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Getting the feeling China has blown it and successful companies looking to expand into Asia are now looking at India instead. I also saw that Foxconn is lookin

Getting the feeling China has blown it and successful companies looking to expand into Asia are now looking at India instead. I also saw that Foxconn is looking to build Apple products in India now too.

buran77 6y ago
Companies don't invest billions in India to shaft China, they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market, which is a huge one. If India suddenly sees a wave of "build it at home" sentiment then Google or Apple won't want to be left out and fall behind the competition. Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whether it's decades of being the mole in a wack-a-mole game with the Chinese system, or having to invest extra billions in India. For example the largest manufacturing plant BMW has is in the US. But that's not because it's cheaper to build there, or because they want to shaft Germany. It's because they wanted access to that market in an economically and socially acceptable fashion, making them the biggest auto exporter by value in the U.S. The "socially acceptable" may not have worked since even the White House was unaware of this, presumably many Americans also.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  No, but they need to make logical decisions about which market to invest in, and it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? If I was making that decision, it would be clearly easier to do business in India rather than China and likely far more lucrative with less concerns about property theft, censorship and the stain that human rights abuses will leave. I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in China, it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? It doesn't look like this to me. India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. Even if the GDP per capita (nominal or PPP) is about half of that of China, it still has a huge potential as a market and it never received enough attention. Companies are starting to see that potential now. We shouldn't anthropomorphize company decisions, they are generally purely pragmatic. There were money on the table, it doesn't imply India will be the biggest or most profitable market or production center. While domestic consumption in big markets that demand local production will be satisfied as such (so an Indian iPhone might say "Made in India"), companies will still supply other markets with products coming from the factory that allows them the highest profits (so a US or EU iPhone will likely still say "Made in China"). > it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often. Designing and building an iPhone are also not very straight forward but if it's profitable companies will do it. That's why so many companies still operate in China despite the chicanery.
    - eldaisfish 6y ago
      >India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. What on earth are you talking about? India's growth rate in the past decade is nowhere comparable to China's. Even if you argue that China cooks their books, you cannot discount the volume and value of trade that China does with numerous other countries. http://statisticstimes.com/economy/china-vs-india-economy.php http://statisticstimes.com/economy/china-vs-india-economy.ph... >it still has a huge potential as a market and it never received enough attention India has hordes of poorly educated and poor people combined with a minuscule middle class - a definition that is expanded to include people one financial disaster away from poverty. The real market is China, not India, with its growing middle class and easy access to the full spectrum of manufacturing needs combined with a large market.
      - buran77 6y ago
        > India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. The growth rate refers to the population.
        eldaisfish 6y ago
        thanks. i misread that and assumed that growth implied economic growth. My other point stands - India's market with any meaningful purchasing power is minuscule compared to China's.
        vidarh 6y ago
        India's population growth is largely just trailing China by ~30 years. Current projections seems to suggest China's population will peak around 2030, and India around 2060. It's clear India's population will exceed China's, but it won't get all that much higher as birth rates in India are dropping with development like most other places.
  - dis-sys 6y ago
    > I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in China, it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often. try doing that in india, good luck for stable electricity supply.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Pretty sure there is a little bit of China exit strategy here as well. The actions taken in Hong Kong along with recent invasion demonstrations against Taiwan don't exactly make for a stable business environment. What is a business to do if China acts violently on either and suddenly your supply chain if off limits because of sanctions? Still after moving segments to India the next area is where? Africa is still a source of cheap labor but too many countries there suffer from stability issues. Figure within a generation it will be both viable market and manufacturing base.
  - laurent123456 6y ago
    Google has pretty much no business in China, so it makes no difference for them what's happening there.
- notahacker 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't read any commentary on the current China situation at all into this decision. The appeal of India's growing middle class, IT outsourcing industry, Android-centric smartphone market, widespread English fluency and emerging domestic startup scene is there for a Google wanting access to that market and a base for certain types of operations regardless of what China's doing.
- peterwwillis 6y ago
