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China is the manufacturing superpower

199 points by luu 2y ago

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
The GGR measure suggests they have a self sustaining economy to some extent. This manufacturing capacity, even if it’s “only” a third of global capacity, is a danger to free societies. It’ll ultimately be used to force the CCP’s authoritarian control on Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and probably others. Unfortunately I don’t know what short term options there are to contain the CCP’s power and control over this capability. The conclusion of this informative article says this: > China is now the world’s sole manufacturing giant. As its recent success in electric vehicles demonstrates, its wide and deep industrial base can help it gain a competitive edge in virtually all sectors. The exceptions are the most advanced sectors, where the G7 countries still dominate. > Politicians who indulge in loose talk about decoupling from China need a clear-eyed look at the facts. As we have shown (Baldwin et al. 2023), all the major manufacturers in the world source at least 2% of all their industrial inputs from China. Decoupling would be difficult, to say the least.
- euroderf 2y ago
  There is no political will - or sufficient tax revenue - to subsidise a broad-based OECD manufacturing economy. Factorio-China produces more than the world (or China itself) can affordably buy. Let's see if it's all sustainable. Are many American homes not warehouses for Chinese overproduction ?
- jkestner 2y ago
  “Wide and deep” is key here. Chinese manufacturing is hungry and way more competitive than in the US. Physical manufacturing in the US is geared toward the largest companies and the defense-industrial complex. If your products have any complexity to them (starting with electronics), a small company has little chance of getting access to good factories and pricing.
advael 2y ago
Huh. For all the claims that US manufacturing is down, it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here, which I really didn't expect to see I'm no expert and of course I have no clue if it even makes sense to measure per-capita manufacturing share, and also assume a lot of other factors matter here - what kinds of things we're manufacturing, how much those products serve domestic versus export markets, etc - but it's still surprising
- elashri 2y ago
  > it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here Ironically this will make Taiwan the manufacturing superpower if it is calculated per-capita. Which is the other china (I am just referring to the history of both PRC and Taiwan claiming to be the historical China successor). And the claims that US manifacruting is down is correct because it used to be much higher percentage wise from the world total manifacruting power. China was only about 3% when people who are now 30yrs were born. That's massive increase in manifacturing share. There is a discussion about domestic vs export in the study too that you might find interesting..
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    > (I am just referring to the history of both RPC and Taiwan claiming to be the historical China successor). Semantics, but the ROC (Republic of China) claims Taiwan, along with the mainland and Outer Mongolia. It isn’t the case that Taiwan claims the ROC (although if the in power DPP decided not to be the ROC anymore, the PRC would probably invade since declaring independence from the ROC would be the same as refuting one China). When the ROC/KMT retook Taiwan in 1946, they weren’t exactly seen as liberators. And when the KMT and a bunch of rich mainlanders relocated there in 1949, there were protests, genocide, and so on.
- ipnon 2y ago
  You might be surprised to learn that manufacturing is larger industry in the US than our tech industry, or that our domestic oil industry is even larger. America produces more oil than any other country. America was the world's factory for over a century. This dominance only ended around 2010, when China took the lead. It was our advantage to lose, and it was the result of deliberate political action. We offshored manufacturing, and treated China as a good faith trading partner, waiting decades for a cooperative international trade diplomacy that has not materialized to this day. All the while Beijing did everything in its power to enrich the Chinese worker, no matter the cost to outsiders. The results speak for themselves.
defrost 2y ago
Six nations manufacture at least 3% of the world total. China is followed by the US, Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea. Note how the world has changed. Only three of these are long-established industrial economies; the other three are newly industrialised economies. Four of the G7 don’t make the cut. s/ 3% / 63% /
- anovikov 2y ago
  It's not surprising: everyone is using the same manufacturing equipment now, due to free markets and trade. So it's only about numbers of workers.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Port capacity and equipment scale, willingness to engage in toxic processing, etc carry far more weight, IMHO. China has a lock on various electronic production streams by having a lock on most of the rare earth processing and dealing with the low level radioactive waste by products. One billion tonnes of raw iron ore per year flows from my state of Western Australia to China for steel production - the machinery, diggers, haul paks, massive trains, et al make that happen in a state with a population of only ~2.3 million or so with few of those in mining. 16x peak US iron ore production for steel with a workforce smaller than the US's at it's peak. China didn't just fall into peak manufacturing capacity by a happy accident of many workers, they (for better or worse) made long term plans and stuck at them - including the reduction in population growth known as the one child policy. Current Chinese pharma production is a truly bespoke behemoth - it has a massive capacity that can easily make small to order amounts, and again that's due to factors such as education and well automated pipelines.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      > China didn't just fall into peak manufacturing capacity by a happy accident of many workers, they (for better or worse) made long term plans and stuck at them - including the reduction in poulation growth known as the one child policy. I don’t think China planned to intentionally fall off of a demographic cliff. But they are already planning for that cliff by making very aggressive investments in AI and automation. If you see how effective their plans from 10-20 years ago turned out today, wait another 10-20 years and…I hope we have some kind of a plan…it isn’t what Trump has in mind for sure. Ironically, Japan planned for the same cliff with aggressive investments in AI and automation in the 1980s, but the rise of China messed that up with cheap labor, and their AI play was misguided/probably too early.
elashri 2y ago
The title needs 2024. The article is almost a year old.
steve76 2y ago
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Animats 2y ago
The US can't even make cell phones any more. What would it take to get that capability back?
- echelon 2y ago
  Moving it to Mexico, Vietnam, and India. Mexico is ideal since you can ship partially assembled goods via truck or rail to and from Texas. It's easy to manage logistics and partnerships due to the close proximity. The future of the US is Mexico. Vietnam and India can absorb SEA manufacturing.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    Mexico is now a hub for Chinese manufacturers. Just look at how they're developing the relationship: the materials are all from China and the market is the US. Vietnam is even more like that.
