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It's not just cheap labor. It's labor that is abused, sometimes enslaved. It's also lack of environmental regulation adherence. China has environmental regulat

It's not just cheap labor. It's labor that is abused, sometimes enslaved. It's also lack of environmental regulation adherence. China has environmental regulations but they don't always demand compliance. I read about companies paying for scrubbers to be installed in factories and when a team comes to take a tour, still with original filters and low run hours.

lesuorac 1y ago
Labor is like 8% of the price of a car. That's not the difference between 25k and 65k. While China does have an advantage over northern states in labor prices it's not why it's so cheap.
- missedthecue 1y ago
  That 8% is only if you include the labor costs of final assembly at the GM plant. But their inputs also were built by labor. GM buys turbochargers not out of thin air, but from Garrett Motion inc., in Plymouth Michigan, who also has sizeable labor costs. Repeat not just for turbochargers, but for the rest of GM's input supply line. If you include only their direct suppliers, the cost of a new car that goes to human wages is about 30-40%. Chinese turbocharger suppliers have lower labor costs and therefore BYD, Changan, Great Wall and others have more pricing power vs GM and Ford products.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Is BYD using turbochargers in their electric cars?
    - ponector 1y ago
      Your comment would be funny if not only half of BYD vehicles are fully electric.
    - missedthecue 1y ago
      Yes, their song, tang, han, and shark models are all turbocharged. But my broader point is that their entire supply chain is comprised of lower labor cost inputs. Whether it be the EV batteries, the windshield, or the air valve in each of the four tires.
      - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        > Yes, their song, tang, han, and shark models are all turbocharged. Pretty sure that only applies to the ICE versions of those cars and not the purely electric ones.
        missedthecue 1y ago
        ...naturally
- Yeul 1y ago
  Maybe Americans could build cars that people living in Asia actually want? Hint someone in Jakarta doesn't want a 40k pick-up truck. Tangentially related China is located in the region with largest economic growth. Power is shifting from Europe and North America.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    > Maybe Americans could build cars that people living in Asia actually want? Hint someone in Jakarta doesn't want a 40k pick-up truck. You'd be surprised. One of the things that really raised my eyebrows in Thailand was slum shacks with a gleaming new muscle pickup parked beside it. For some reason these are really popular and people spend an inordinate amount of income on them.
pphysch 1y ago
Counterpoint: cost of living is ridiculously cheaper in China vs. USA. Workers can be paid 3x less and still have a better QoL. It's a vastly more efficient economy in terms of human capital. Counterpoint: China is the undisputed leader in renewable energy technology, including battery storage. I don't think they are doing it purely for environmental reasons, but they are doing it.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  I agree. A lot of modern trade for the US is built around arbitrage on purchasing power. If all else costs the same, and you have to decide whether to pay someone $2 per hour to do it or $20, $2 always wins unless shipping it over is more expensive than the difference, which almost always isn’t.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    Average salary in China has gone up quite a bit. It might be 1/3 but it's not $2. I had a friend move his factory to China because the packaging and other costs were so much cheaper. I wish I'd asked for a breakdown. He didn't factor in/expect wages to be much of a savings.
    - darth_avocado 1y ago
      I just pulled a random number but what I intended to say is that as long as differences in purchasing power exist and the dollar is the stronger currency, trade will move to where your dollar has more purchasing power for labor, as long as moving the finished goods back to the US isn’t prohibitively expensive.
- int_19h 1y ago
  But the main reason why that cost of living is ridiculously cheaper is because human labor is so much less expensive. There's no free lunch - if the output is that much cheaper, that difference has to come out of someone's pocket eventually, even if it's not the person directly manufacturing the thing but someone down the line from them. Or you can look from it from the opposite direction and imagine what would have happened if there was full freedom of movement between China and US (i.e. no visas etc) and thus an actual free market for labor. If you expect workers in such situation to steadily migrate from China to US but not vice versa (at least until cost of labor equalizes), this implies that the workers in China are somehow worse off in absolute quality of life even when accounting for relative cost-of-life differences. That is, if the relationship between two countries wasn't economically exploitative in some way, we wouldn't need to restrict the free flow of labor at the border.
throw734785 1y ago
That is rich from Americans, who exploit illegal immigrants for cheap labour!
- DontchaKnowit 1y ago
  Who said OP was american.
- themaninthedark 1y ago
  That sounds like a very good argument for cracking down on illegal immigration, either by bringing people out of the shadows or by removing them. Currently American is going the removal route.
ponector 1y ago
> It's labor that is abused, sometimes enslaved Sounds like average American gig worker.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
> It's labor that is abused, sometimes enslaved. Maybe 20 years ago? Wages are rising salaries and employers are playing nice so their employees don't jump ship elsewhere. The day of your employer keeping your ID card captive is long gone (unless you are a naked official). > China has environmental regulations but they don't always demand compliance. That was also a lot more common 20 years ago than today. These days, cities/provinces are held accountable for AQI reductions, so pretend inspections no longer help their metrics. But I totally get it, there is a lot of material from 2000 to 2015 or so, and they basically live forever on the internet.
- themaninthedark 1y ago
  No, still very ongoing. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/05/30/the-evolution-of-forced-labour-in-xinjiang https://www.economist.com/china/2024/05/30/the-evolution-of-... https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/against-their-will-the-situation-in-xinjiang https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/against-their-will-the-sit... https://www.politico.eu/article/forced-labor-still-haunts-chinese-region-of-xinjiang-report-finds/ https://www.politico.eu/article/forced-labor-still-haunts-ch... https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-05-29/chinas-economy-runs-on-uyghur-forced-labour https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-05-29/chi...
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    Those articles seem to be mostly retrospective, so you are agreeing?
    - themaninthedark 1y ago
      From the 2024 Politico article: >The study, which focuses on 2023 and early this year(2024), adds to a growing body of evidence that Beijing is using forced labor and mass internment camps to control the Uyghurs — and ramps up pressure on the European Union to finalize plans for a bloc-wide ban on imports of products made with forced labor. Your comment: >Maybe 20 years ago? Unless it is suddenly 2030 and I missed the time shift, I am talking the past year or two.