  > they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market That's not the main reason for moving manufacturing. You move manufacturing to exploit lower prices in the production chain (and other logistical considerations). It's why one $10 t-shirt is produced by work in 10 different countries, and why that too is constantly shifting. It's harder to "shift" a massive centralized tech industrial manufacturing system, but if the cost savings are there, you move. I think everyone is now aware that China is finally developing a middle class and starting to clean up its rampant abuse of its environment, meaning it's going to cost more to manufacture there. Time to look for another developing nation to exploit, and India is a gigantic and attractive target with a lot of potential. Building (and selling) cars is quite different than phones, advertising, or internet services. BMW produces mostly SUVs in its Spartanburg plant, and it sells most of those SUVs in the USA (its biggest market), so it's more profitable (tariffs, shipping, JIT, etc) to make them locally. All other BMWs in the USA are imported. Manufacturing your tech in your biggest market (now or the future) may be unnecessary and less profitable if you can squeeze more out of the production chain in another country. China has just been so god damn cheap for so long (and so free with its loans) that it's totally fine if they aren't even one of your biggest markets. But they won't be that cheap for much longer, especially if the USG makes it harder/more expensive.
  - fny 6y ago
    This isn't about manufacturing. This is $10B for /digital/ services. Google dreams of being allowed into that market. The Great Firewall prevents it outright.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  > Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whether it's decades of being the mole in a wack-a-mole game with the Chinese system, or having to invest extra billions in India. True to some extent only. Apart from profits, publicly traded companies also clamour for a stable business environment. And authoritarian countries have an inherent risk, due to the nature of their government and uncertainty on the world stage. No one can make 50 year plans for China, like they can do with US, Europe or UK. It's the same case with India too. Democracies provide an extra level of stability.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > clamour for a stable business environment > Democracies provide an extra level of stability. That's very true which is why I said "make the best of it" (i.e. "of a bad situation"). Companies will have to operate under different assumptions and making different plans than they would under normal conditions. Think "peace time vs. war time CEOs". But this is what makes these companies successful, the ability to juggle with unknowns, hostile conditions, uncertain future. It's a gamble but not that different from what Tesla or SpaceX did when jumping into the unknown. They're different types of unknowns but still just as risky, able to easily sink a ship.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - munificent 6y ago
    > No one can make 50 year plans for China, like they can do with US Five years ago, I would have agreed with you about the US. But the direction that politics have gone since then makes me a lot less sure. The rate that corruption has grown under the Trump without repercussions is absolutely astonishing. Like any relationship, I don't know how that break in trust between the government and its citizens can be repaired.
    - newfriend 6y ago
      Give me a break. Very little has effectively changed in the past five years, aside from the insane polarization of the media. The Trump administration's "astonishing rate of corruption" you are perceiving is being massively overstated by partisan media outlets. Previous administrations were free to engage in all manners of corruption, while the mainstream media touted their "coolness".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seemslegit 6y ago
China hasn't "blown" anything - it is set to compete with US head to head on the world stage not with India over US investments.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted. China is clearly the one investing in foreign countries now, for instance see belt & road initiative. It is also clearly conpeting with US, with Trump administration exacerbating the conflict. Even if you don't like China, you should not pretend they are a in a weaker position than they are.
  - MangoCoffee 6y ago
    you should check one-belt-one-road again. it haven't bring any fruits that China is hoping for. China is aging. while India have plenty of young cheap labors. its only natural for companies want India's labors and market.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      The point is that they arent sitting around waiting for foreign investment, they are now the ones making foreign investment. The paradigm has shifled. Its certainly debatable whether belt and road is successfull, but I have recently recieved package from China to UK by Rail so at least some good came of it. Also the countries China is investing in were neglected by West and wall street for decades.
  - starfallg 6y ago
    The belt and road initiative is heavily hyped but hasn't resulted in any real concrete shift in trade. China is still making its money the old way - through massive amount of exports to advanced economies.
- starfallg 6y ago
  China is an heavily export oriented economy losing access to the markets of the advanced economies day-by-day. Their play is to pivot into a consumer market before their foreign reserves eventually dries up, but that's hindered by the large population.
totalZero 6y ago
If China has indeed "blown it," there's no imperative reason that India must be the subsequent option. Several other markets offer cheap labor and friendly host government policies toward foreign manufacturers.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  (not OP) That's true, but Modi is riding a nationalist wave. If you're Google and you're worried about having too much invested in China AND being kicked out of India for investing too little, this would be killing 2 birds with one stone...