  - jimt1234 2y ago
    A friend of mine has done logistics for years, getting raw materials (sheet metal) into Mexico, manufacturing the products there (mostly kitchen appliances), and shipping to the US. According to her, it's nearly impossible to make any significant progress in Mexico because there's so much corruption at all levels. She has to ship metal from Asia to Long Beach, then have it trucked down to Baja where it gets made into a product, then the product gets shipped back to the US for sale. Every couple of years there's talk of scaling up the ports at Ensenada so the shipments of metals can go directly to Mexico, but it never happens - locals get paid off, and nothing ever happens. I once asked how the Mexican officials can be so corrupt, that they would sabotage their own port improvements. She told me, "I wasn't talking about corrupt Mexicans. Do you think Long Beach is just gonna sit back and let the Ensenda take shipments from them?"
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  The US can make cellphones, its just not efficient for the US to make cellphones because the US’s comparative advantage is elsewhere. What it would take for the US to make cellphones is direct subsidy to the (inefficient, and for that reason likely therefore doomed by the market without artificial support, since there is robust competition) US firms doing so. Of course, not only would this cost the amount of the subsidy, but the amount of the lost opportunities in places where the US has comparative advantages foregone to provide the subsidy. The question then is why would you want to do this?
_1tem 2y ago
> 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 hypersonic missiles and ships casts doubt on this claim. Says the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons-production-munitions-shortfall-ukraine-democracy/680867/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons...
- echelon 2y ago
  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 as possible to other countries (Vietnam, India, Mexico) and hope that can put a dent in China's manufacturing flywheel. The Chinese consumer economy isn't robust enough to absorb all of the goods they manufacture (at least not yet), and without buyers the system would need to be scaled back. Even if China was 100% a friend, you wouldn't want one country with this much outsized control over manufacturing. In the future this will be better distributed.
  - klipklop 2y ago
    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.
    - ignoredposter 2y ago
      [dead]
    - coliveira 2y ago
gorgoiler 2y ago
I bought two things recently: some temperature sensors for a smart home and some cable clips to hide some wiring under a cabinet. Both were mass produced in China and both shipped with 3M branded adhesive mounting pads. An apt and literal representation of global manufacturing — US made chemicals, Chinese electronics, one clinging to the other.
- coverband 2y ago
  If one assumes that those 3M strips are authentic branding... I haven't come across a single tape that offered the expected brand quality.
  - pjbk 2y ago
    When I visited China some years ago "3N" was also popular. Same logo font and color, but at least they tried to avoid blatantly infringing the genuine brand.
    - greggyb 2y ago
      I imagine most courts in the US would, in fact, find “3N” as blatantly infringing the 3M trademark.
      - grugagag 2y ago
        They sell "3N" within China and the US can't really do anything about it.
        greggyb 2y ago
        Totally understood and not under debate. I could have been more clear. "3N" is blatant infringement, or at least would be understood as such in the US. China simply doesn't enforce trademark infringement in the same way. I am not opining on whether China should.
        pjbk 2y ago
csomar 2y ago
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-indonesia-malaysia-sri-lanka-tunisia-n12045.html https://antidumping.vn/eu-chinabike-duty-hits-indonesia-mala... I come from a country that does this. Massive deficit with China vs. an equivalent surplus with the EU. Weak manufacturing base that essentially import Chinese, does some packaging and then export it back.
- mylastattempt 2y ago
  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 companies are well aware of this and happily use their existing Chinese suppliers' SEA entity to avoid sanctions and tarrifs, or to show that they are moving away from having everything Made in China. To be fair, only gullible or naive people could truly believe that products coming from any part of Asia are not made, controlled, or otherwise influcnced by the Chinese.
  - lukan 2y ago
    "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.
  - csomar 2y ago
    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.
maxglute 2y ago
One thing to note is PRC is the only country in the world whose manufacturing sector has every industrial category classified by the United Nations.
mahirsaid 2y ago
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 time with U.S. military. That's if they decide to do so. i would ask does the Chinese republic need to invest heavy in this sector in order to grow? Clearly not from the facts. in fact that's the very same thing we should have been doing all along.The U.S. has spent enormous amount of capital to fund wars and foreign relational activities. China has a great way going about this. making friends with less developed countries that U.S. overlooked. China is looking for something specific. Just as U.S. is looking for something specific as well. To be totally honest I am not entirely sure what the U.S. is looking for when engaging with other countries, other than the same narrative for the fear of not having safety blah blah. This time that was spent on these adventures the U.S. cannot get back, while also injuring foreign relations. there is a clear sign that the U.S. government is confused and has a gun with no-where to aim. All the policies and efforts are accelerating the U.S. into deterioration. The U.S. has some strong sector for the sake of this reply i will mainly say that attacking the top tech firms and industries with regulation will only push them out to more favorable grounds give new room for industries to form in more favorable grounds other than U.S.. the solution must solve the problem that brought the solution to existence.
- smcl 2y ago
  > 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.
  - kasey_junk 2y ago
deepsun 2y ago
I remember when USSR tried to make everything on its soil. It didn't end well.
renewiltord 2y ago
[flagged]
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  trump is not going to end stupid industrial policy
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Indeed. That’s what I meant by “ US industrial policy is especially bad”. It’s usually a regulatory capture thing here.
soramimo 2y ago
And unfortunately for the West, manufacturing capacity translates to military capability in any prolonged conflict (which is why industrial policy and tariffs in dual use / strategic industries seem like the way to go)
- treebeard901 2y ago
