So there are four major draws to China for Western companies: 1. It's a market of >1B people, hundreds of millions of whom are rapidly developing disposable in

So there are four major draws to China for Western companies: 1. It's a market of >1B people, hundreds of millions of whom are rapidly developing disposable income. That in itself is probably enough; 2. Cheap labour; 3. Supplier proximity; and 4. Political stability I can't stress how important (3) is. The net effect of all this is there's a network effect of suppliers in China. Those phones that are made in, say, Shenzhen require parts that are made by a factory down the road. This could be everything from chips to tiny screws. Anywhere else and you'd need to ship various parts from China and have the supply chains and inventory management that that entails. If you look past the fact that worker conditions are Dystopian, it's quite a wonder of the modern world, really. But when I (and I'm sure others) talk about the perils of kowtowing to China, it's because they want the market not the manufacturing capacity. Think of a movie studio that wants to distribute content in China. To get permission to do so that content has to be acceptable to the CCP. Many suspect this is why the movie "First Man" had no scene of planting the American flag in lunar soil (an iconic historical moment). Some pseudo-artistic defenses have been unenthusiastically lobbed on this issue. Personally I find these unconvincing at best. Western companies willingly engaging in self-censorship (or even the credible allegation of such) to pander to a foreign totalitarian government is not something I, personally, approve of.