- bluGill 6y ago
  India is one country with a lot of people. Other countries can be used but the smaller population means you have to figure out a new legal system sooner when you run out of cheap labor.
- aylmao 6y ago
  India can offer both the cheap labour and the large market. In the coming decades as the rest of India gets connected to the internet, it will become the biggest market since at its current population growth it'll surpass China's population size.
Barrin92 6y ago
>Getting the feeling China has blown it and successful companies looking to expand into Asia are now looking at India instead Chinese leadership priced this in years ago. If you follow ongoing political debates in China more closely they were already talking about the next 20 years being rocky as China climbs up in the world stage five to ten years ago. Why do you think China's Made in China 2025 industrial policy program was started in 2015 and OBOR in 2013?
- tlear 6y ago
  Talk is talk, but question is why murder Indian soldiers? Why bother destroying the golden goose Honkong? Add to that silly power games to try and intimidate Australia(and failing) PRC strategy is very far from smart here. Perhaps it is supreme arrogance? Arrogance like that historically have led to a lot of people getting killed.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    Hong Kong isn't a golden goose any more. Hong Kong went from representing about a fifth of the Chinese economy to about 2% today. The Shanghai stock exchange today is larger than the one in Hong Kong, and the perception in China has shifted from seeing it as an important economic region to a political nuissance as the role of foreign capital diminishes. It's not seen as a dynamic region any more and the tech talent goes to Shenzhen or the Greater Bay Area and to mainland universities while HK suffers from stagnation, so basically they've decided that now is the time to incorporate it before the situation becomes politically untenable. The situation with India is more complicated and there's actually no consensus inside the party. The arguments for the more assertive stance are mainly that there's right now a huge asymmetry between China and India, simply put India doesn't stand a chance in an actual conflict. The hawkish factions inside the party argue that conflict is inevitable so now is the time to clarify matters as long as China has a tactical advantage. The jury's actually out on whether that's a smart move or not. From the perspective of the Chinese there's certainly a case to be made for it as the US is in political disarray under incompetent leadership.
    - 6y ago
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
India is a giant market, an investment of $10 billion is a rounding error.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  No, it's not. All Indian startups combined raised a total of $14B last year (2019).
  - biql 6y ago
    Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s small, might be just undervalued and it’s probably cheaper to run a startup there due to lower cost of living and salaries.
  - t3rabytes 6y ago
    Just because their VC totals don't match the bay area doesn't mean that this is a small investment.
  - tester34 6y ago
    That's giant amount of money How many serious start ups can be there?
    - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
      Quite a few: it's a country of near 1.4 billion people, so it comes to only $10 per person, and India already has 20-ish unicorns who largely exist to serve them.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Most of the world economy does not revolve around startups. "In 2018–19, the foreign direct investment (FDI) in India was $64.4 billion". Consider that there is also domestic investment, and that Google's investment is spread over many years.
  - billfruit 6y ago
    India probably has a rather small startup scene, that is not much of an argument.
oblio 6y ago
I'm pretty sure that we're at the point where no one and nothing is putting the Chinese genie back in the bottle. I don't agree with the CCP on many things, but China has stood up. At this point the Chinese ascent can only be slowed down but they will only go down if they implode. Which I don't think anyone wants.
- baybal2 6y ago
  The genie is out of the bottle, the best saying by far about how the West overlooked the coming of hardcore rightists to power in China.
intended 6y ago
This is bunk. There are 2 forces At play that matter to your position 1) big tech firms investing in a large local player for legal, political connections and arms length sheilding from the necessary local corruption 2) normal manufacturers moving to Vietnam - which has accelerated since the trade war due to COVID. The second is best described by a New Zealand owner who was looking for factories to build stuff in, aside from China. India was described as passable, if you Are an MNC. Then you can afford the workers while ensuring quality. For anyone else, the quality of service from factories drops of fast. There simply isn’t the wherewithal in talent or experience to do manufacturing at scale and at competitive pricing for the typical firm who wants to move manufacturing hubs. In contrast He had videos of Vietnamese factories working towards throughout targets and being a viable alternative to China. India needs to reform Labour laws. It’s been a great hope that this govt with its monumental single mandate would have taken the issue and freed the system up so manufacturing could be unshackled.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines with "This is bunk" and other such swipes: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - intended 6y ago
    Noted. My bad.
kccqzy 6y ago
I don't think China has really "blown" it in the sense that they wanted foreign expansion and investment but failed. The Chinese had always wanted a homegrown tech industry, and they are pretty successfully at that.