  Any non-nuclear prolonged conventional war will see U.S. ammo and shipbuilding far surpassed by Chinas manufacturing base and it isnt even close. The U.S. plan was to cut off oil shipments and food if this happened. Now China can likely have a Navy capable of guarding oil shipments from the Middle East all the way to Chinese ports. Everyone in the U.S. just assumes that they did it in 1940 so they can just do it again in 2040. It was the manufacturing capacity that won in the 1940s in the first place!
  - thruway516 2y ago
    You might be right. But a major 21st century conflict is likely going to be very different from past conflicts and we still don't know what that will look like. We're getting a few glimpses from the Ukraine conflict - drones, social media - but who knows what else. Having a numerical advantage in conventional arms might be the equivalent of having superior cavalry at the onset of WWI
    - bigthymer 2y ago
      > We're getting a few glimpses from the Ukraine conflict - drones, social media - but who knows what else Actually, from the assessments that I have read, while new technology and drones have made a meaningful splash, it seems like manpower and the ability to produce large quantities of artillery shells have been the true determiner of the tides. The lesson learned thus far is that considerations from the past still matter.
      - thruway516 2y ago
        Well I did say a glimpse. Manpower, food, supply chains and all the basics will never not matter. It's a question of what could be a deciding advantage that did not exist before, like mechanized divisions in WWI and air power subsequently. Russia-Ukraine is still a very conventional land war but it won't surprise me if a future China-US conflict was fought (and maybe even won or lost) virtually as well as conventionally.
rich_sasha 2y ago
I think there's no denying that this is super impressive. Realpolitik aside, well done China. I wonder how manufacturing output compares between China and US+EU, say. It doesn't make that much sense to look at EU constituents in separation. Even then I suppose China is ahead, but maybe it's not a total wipeout. That led me to wonder about manufacturing output vs GDP. Is China producing more, after adjusting for its total GDP. So for example, China's GDP is about 4-5x bigger than Germany's, whereas the fraction of manufacturing output is about 5-7x different. It still puts Germany "behind" but it's not outright domination. In fact, such fraction, of manufacturing to GDP, is a basic economics measure: it's the fraction of GDP coming from manufacturing! And it's no surprise to anyone that this fraction is high in China. So then I guess the questions would be: - is manufacturing expected to outperform the other constituents of global economies going forwards (i.e. is China smart putting its eggs in this basket) - is the rest of the world at risk because China can squeeze them (perhaps) - what is the outlook for manufacturing outside of China (maybe not great but it seems like people are waking up to this). I wonder how much of that simply cuts back to marginal costs of energy and ESG. Presumably in China you can manufacture cheaply partly because you don't need to pay for employee rights or clean energy. Not all of this, clearly, but where would US+EU be if it wasn't constrained by broadly speaking ESG (I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it is a thing).
- grobbyy 2y ago
  World War II was won because of US and (less advertised) Soviet manufacturing capacity. Ukraine is more constrained by weapon supplies, especially drones and artillery, than by manpower. I'm not sure both sides are playing the same game. In the game I think might be afoot, if your economy is management consultants, therapists, and hair stylists, that's "bad" GDP. Resources and manufacturing are "good" GDP. Resources are complex in that stone are renewable, and some go away when you export them. I'm not even going to talk about education or, related, R&D capacity.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    high finance/management can be quite valuable when you’re trying to plan a conflict. this is how you get the industries developed that are capable of designing a system to turn sand into missile-targeting systems. i’m extremely skeptical of people’s ability to view the economy from on high and pick out the “good, productive gdp” and the “bad, makework gdp”.
m0llusk 2y ago
The imbalance in trade sectors is striking. China is dominating manufacturing, but this is requiring huge imports of agricultural goods and also services. The result being that there is a trade surplus, but it is far smaller than manufacturing dominance implies and also potentially quite volatile. Global changes like the war in Ukraine stressing agriculture supply lines and the decline of Hong Kong as a provider of services could have large impacts on Chinese trade.
metalman 2y ago
my favorite bit of trivia connected with the whole "trade war" is the sudden apearance in China, of companies devoted to the making labels, the most poular (currently) are those saying "made in vietnam" and apocryaphal or not?, there is a city in china named USA, which satisfied the beurocratic requirements of some other round of protectionism
throw0101b 2y ago
See also "Manufacturing is a war now": > Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car. > Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself. > Democratic countries seem to still mostly be in “peace mode” with respect to their economic models. They don’t yet see manufacturing as something that needs to be preserved and expanded in peacetime in order to be ready for the increasing likelihood of a major war. Fortunately, both Republicans and Democrats in America have inched away from this deadly complacency in recent years. But both the tariffs embraced by the GOP and the industrial policies pioneered by the Dems are only partial solutions, lacking key pieces of a military-industrial strategy. * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now FDR started preparing for war years before WW2 / Pearl Harbor (warning: heavy anti-union slant in the book as it was funded by AEI): * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13152691-freedom-s-forge https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13152691-freedom-s-forge
- deleted 2y ago
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TriangleEdge 2y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but how does a country with a strong military turn that into GDP? I don't understand how military > manufacturing in terms of GDP. In my mind, manufacturing > military, but my knowledge of economics isn't great.
- SirHumphrey 2y ago
  GDP includes government spending. If a country spends a lot of money on military, that reflects in GDP figures.
  - credit_guy 2y ago
    That's correct, but it's not that material. The US GDP is about $27 trillion, the military spending is about $1 trillion, or about 3% of the GDP.
  - VHRanger 2y ago
    Correct. But military spending only *grows* GDP if the money is invested properly. In, say, research/infrastructure/training, etc. Malinvested money will pump GDP for a few years before growth stops and potentially reverses.
- chvid 2y ago