lesuorac 1y ago

Labor is like 8% of the price of a car. That's not the difference between 25k and 65k. While China does have an advantage over northern states in labor prices it's not why it's so cheap.

missedthecue 1y ago
That 8% is only if you include the labor costs of final assembly at the GM plant. But their inputs also were built by labor. GM buys turbochargers not out of thin air, but from Garrett Motion inc., in Plymouth Michigan, who also has sizeable labor costs. Repeat not just for turbochargers, but for the rest of GM's input supply line. If you include only their direct suppliers, the cost of a new car that goes to human wages is about 30-40%. Chinese turbocharger suppliers have lower labor costs and therefore BYD, Changan, Great Wall and others have more pricing power vs GM and Ford products.
- fragmede 1y ago
  Is BYD using turbochargers in their electric cars?
  - ponector 1y ago
    Your comment would be funny if not only half of BYD vehicles are fully electric.
  - missedthecue 1y ago
    Yes, their song, tang, han, and shark models are all turbocharged. But my broader point is that their entire supply chain is comprised of lower labor cost inputs. Whether it be the EV batteries, the windshield, or the air valve in each of the four tires.
    - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
      > Yes, their song, tang, han, and shark models are all turbocharged. Pretty sure that only applies to the ICE versions of those cars and not the purely electric ones.
      - missedthecue 1y ago
        ...naturally
Yeul 1y ago
Maybe Americans could build cars that people living in Asia actually want? Hint someone in Jakarta doesn't want a 40k pick-up truck. Tangentially related China is located in the region with largest economic growth. Power is shifting from Europe and North America.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  > Maybe Americans could build cars that people living in Asia actually want? Hint someone in Jakarta doesn't want a 40k pick-up truck. You'd be surprised. One of the things that really raised my eyebrows in Thailand was slum shacks with a gleaming new muscle pickup parked beside it. For some reason these are really popular and people spend an inordinate amount of income on them.