buran77 6y ago

Companies don't invest billions in India to shaft China, they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market, which is a huge one. If India suddenly sees a wave of "build it at home" sentiment then Google or Apple won't want to be left out and fall behind the competition. Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whether it's decades of being the mole in a wack-a-mole game with the Chinese system, or having to invest extra billions in India. For example the largest manufacturing plant BMW has is in the US. But that's not because it's cheaper to build there, or because they want to shaft Germany. It's because they wanted access to that market in an economically and socially acceptable fashion, making them the biggest auto exporter by value in the U.S. The "socially acceptable" may not have worked since even the White House was unaware of this, presumably many Americans also.

bamboozled 6y ago
No, but they need to make logical decisions about which market to invest in, and it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? If I was making that decision, it would be clearly easier to do business in India rather than China and likely far more lucrative with less concerns about property theft, censorship and the stain that human rights abuses will leave. I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in China, it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often.
- buran77 6y ago
  > it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? It doesn't look like this to me. India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. Even if the GDP per capita (nominal or PPP) is about half of that of China, it still has a huge potential as a market and it never received enough attention. Companies are starting to see that potential now. We shouldn't anthropomorphize company decisions, they are generally purely pragmatic. There were money on the table, it doesn't imply India will be the biggest or most profitable market or production center. While domestic consumption in big markets that demand local production will be satisfied as such (so an Indian iPhone might say "Made in India"), companies will still supply other markets with products coming from the factory that allows them the highest profits (so a US or EU iPhone will likely still say "Made in China"). > it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often. Designing and building an iPhone are also not very straight forward but if it's profitable companies will do it. That's why so many companies still operate in China despite the chicanery.
  - eldaisfish 6y ago
    >India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. What on earth are you talking about? India's growth rate in the past decade is nowhere comparable to China's. Even if you argue that China cooks their books, you cannot discount the volume and value of trade that China does with numerous other countries. http://statisticstimes.com/economy/china-vs-india-economy.php http://statisticstimes.com/economy/china-vs-india-economy.ph... >it still has a huge potential as a market and it never received enough attention India has hordes of poorly educated and poor people combined with a minuscule middle class - a definition that is expanded to include people one financial disaster away from poverty. The real market is China, not India, with its growing middle class and easy access to the full spectrum of manufacturing needs combined with a large market.
    - buran77 6y ago
      > India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. The growth rate refers to the population.
      - eldaisfish 6y ago
        thanks. i misread that and assumed that growth implied economic growth. My other point stands - India's market with any meaningful purchasing power is minuscule compared to China's.
      - vidarh 6y ago
        India's population growth is largely just trailing China by ~30 years. Current projections seems to suggest China's population will peak around 2030, and India around 2060. It's clear India's population will exceed China's, but it won't get all that much higher as birth rates in India are dropping with development like most other places.
- dis-sys 6y ago
  > I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in China, it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often. try doing that in india, good luck for stable electricity supply.
Shivetya 6y ago
Pretty sure there is a little bit of China exit strategy here as well. The actions taken in Hong Kong along with recent invasion demonstrations against Taiwan don't exactly make for a stable business environment. What is a business to do if China acts violently on either and suddenly your supply chain if off limits because of sanctions? Still after moving segments to India the next area is where? Africa is still a source of cheap labor but too many countries there suffer from stability issues. Figure within a generation it will be both viable market and manufacturing base.
- laurent123456 6y ago
  Google has pretty much no business in China, so it makes no difference for them what's happening there.
notahacker 6y ago
Yeah, I don't read any commentary on the current China situation at all into this decision. The appeal of India's growing middle class, IT outsourcing industry, Android-centric smartphone market, widespread English fluency and emerging domestic startup scene is there for a Google wanting access to that market and a base for certain types of operations regardless of what China's doing.
peterwwillis 6y ago
> they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market That's not the main reason for moving manufacturing. You move manufacturing to exploit lower prices in the production chain (and other logistical considerations). It's why one $10 t-shirt is produced by work in 10 different countries, and why that too is constantly shifting. It's harder to "shift" a massive centralized tech industrial manufacturing system, but if the cost savings are there, you move. I think everyone is now aware that China is finally developing a middle class and starting to clean up its rampant abuse of its environment, meaning it's going to cost more to manufacture there. Time to look for another developing nation to exploit, and India is a gigantic and attractive target with a lot of potential. Building (and selling) cars is quite different than phones, advertising, or internet services. BMW produces mostly SUVs in its Spartanburg plant, and it sells most of those SUVs in the USA (its biggest market), so it's more profitable (tariffs, shipping, JIT, etc) to make them locally. All other BMWs in the USA are imported. Manufacturing your tech in your biggest market (now or the future) may be unnecessary and less profitable if you can squeeze more out of the production chain in another country. China has just been so god damn cheap for so long (and so free with its loans) that it's totally fine if they aren't even one of your biggest markets. But they won't be that cheap for much longer, especially if the USG makes it harder/more expensive.
- fny 6y ago
  This isn't about manufacturing. This is $10B for /digital/ services. Google dreams of being allowed into that market. The Great Firewall prevents it outright.
kumarvvr 6y ago
> Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whether it's decades of being the mole in a wack-a-mole game with the Chinese system, or having to invest extra billions in India. True to some extent only. Apart from profits, publicly traded companies also clamour for a stable business environment. And authoritarian countries have an inherent risk, due to the nature of their government and uncertainty on the world stage. No one can make 50 year plans for China, like they can do with US, Europe or UK. It's the same case with India too. Democracies provide an extra level of stability.
- buran77 6y ago
  > clamour for a stable business environment > Democracies provide an extra level of stability. That's very true which is why I said "make the best of it" (i.e. "of a bad situation"). Companies will have to operate under different assumptions and making different plans than they would under normal conditions. Think "peace time vs. war time CEOs". But this is what makes these companies successful, the ability to juggle with unknowns, hostile conditions, uncertain future. It's a gamble but not that different from what Tesla or SpaceX did when jumping into the unknown. They're different types of unknowns but still just as risky, able to easily sink a ship.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- munificent 6y ago
  > No one can make 50 year plans for China, like they can do with US Five years ago, I would have agreed with you about the US. But the direction that politics have gone since then makes me a lot less sure. The rate that corruption has grown under the Trump without repercussions is absolutely astonishing. Like any relationship, I don't know how that break in trust between the government and its citizens can be repaired.
  - newfriend 6y ago
    Give me a break. Very little has effectively changed in the past five years, aside from the insane polarization of the media. The Trump administration's "astonishing rate of corruption" you are perceiving is being massively overstated by partisan media outlets. Previous administrations were free to engage in all manners of corruption, while the mainstream media touted their "coolness".