  In the old days a country would use its military to conquer or subvert other countries to setup exploitative trading relationships. For example the opium wars. Nowadays the empire works via its currency that allows it to buy real goods and assets for something it can create for free with little constrain. Of course the exploitive nature of the “exorbitant” privilege is controversial; and some economists would argue that it does not exist at all.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > For example the opium wars. For a more recent example, the CIA operations on South and Central America in the 20th century. But well, it didn't take the entire military there, just a military-like paragovernamental entity. Doing that today would be seen in a bad light and has a real chance of turning the entire world against the country. That doesn't seem enough to stop Russia, though.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The premise that China does around a third of the world's manufacturing isn't really that surprising, they have more than a sixth of the world's population and there are a lot of areas (e.g. India and Africa) that have large populations and a disproportionately small share of manufacturing. The real problem isn't that it's a third, it's that it will be something like 2% of commercial aircraft and 98% of PCs, and then the second one is bad. Single point of failure. That's the part that needs to be addressed.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  give me an example good where china has 98% share
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    You can find threads where people are asking for laptops that aren't made in China and the responses end up being things like "well some of those are made in Taiwan" or "this one is made of components from China but the final screw is tightened in the US for labeling reasons".
_7acn 2y ago
I remember how until quite recently, the West viewed the East, particularly China, as a backward region. People would even dismissively use the term 'Chinese junk'. In a remarkably short time, that perception has completely flipped. Now it's the West that seems to be falling behind...
- giardini 2y ago
  MaxGripe says "...that perception has completely flipped" I avoid goods made in mainland China but seek out those made in Taiwan b/c they are exquisitely tooled. Both are Chinese but mainland manufactury severely lags Taiwan's.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  people are slow to adapt and have very outdated ideas of countries that are not their own. i see this upcoming with India too and Mexico soon
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > People would even dismissively use the term 'Chinese junk' I still do. Amazon in Europe is completely filled with Chinese junk, it's nigh impossible to find anything EU/US produced in certain categories. It became Alibaba with markup.
  - serpix 2y ago
    There is no EU/US equivalent to many products. We simply don't make things.
- playa06 2y ago
  It's still backwards. https://forcedistancetimes.com/asymmetric-why-china-still-cant-make-ballpoint-pens/ https://forcedistancetimes.com/asymmetric-why-china-still-ca... > While China claimed a breakthrough in 2017, manufacturing a ballpoint pen all by itself and “ending a long-term reliance on imported [ballpoint pen tips],” as of 2021 the country was still reportedly 80% dependent on imported ballpoints. > In fact, Chinese imports of ballpoints pens (comprising the ballpoint and ink reservoir) have more than doubled since 2017, from 12 million USD to nearly 28 million USD last year. > Machine tools are machines that make other machines. China is a leading producer of machine tools, accounting for about 31% the world’s output in 2021 (p.10, fig. 12)—ahead of Germany (13%), Japan (12%), the US (9%), and Italy (8%). But China is heavily reliant on foreign technology for high-end machine tools: in 2021, it was 91% dependent on foreign firms for the most advanced machine tools. China just doesn't have the ability to do high precision, high quality engineering and manufacturing. I am not saying that everything that comes out of China is bad, but that there are limits to what can be produced at a high level of quality there. You can buy simple tools, like knives, at a good level of quality from China, but anything that requires complex tooling is likely not actually made in China. For that matter, smartphones aren't "made in china". They are /assembled/ there. China doesn't make the CPU in an iPhone, TSMC did. China doesn't make the /machines/ that engrave silicon in TSMC's factories, ASML does. And so on, and on, and on. If something is truly mainly made in China, with Chinese tools, and it's complex to manufacture, you should avoid like the plague. China hasn't really become the manufacturing capital of the world. It's just the place where a lot of people are paid to use screwdrivers, glue, and package things.
thelastgallon 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzKuHxp7WqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzKuHxp7WqA tl;dr: Today China vs US is 19% vs 16% world GDP. By 2035, it will be 24% vs 14%. China will be large economy, US can't beat China. Unless there is a nuclear war, which is probably less than ideal.
obscurette 2y ago
It's not about what China did well, but about Europe/US ignorance. How many times you've heard during last decade that software eats the world? That we should do highly profitable software things only anyway? That everyone and his dog should be a software engineer in future? Well, turned out that it was really about free money and it didn't last. Serious question – how many of you who say that they can't find the job any more, have considered manufacturing? https://x.com/zanehengsperger/status/1862134411657117773?mx=2 https://x.com/zanehengsperger/status/1862134411657117773?mx=...
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > how many of you who say that they can't find the job any more, have considered manufacturing? If one wants a skilled job in manufacturing, they have to earn a qualification first, or go through a period of apprenticeship. The wages for most manufacturing jobs are much lower in the west than for knowledge workers, and openings likely fewer - it's only recently that new manufacturing sites got spun-up after decades of continuous decline- thanks to 2 pieces of legislation from the Biden administration; the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act
  - obscurette 2y ago
    There is a non-zero chance that these higher wages of knowledge workers and especially in IT industry were actually the results of rent-seeking.
- aeonik 2y ago
  Software is eating the world, you just need to multi class into the field that software is eating to be of good value.
o0-0o 2y ago
I hope the Chinese people will be free one day, and I hope their lifespan goes up. #58 is nothing to be proud of. Work to death. Not very fun. https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/ https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
Havoc 2y ago
And only a matter of time before the manufacturing superpower is both that and a military superpower. If you can make stuff you can make military stuff
rajnathani 2y ago
It's not too bad if you consider that China is 17.6% of the world population; suddenly around 30% of manufacturing share doesn't seem that high. However, India at 3% is pretty eye-opening, but this is gradually shifting not just because of the China+1 strategy but due to the larger growing market (read: increase in standard of living / spending capacity / GDP per capita) in India and also government measures such as high import duties on high-volume goods such as smartphone (eg: Samsung's mobiles factory in Noida is the largest mobiles factory in the world [0] (India's market for mobiles (non-smartphones) is still relatively large)). [0] https://news.samsung.com/in/samsung-inaugurates-worlds-largest-mobile-factory-in-india https://news.samsung.com/in/samsung-inaugurates-worlds-large...

