It's a double-edged sword: global labour arbitrage has resulted in massive increases in quality of life for the average Chinese, but people look at the QOL in C

It's a double-edged sword: global labour arbitrage has resulted in massive increases in quality of life for the average Chinese, but people look at the QOL in China and think, "I'm facilitating slavery by buying foreign goods". What these people really want, in an ideal world, is for there to be no inequality between various national markets. This is happening slowly, but like any inequality, it will gradually even out over time. Businesses look at both halves of that problem and see a) we have to pay more to manufacture things in China, and the cost is going up b) people don't want to buy things made in China, even though the price is going up, because they still sense inequality and so they tentatively start bringing some production back. This trend will likely speed up ( especially, as this article says, for large goods that are more expensive to ship and easier to assemble ) as Chinese wages rise.