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seemslegit 6y ago

China hasn't "blown" anything - it is set to compete with US head to head on the world stage not with India over US investments.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted. China is clearly the one investing in foreign countries now, for instance see belt & road initiative. It is also clearly conpeting with US, with Trump administration exacerbating the conflict. Even if you don't like China, you should not pretend they are a in a weaker position than they are.
- MangoCoffee 6y ago
  you should check one-belt-one-road again. it haven't bring any fruits that China is hoping for. China is aging. while India have plenty of young cheap labors. its only natural for companies want India's labors and market.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    The point is that they arent sitting around waiting for foreign investment, they are now the ones making foreign investment. The paradigm has shifled. Its certainly debatable whether belt and road is successfull, but I have recently recieved package from China to UK by Rail so at least some good came of it. Also the countries China is investing in were neglected by West and wall street for decades.
- starfallg 6y ago
  The belt and road initiative is heavily hyped but hasn't resulted in any real concrete shift in trade. China is still making its money the old way - through massive amount of exports to advanced economies.
starfallg 6y ago
China is an heavily export oriented economy losing access to the markets of the advanced economies day-by-day. Their play is to pivot into a consumer market before their foreign reserves eventually dries up, but that's hindered by the large population.

totalZero 6y ago

If China has indeed "blown it," there's no imperative reason that India must be the subsequent option. Several other markets offer cheap labor and friendly host government policies toward foreign manufacturers.

LatteLazy 6y ago
(not OP) That's true, but Modi is riding a nationalist wave. If you're Google and you're worried about having too much invested in China AND being kicked out of India for investing too little, this would be killing 2 birds with one stone...
bluGill 6y ago
India is one country with a lot of people. Other countries can be used but the smaller population means you have to figure out a new legal system sooner when you run out of cheap labor.
aylmao 6y ago
India can offer both the cheap labour and the large market. In the coming decades as the rest of India gets connected to the internet, it will become the biggest market since at its current population growth it'll surpass China's population size.