199 points by luu 2y ago

The GGR measure suggests they have a self sustaining economy to some extent. This manufacturing capacity, even if it’s “only” a third of global capacity, is a danger to free societies. It’ll ultimately be used to force the CCP’s authoritarian control on Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and probably others. Unfortunately I don’t know what short term options there are to contain the CCP’s power and control over this capability. The conclusion of this informative article says this: > China is now the world’s sole manufacturing giant. As its recent success in electric vehicles demonstrates, its wide and deep industrial base can help it gain a competitive edge in virtually all sectors. The exceptions are the most advanced sectors, where the G7 countries still dominate. > Politicians who indulge in loose talk about decoupling from China need a clear-eyed look at the facts. As we have shown (Baldwin et al. 2023), all the major manufacturers in the world source at least 2% of all their industrial inputs from China. Decoupling would be difficult, to say the least.

euroderf 2y ago
There is no political will - or sufficient tax revenue - to subsidise a broad-based OECD manufacturing economy. Factorio-China produces more than the world (or China itself) can affordably buy. Let's see if it's all sustainable. Are many American homes not warehouses for Chinese overproduction ?
jkestner 2y ago
“Wide and deep” is key here. Chinese manufacturing is hungry and way more competitive than in the US. Physical manufacturing in the US is geared toward the largest companies and the defense-industrial complex. If your products have any complexity to them (starting with electronics), a small company has little chance of getting access to good factories and pricing.

advael 2y ago

Huh. For all the claims that US manufacturing is down, it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here, which I really didn't expect to see I'm no expert and of course I have no clue if it even makes sense to measure per-capita manufacturing share, and also assume a lot of other factors matter here - what kinds of things we're manufacturing, how much those products serve domestic versus export markets, etc - but it's still surprising

elashri 2y ago
> it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it's on par with China based on the figures presented here Ironically this will make Taiwan the manufacturing superpower if it is calculated per-capita. Which is the other china (I am just referring to the history of both PRC and Taiwan claiming to be the historical China successor). And the claims that US manifacruting is down is correct because it used to be much higher percentage wise from the world total manifacruting power. China was only about 3% when people who are now 30yrs were born. That's massive increase in manifacturing share. There is a discussion about domestic vs export in the study too that you might find interesting..
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  > (I am just referring to the history of both RPC and Taiwan claiming to be the historical China successor). Semantics, but the ROC (Republic of China) claims Taiwan, along with the mainland and Outer Mongolia. It isn’t the case that Taiwan claims the ROC (although if the in power DPP decided not to be the ROC anymore, the PRC would probably invade since declaring independence from the ROC would be the same as refuting one China). When the ROC/KMT retook Taiwan in 1946, they weren’t exactly seen as liberators. And when the KMT and a bunch of rich mainlanders relocated there in 1949, there were protests, genocide, and so on.
ipnon 2y ago
You might be surprised to learn that manufacturing is larger industry in the US than our tech industry, or that our domestic oil industry is even larger. America produces more oil than any other country. America was the world's factory for over a century. This dominance only ended around 2010, when China took the lead. It was our advantage to lose, and it was the result of deliberate political action. We offshored manufacturing, and treated China as a good faith trading partner, waiting decades for a cooperative international trade diplomacy that has not materialized to this day. All the while Beijing did everything in its power to enrich the Chinese worker, no matter the cost to outsiders. The results speak for themselves.

defrost 2y ago

Six nations manufacture at least 3% of the world total. China is followed by the US, Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea. Note how the world has changed. Only three of these are long-established industrial economies; the other three are newly industrialised economies. Four of the G7 don’t make the cut. s/ 3% / 63% /

anovikov 2y ago
It's not surprising: everyone is using the same manufacturing equipment now, due to free markets and trade. So it's only about numbers of workers.
- defrost 2y ago
  Port capacity and equipment scale, willingness to engage in toxic processing, etc carry far more weight, IMHO. China has a lock on various electronic production streams by having a lock on most of the rare earth processing and dealing with the low level radioactive waste by products. One billion tonnes of raw iron ore per year flows from my state of Western Australia to China for steel production - the machinery, diggers, haul paks, massive trains, et al make that happen in a state with a population of only ~2.3 million or so with few of those in mining. 16x peak US iron ore production for steel with a workforce smaller than the US's at it's peak. China didn't just fall into peak manufacturing capacity by a happy accident of many workers, they (for better or worse) made long term plans and stuck at them - including the reduction in population growth known as the one child policy. Current Chinese pharma production is a truly bespoke behemoth - it has a massive capacity that can easily make small to order amounts, and again that's due to factors such as education and well automated pipelines.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    > China didn't just fall into peak manufacturing capacity by a happy accident of many workers, they (for better or worse) made long term plans and stuck at them - including the reduction in poulation growth known as the one child policy. I don’t think China planned to intentionally fall off of a demographic cliff. But they are already planning for that cliff by making very aggressive investments in AI and automation. If you see how effective their plans from 10-20 years ago turned out today, wait another 10-20 years and…I hope we have some kind of a plan…it isn’t what Trump has in mind for sure. Ironically, Japan planned for the same cliff with aggressive investments in AI and automation in the 1980s, but the rise of China messed that up with cheap labor, and their AI play was misguided/probably too early.

elashri 2y ago

The title needs 2024. The article is almost a year old.

steve76 2y ago

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Animats 2y ago

The US can't even make cell phones any more. What would it take to get that capability back?

