many others? None were "lights out," but I can say that the labour does not contribute more than 10% of their cost for them.

Re: China scrambles to stem manufacturing exodus as companies leave

#52

Post by TMWNN » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #41

ETHisso2017 wrote: post #19

Nikkei and Bloomberg seem to have an ideological axe to grind. From someone who's on the ground here, China's manufacturing base is shifting up the value chain pretty rapidly, which naturally shifts its relative attractiveness to foreign companies as a source of contract manufacturing.

On the other hand, pretending like the tariffs haven’t been a bloodbath for Chinese manufacturing seems unrealistic. I’m the CFO of a small company. Last year, 100% of our products came from China. This year only 20% are coming from China. And we’re trying our hardest to shift the remainder. Every other company in our market has either made the same shift or is planning to.

According to Peter Zeihan's The Accidental Superpower (2014), manufacturing in China has gone from being one quarter as expensive as in Mexico to 25% more expensive. He expects that the US shale and natural gas boom will further reduce costs in Mexico and the US.

Also see "Why China should follow Trump’s example and cut taxes" http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2056874/why-ch... . Quote: "As far as manufacturing is concerned, according to Cao, everything is cheaper in America apart from manpower."

Re: China scrambles to stem manufacturing exodus as companies leave

#53

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #45

panpanna wrote: post #12

Out of curiosity, how much of this is due to import tarifs and how much due to rising wages?

Chinese manufacturing industry is already the most automated and robotised in the world. Chinese factories did not stand still for the last 10 years when accommodating the rising wages was their biggest trouble. This is very obvious to anybody working in the industry. The popular image of the industry being all about "sweatshops" is completely wrong.

That simply isn’t true. Unless you are using the superlative in a weak sense. For example, the reasons why Toyota’s are crap in China vs being quality everywhere else is because Chinese auto plants aren’t as automated as those in Japan and North America.

China is definitely in the process of automating, but it is nowhere near where Japan is, or even the USA (not to mention Korea and Taiwan).