Barrin92 6y ago

>Getting the feeling China has blown it and successful companies looking to expand into Asia are now looking at India instead Chinese leadership priced this in years ago. If you follow ongoing political debates in China more closely they were already talking about the next 20 years being rocky as China climbs up in the world stage five to ten years ago. Why do you think China's Made in China 2025 industrial policy program was started in 2015 and OBOR in 2013?

tlear 6y ago
Talk is talk, but question is why murder Indian soldiers? Why bother destroying the golden goose Honkong? Add to that silly power games to try and intimidate Australia(and failing) PRC strategy is very far from smart here. Perhaps it is supreme arrogance? Arrogance like that historically have led to a lot of people getting killed.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Hong Kong isn't a golden goose any more. Hong Kong went from representing about a fifth of the Chinese economy to about 2% today. The Shanghai stock exchange today is larger than the one in Hong Kong, and the perception in China has shifted from seeing it as an important economic region to a political nuissance as the role of foreign capital diminishes. It's not seen as a dynamic region any more and the tech talent goes to Shenzhen or the Greater Bay Area and to mainland universities while HK suffers from stagnation, so basically they've decided that now is the time to incorporate it before the situation becomes politically untenable. The situation with India is more complicated and there's actually no consensus inside the party. The arguments for the more assertive stance are mainly that there's right now a huge asymmetry between China and India, simply put India doesn't stand a chance in an actual conflict. The hawkish factions inside the party argue that conflict is inevitable so now is the time to clarify matters as long as China has a tactical advantage. The jury's actually out on whether that's a smart move or not. From the perspective of the Chinese there's certainly a case to be made for it as the US is in political disarray under incompetent leadership.
  - 6y ago

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

India is a giant market, an investment of $10 billion is a rounding error.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
No, it's not. All Indian startups combined raised a total of $14B last year (2019).
- biql 6y ago
  Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s small, might be just undervalued and it’s probably cheaper to run a startup there due to lower cost of living and salaries.
- t3rabytes 6y ago
  Just because their VC totals don't match the bay area doesn't mean that this is a small investment.
- tester34 6y ago
  That's giant amount of money How many serious start ups can be there?
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    Quite a few: it's a country of near 1.4 billion people, so it comes to only $10 per person, and India already has 20-ish unicorns who largely exist to serve them.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Most of the world economy does not revolve around startups. "In 2018–19, the foreign direct investment (FDI) in India was $64.4 billion". Consider that there is also domestic investment, and that Google's investment is spread over many years.
- billfruit 6y ago
  India probably has a rather small startup scene, that is not much of an argument.

oblio 6y ago

I'm pretty sure that we're at the point where no one and nothing is putting the Chinese genie back in the bottle. I don't agree with the CCP on many things, but China has stood up. At this point the Chinese ascent can only be slowed down but they will only go down if they implode. Which I don't think anyone wants.

baybal2 6y ago
The genie is out of the bottle, the best saying by far about how the West overlooked the coming of hardcore rightists to power in China.

intended 6y ago

This is bunk. There are 2 forces At play that matter to your position 1) big tech firms investing in a large local player for legal, political connections and arms length sheilding from the necessary local corruption 2) normal manufacturers moving to Vietnam - which has accelerated since the trade war due to COVID. The second is best described by a New Zealand owner who was looking for factories to build stuff in, aside from China. India was described as passable, if you Are an MNC. Then you can afford the workers while ensuring quality. For anyone else, the quality of service from factories drops of fast. There simply isn’t the wherewithal in talent or experience to do manufacturing at scale and at competitive pricing for the typical firm who wants to move manufacturing hubs. In contrast He had videos of Vietnamese factories working towards throughout targets and being a viable alternative to China. India needs to reform Labour laws. It’s been a great hope that this govt with its monumental single mandate would have taken the issue and freed the system up so manufacturing could be unshackled.

dang 6y ago
Please don't break the site guidelines with "This is bunk" and other such swipes: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- intended 6y ago
  Noted. My bad.

kccqzy 6y ago

I don't think China has really "blown" it in the sense that they wanted foreign expansion and investment but failed. The Chinese had always wanted a homegrown tech industry, and they are pretty successfully at that.