echelon 2y ago
Moving it to Mexico, Vietnam, and India. Mexico is ideal since you can ship partially assembled goods via truck or rail to and from Texas. It's easy to manage logistics and partnerships due to the close proximity. The future of the US is Mexico. Vietnam and India can absorb SEA manufacturing.
- coliveira 2y ago
  Mexico is now a hub for Chinese manufacturers. Just look at how they're developing the relationship: the materials are all from China and the market is the US. Vietnam is even more like that.
- jimt1234 2y ago
  A friend of mine has done logistics for years, getting raw materials (sheet metal) into Mexico, manufacturing the products there (mostly kitchen appliances), and shipping to the US. According to her, it's nearly impossible to make any significant progress in Mexico because there's so much corruption at all levels. She has to ship metal from Asia to Long Beach, then have it trucked down to Baja where it gets made into a product, then the product gets shipped back to the US for sale. Every couple of years there's talk of scaling up the ports at Ensenada so the shipments of metals can go directly to Mexico, but it never happens - locals get paid off, and nothing ever happens. I once asked how the Mexican officials can be so corrupt, that they would sabotage their own port improvements. She told me, "I wasn't talking about corrupt Mexicans. Do you think Long Beach is just gonna sit back and let the Ensenda take shipments from them?"
dragonwriter 2y ago
The US can make cellphones, its just not efficient for the US to make cellphones because the US’s comparative advantage is elsewhere. What it would take for the US to make cellphones is direct subsidy to the (inefficient, and for that reason likely therefore doomed by the market without artificial support, since there is robust competition) US firms doing so. Of course, not only would this cost the amount of the subsidy, but the amount of the lost opportunities in places where the US has comparative advantages foregone to provide the subsidy. The question then is why would you want to do this?

_1tem 2y ago

> 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 hypersonic missiles and ships casts doubt on this claim. Says the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons-production-munitions-shortfall-ukraine-democracy/680867/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons...

echelon 2y ago
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 as possible to other countries (Vietnam, India, Mexico) and hope that can put a dent in China's manufacturing flywheel. The Chinese consumer economy isn't robust enough to absorb all of the goods they manufacture (at least not yet), and without buyers the system would need to be scaled back. Even if China was 100% a friend, you wouldn't want one country with this much outsized control over manufacturing. In the future this will be better distributed.
- klipklop 2y ago
  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.
  - ignoredposter 2y ago
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  - coliveira 2y ago

gorgoiler 2y ago

I bought two things recently: some temperature sensors for a smart home and some cable clips to hide some wiring under a cabinet. Both were mass produced in China and both shipped with 3M branded adhesive mounting pads. An apt and literal representation of global manufacturing — US made chemicals, Chinese electronics, one clinging to the other.

coverband 2y ago
If one assumes that those 3M strips are authentic branding... I haven't come across a single tape that offered the expected brand quality.
- pjbk 2y ago
  When I visited China some years ago "3N" was also popular. Same logo font and color, but at least they tried to avoid blatantly infringing the genuine brand.
  - greggyb 2y ago
    I imagine most courts in the US would, in fact, find “3N” as blatantly infringing the 3M trademark.
    - grugagag 2y ago
      They sell "3N" within China and the US can't really do anything about it.
      - greggyb 2y ago
        Totally understood and not under debate. I could have been more clear. "3N" is blatant infringement, or at least would be understood as such in the US. China simply doesn't enforce trademark infringement in the same way. I am not opining on whether China should.
      - pjbk 2y ago

csomar 2y ago

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-indonesia-malaysia-sri-lanka-tunisia-n12045.html https://antidumping.vn/eu-chinabike-duty-hits-indonesia-mala... I come from a country that does this. Massive deficit with China vs. an equivalent surplus with the EU. Weak manufacturing base that essentially import Chinese, does some packaging and then export it back.

mylastattempt 2y ago
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 companies are well aware of this and happily use their existing Chinese suppliers' SEA entity to avoid sanctions and tarrifs, or to show that they are moving away from having everything Made in China. To be fair, only gullible or naive people could truly believe that products coming from any part of Asia are not made, controlled, or otherwise influcnced by the Chinese.
- lukan 2y ago
  "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.
- csomar 2y ago
  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.

maxglute 2y ago

One thing to note is PRC is the only country in the world whose manufacturing sector has every industrial category classified by the United Nations.

mahirsaid 2y ago

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 time with U.S. military. That's if they decide to do so. i would ask does the Chinese republic need to invest heavy in this sector in order to grow? Clearly not from the facts. in fact that's the very same thing we should have been doing all along.The U.S. has spent enormous amount of capital to fund wars and foreign relational activities. China has a great way going about this. making friends with less developed countries that U.S. overlooked. China is looking for something specific. Just as U.S. is looking for something specific as well. To be totally honest I am not entirely sure what the U.S. is looking for when engaging with other countries, other than the same narrative for the fear of not having safety blah blah. This time that was spent on these adventures the U.S. cannot get back, while also injuring foreign relations. there is a clear sign that the U.S. government is confused and has a gun with no-where to aim. All the policies and efforts are accelerating the U.S. into deterioration. The U.S. has some strong sector for the sake of this reply i will mainly say that attacking the top tech firms and industries with regulation will only push them out to more favorable grounds give new room for industries to form in more favorable grounds other than U.S.. the solution must solve the problem that brought the solution to existence.

smcl 2y ago
> 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.
- kasey_junk 2y ago

deepsun 2y ago

I remember when USSR tried to make everything on its soil. It didn't end well.

renewiltord 2y ago

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whimsicalism 2y ago
trump is not going to end stupid industrial policy
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Indeed. That’s what I meant by “ US industrial policy is especially bad”. It’s usually a regulatory capture thing here.

soramimo 2y ago

And unfortunately for the West, manufacturing capacity translates to military capability in any prolonged conflict (which is why industrial policy and tariffs in dual use / strategic industries seem like the way to go)

treebeard901 2y ago
Any non-nuclear prolonged conventional war will see U.S. ammo and shipbuilding far surpassed by Chinas manufacturing base and it isnt even close. The U.S. plan was to cut off oil shipments and food if this happened. Now China can likely have a Navy capable of guarding oil shipments from the Middle East all the way to Chinese ports. Everyone in the U.S. just assumes that they did it in 1940 so they can just do it again in 2040. It was the manufacturing capacity that won in the 1940s in the first place!
- thruway516 2y ago
  You might be right. But a major 21st century conflict is likely going to be very different from past conflicts and we still don't know what that will look like. We're getting a few glimpses from the Ukraine conflict - drones, social media - but who knows what else. Having a numerical advantage in conventional arms might be the equivalent of having superior cavalry at the onset of WWI
  - bigthymer 2y ago
    > We're getting a few glimpses from the Ukraine conflict - drones, social media - but who knows what else Actually, from the assessments that I have read, while new technology and drones have made a meaningful splash, it seems like manpower and the ability to produce large quantities of artillery shells have been the true determiner of the tides. The lesson learned thus far is that considerations from the past still matter.
    - thruway516 2y ago
      Well I did say a glimpse. Manpower, food, supply chains and all the basics will never not matter. It's a question of what could be a deciding advantage that did not exist before, like mechanized divisions in WWI and air power subsequently. Russia-Ukraine is still a very conventional land war but it won't surprise me if a future China-US conflict was fought (and maybe even won or lost) virtually as well as conventionally.

rich_sasha 2y ago

I think there's no denying that this is super impressive. Realpolitik aside, well done China. I wonder how manufacturing output compares between China and US+EU, say. It doesn't make that much sense to look at EU constituents in separation. Even then I suppose China is ahead, but maybe it's not a total wipeout. That led me to wonder about manufacturing output vs GDP. Is China producing more, after adjusting for its total GDP. So for example, China's GDP is about 4-5x bigger than Germany's, whereas the fraction of manufacturing output is about 5-7x different. It still puts Germany "behind" but it's not outright domination. In fact, such fraction, of manufacturing to GDP, is a basic economics measure: it's the fraction of GDP coming from manufacturing! And it's no surprise to anyone that this fraction is high in China. So then I guess the questions would be: - is manufacturing expected to outperform the other constituents of global economies going forwards (i.e. is China smart putting its eggs in this basket) - is the rest of the world at risk because China can squeeze them (perhaps) - what is the outlook for manufacturing outside of China (maybe not great but it seems like people are waking up to this). I wonder how much of that simply cuts back to marginal costs of energy and ESG. Presumably in China you can manufacture cheaply partly because you don't need to pay for employee rights or clean energy. Not all of this, clearly, but where would US+EU be if it wasn't constrained by broadly speaking ESG (I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it is a thing).

grobbyy 2y ago
World War II was won because of US and (less advertised) Soviet manufacturing capacity. Ukraine is more constrained by weapon supplies, especially drones and artillery, than by manpower. I'm not sure both sides are playing the same game. In the game I think might be afoot, if your economy is management consultants, therapists, and hair stylists, that's "bad" GDP. Resources and manufacturing are "good" GDP. Resources are complex in that stone are renewable, and some go away when you export them. I'm not even going to talk about education or, related, R&D capacity.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  high finance/management can be quite valuable when you’re trying to plan a conflict. this is how you get the industries developed that are capable of designing a system to turn sand into missile-targeting systems. i’m extremely skeptical of people’s ability to view the economy from on high and pick out the “good, productive gdp” and the “bad, makework gdp”.

m0llusk 2y ago

The imbalance in trade sectors is striking. China is dominating manufacturing, but this is requiring huge imports of agricultural goods and also services. The result being that there is a trade surplus, but it is far smaller than manufacturing dominance implies and also potentially quite volatile. Global changes like the war in Ukraine stressing agriculture supply lines and the decline of Hong Kong as a provider of services could have large impacts on Chinese trade.

metalman 2y ago

my favorite bit of trivia connected with the whole "trade war" is the sudden apearance in China, of companies devoted to the making labels, the most poular (currently) are those saying "made in vietnam" and apocryaphal or not?, there is a city in china named USA, which satisfied the beurocratic requirements of some other round of protectionism

throw0101b 2y ago

See also "Manufacturing is a war now": > Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car. > Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself. > Democratic countries seem to still mostly be in “peace mode” with respect to their economic models. They don’t yet see manufacturing as something that needs to be preserved and expanded in peacetime in order to be ready for the increasing likelihood of a major war. Fortunately, both Republicans and Democrats in America have inched away from this deadly complacency in recent years. But both the tariffs embraced by the GOP and the industrial policies pioneered by the Dems are only partial solutions, lacking key pieces of a military-industrial strategy. * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now FDR started preparing for war years before WW2 / Pearl Harbor (warning: heavy anti-union slant in the book as it was funded by AEI): * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13152691-freedom-s-forge https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13152691-freedom-s-forge

deleted 2y ago
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TriangleEdge 2y ago

Forgive my ignorance, but how does a country with a strong military turn that into GDP? I don't understand how military > manufacturing in terms of GDP. In my mind, manufacturing > military, but my knowledge of economics isn't great.

SirHumphrey 2y ago
GDP includes government spending. If a country spends a lot of money on military, that reflects in GDP figures.
- credit_guy 2y ago
  That's correct, but it's not that material. The US GDP is about $27 trillion, the military spending is about $1 trillion, or about 3% of the GDP.
- VHRanger 2y ago
  Correct. But military spending only *grows* GDP if the money is invested properly. In, say, research/infrastructure/training, etc. Malinvested money will pump GDP for a few years before growth stops and potentially reverses.
chvid 2y ago
In the old days a country would use its military to conquer or subvert other countries to setup exploitative trading relationships. For example the opium wars. Nowadays the empire works via its currency that allows it to buy real goods and assets for something it can create for free with little constrain. Of course the exploitive nature of the “exorbitant” privilege is controversial; and some economists would argue that it does not exist at all.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > For example the opium wars. For a more recent example, the CIA operations on South and Central America in the 20th century. But well, it didn't take the entire military there, just a military-like paragovernamental entity. Doing that today would be seen in a bad light and has a real chance of turning the entire world against the country. That doesn't seem enough to stop Russia, though.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

The premise that China does around a third of the world's manufacturing isn't really that surprising, they have more than a sixth of the world's population and there are a lot of areas (e.g. India and Africa) that have large populations and a disproportionately small share of manufacturing. The real problem isn't that it's a third, it's that it will be something like 2% of commercial aircraft and 98% of PCs, and then the second one is bad. Single point of failure. That's the part that needs to be addressed.

whimsicalism 2y ago
give me an example good where china has 98% share
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  You can find threads where people are asking for laptops that aren't made in China and the responses end up being things like "well some of those are made in Taiwan" or "this one is made of components from China but the final screw is tightened in the US for labeling reasons".

_7acn 2y ago

I remember how until quite recently, the West viewed the East, particularly China, as a backward region. People would even dismissively use the term 'Chinese junk'. In a remarkably short time, that perception has completely flipped. Now it's the West that seems to be falling behind...

giardini 2y ago
MaxGripe says "...that perception has completely flipped" I avoid goods made in mainland China but seek out those made in Taiwan b/c they are exquisitely tooled. Both are Chinese but mainland manufactury severely lags Taiwan's.
whimsicalism 2y ago
people are slow to adapt and have very outdated ideas of countries that are not their own. i see this upcoming with India too and Mexico soon
wiseowise 2y ago
> People would even dismissively use the term 'Chinese junk' I still do. Amazon in Europe is completely filled with Chinese junk, it's nigh impossible to find anything EU/US produced in certain categories. It became Alibaba with markup.
- serpix 2y ago
  There is no EU/US equivalent to many products. We simply don't make things.
playa06 2y ago
It's still backwards. https://forcedistancetimes.com/asymmetric-why-china-still-cant-make-ballpoint-pens/ https://forcedistancetimes.com/asymmetric-why-china-still-ca... > While China claimed a breakthrough in 2017, manufacturing a ballpoint pen all by itself and “ending a long-term reliance on imported [ballpoint pen tips],” as of 2021 the country was still reportedly 80% dependent on imported ballpoints. > In fact, Chinese imports of ballpoints pens (comprising the ballpoint and ink reservoir) have more than doubled since 2017, from 12 million USD to nearly 28 million USD last year. > Machine tools are machines that make other machines. China is a leading producer of machine tools, accounting for about 31% the world’s output in 2021 (p.10, fig. 12)—ahead of Germany (13%), Japan (12%), the US (9%), and Italy (8%). But China is heavily reliant on foreign technology for high-end machine tools: in 2021, it was 91% dependent on foreign firms for the most advanced machine tools. China just doesn't have the ability to do high precision, high quality engineering and manufacturing. I am not saying that everything that comes out of China is bad, but that there are limits to what can be produced at a high level of quality there. You can buy simple tools, like knives, at a good level of quality from China, but anything that requires complex tooling is likely not actually made in China. For that matter, smartphones aren't "made in china". They are /assembled/ there. China doesn't make the CPU in an iPhone, TSMC did. China doesn't make the /machines/ that engrave silicon in TSMC's factories, ASML does. And so on, and on, and on. If something is truly mainly made in China, with Chinese tools, and it's complex to manufacture, you should avoid like the plague. China hasn't really become the manufacturing capital of the world. It's just the place where a lot of people are paid to use screwdrivers, glue, and package things.

thelastgallon 2y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzKuHxp7WqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzKuHxp7WqA tl;dr: Today China vs US is 19% vs 16% world GDP. By 2035, it will be 24% vs 14%. China will be large economy, US can't beat China. Unless there is a nuclear war, which is probably less than ideal.

obscurette 2y ago

It's not about what China did well, but about Europe/US ignorance. How many times you've heard during last decade that software eats the world? That we should do highly profitable software things only anyway? That everyone and his dog should be a software engineer in future? Well, turned out that it was really about free money and it didn't last. Serious question – how many of you who say that they can't find the job any more, have considered manufacturing? https://x.com/zanehengsperger/status/1862134411657117773?mx=2 https://x.com/zanehengsperger/status/1862134411657117773?mx=...

sangnoir 2y ago
> how many of you who say that they can't find the job any more, have considered manufacturing? If one wants a skilled job in manufacturing, they have to earn a qualification first, or go through a period of apprenticeship. The wages for most manufacturing jobs are much lower in the west than for knowledge workers, and openings likely fewer - it's only recently that new manufacturing sites got spun-up after decades of continuous decline- thanks to 2 pieces of legislation from the Biden administration; the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act
- obscurette 2y ago
  There is a non-zero chance that these higher wages of knowledge workers and especially in IT industry were actually the results of rent-seeking.
aeonik 2y ago
Software is eating the world, you just need to multi class into the field that software is eating to be of good value.

o0-0o 2y ago

I hope the Chinese people will be free one day, and I hope their lifespan goes up. #58 is nothing to be proud of. Work to death. Not very fun. https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/ https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/

Havoc 2y ago

And only a matter of time before the manufacturing superpower is both that and a military superpower. If you can make stuff you can make military stuff

rajnathani 2y ago

It's not too bad if you consider that China is 17.6% of the world population; suddenly around 30% of manufacturing share doesn't seem that high. However, India at 3% is pretty eye-opening, but this is gradually shifting not just because of the China+1 strategy but due to the larger growing market (read: increase in standard of living / spending capacity / GDP per capita) in India and also government measures such as high import duties on high-volume goods such as smartphone (eg: Samsung's mobiles factory in Noida is the largest mobiles factory in the world [0] (India's market for mobiles (non-smartphones) is still relatively large)). [0] https://news.samsung.com/in/samsung-inaugurates-worlds-largest-mobile-factory-in-india https://news.samsung.com/in/samsung-inaugurates-worlds-large...