pphysch 1y ago

Counterpoint: cost of living is ridiculously cheaper in China vs. USA. Workers can be paid 3x less and still have a better QoL. It's a vastly more efficient economy in terms of human capital. Counterpoint: China is the undisputed leader in renewable energy technology, including battery storage. I don't think they are doing it purely for environmental reasons, but they are doing it.

darth_avocado 1y ago
I agree. A lot of modern trade for the US is built around arbitrage on purchasing power. If all else costs the same, and you have to decide whether to pay someone $2 per hour to do it or $20, $2 always wins unless shipping it over is more expensive than the difference, which almost always isn’t.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  Average salary in China has gone up quite a bit. It might be 1/3 but it's not $2. I had a friend move his factory to China because the packaging and other costs were so much cheaper. I wish I'd asked for a breakdown. He didn't factor in/expect wages to be much of a savings.
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    I just pulled a random number but what I intended to say is that as long as differences in purchasing power exist and the dollar is the stronger currency, trade will move to where your dollar has more purchasing power for labor, as long as moving the finished goods back to the US isn’t prohibitively expensive.
int_19h 1y ago
But the main reason why that cost of living is ridiculously cheaper is because human labor is so much less expensive. There's no free lunch - if the output is that much cheaper, that difference has to come out of someone's pocket eventually, even if it's not the person directly manufacturing the thing but someone down the line from them. Or you can look from it from the opposite direction and imagine what would have happened if there was full freedom of movement between China and US (i.e. no visas etc) and thus an actual free market for labor. If you expect workers in such situation to steadily migrate from China to US but not vice versa (at least until cost of labor equalizes), this implies that the workers in China are somehow worse off in absolute quality of life even when accounting for relative cost-of-life differences. That is, if the relationship between two countries wasn't economically exploitative in some way, we wouldn't need to restrict the free flow of labor at the border.

throw734785 1y ago

That is rich from Americans, who exploit illegal immigrants for cheap labour!

DontchaKnowit 1y ago
Who said OP was american.
themaninthedark 1y ago
That sounds like a very good argument for cracking down on illegal immigration, either by bringing people out of the shadows or by removing them. Currently American is going the removal route.

ponector 1y ago

> It's labor that is abused, sometimes enslaved Sounds like average American gig worker.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

> It's labor that is abused, sometimes enslaved. Maybe 20 years ago? Wages are rising salaries and employers are playing nice so their employees don't jump ship elsewhere. The day of your employer keeping your ID card captive is long gone (unless you are a naked official). > China has environmental regulations but they don't always demand compliance. That was also a lot more common 20 years ago than today. These days, cities/provinces are held accountable for AQI reductions, so pretend inspections no longer help their metrics. But I totally get it, there is a lot of material from 2000 to 2015 or so, and they basically live forever on the internet.

themaninthedark 1y ago
No, still very ongoing. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/05/30/the-evolution-of-forced-labour-in-xinjiang https://www.economist.com/china/2024/05/30/the-evolution-of-... https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/against-their-will-the-situation-in-xinjiang https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/against-their-will-the-sit... https://www.politico.eu/article/forced-labor-still-haunts-chinese-region-of-xinjiang-report-finds/ https://www.politico.eu/article/forced-labor-still-haunts-ch... https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-05-29/chinas-economy-runs-on-uyghur-forced-labour https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-05-29/chi...
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  Those articles seem to be mostly retrospective, so you are agreeing?
  - themaninthedark 1y ago
    From the 2024 Politico article: >The study, which focuses on 2023 and early this year(2024), adds to a growing body of evidence that Beijing is using forced labor and mass internment camps to control the Uyghurs — and ramps up pressure on the European Union to finalize plans for a bloc-wide ban on imports of products made with forced labor. Your comment: >Maybe 20 years ago? Unless it is suddenly 2030 and I missed the time shift, I am talking the past year or two.