Live data from Hacker News

China is the manufacturing superpower

cepr.org

91–100 of 315 posts

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#91

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 developed, productive and growing economy. What argument can there possibly be in favour of China falling back, other than maybe the aforementioned demographic issues.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#92
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't take long for China to catch up. And in a hot war, they're the ones who can rapidly rebuild. Lots of reports say that Chinese military spending has exceeded our own if you account for their cheaper cost of labor and material goods. China also recently (just days ago) flew two new sixth gen fighters. The US has yet to demonstrate one. The tactical move for the West to counter is to move as much manufacturing…

> 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…

The US can have a big effect with policies supporting local / non Chinese manufacturing with tariffs, subsidies and the like, as they are already doing.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#93
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 comp…

"or otherwise influcnced by the Chinese"

That last statement makes it almost meaningless. Then you can also say, no product on this world was made without US influence. Otherwise all those countries like Vietnam do have a agency of their own (Vietnam for example even succesfully fought china before with military)

And south korea and Japan (and Taiwan) also are somewhat out of the direct control of china.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#94
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't take long for China to catch up. And in a hot war, they're the ones who can rapidly rebuild. Lots of reports say that Chinese military spending has exceeded our own if you account for their cheaper cost of labor and material goods. China also recently (just days ago) flew two new sixth gen fighters. The US has yet to demonstrate one. The tactical move for the West to counter is to move as much manufacturing…

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.

Can we even talk about a world war like this in the nuclear era? Wouldn't we all just annihilate each other with nuclear weapons if we had a full fledged war?

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#95
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 comp…

The country am from is neither in Asia nor influenced by China. People do it because there is money in doing it, simple as that. Chinese accept it (they sell low what other people sell high) because regulation/tariffs put them at a disadvantage and they just have to suck it up.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#96
post #54
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. I keep seeing these statements on here and they're utterly misleading. Protectionism is a spectrum. It is practiced by every single country. It's a very bold assumption to make that if every country would completely eliminate everything resembling it, this would benefit everyone. The opposite is very likely. There are numer…

A reduction in the space of possible allocations of resources isn’t good. It is good for any particular set of parties insofar as it hurts some other set of parties more than themselves. This is neither complicated nor controversial.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Did Apple build these factories?

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#98
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…

There's not too much fake origin stuff from Vietnam to US, which is the largest SEA country exporting to US.

"However, new research from Harvard Business School and Duke University paints a more nuanced picture — rerouting appears to be lower than is imagined.

While trade rerouting through Vietnam does occur, its scale appears far smaller than previously thought. The study found that in 2021, about 16.1 per cent of Vietnamese exports to the US — roughly US$15.5 billion — could be classified as potential rerouting when analysed at the product level. But when the researchers examined individual firms — tracking specific products flowing from China through Vietnam to the US — the figure fell to just 1.8 per cent, or US$1.7 billion."

https://fulcrum.sg/vietnam-china-and-rerouting-when-percepti...

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#99
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 unbalanced it is still Western companies that make biggest part of the profit. (At least so far though things are clearly changing with Chinese companies are climbing up the value chain.)

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#100
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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN