Re:We purchased a machine from China and it came with malwar...
by mach1ne on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @10:43AM
(#30073056)
This was the case some 10 years ago, but Chinese labor is no longer cheap. The wealth brought in by making China the factory of the world drove the income level of its middle class up and now there are few advantages in manufacturing your products in China.
Western manufacturers are constantly pulling their factories back from China, many having gained an ultimate net loss from moving in in the 90s and now relocating again.
Re:We purchased a machine from China and it came with malwar...
by toss1 on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @02:37PM
(#30076886)
Yes, they have made a net loss, and meanwhile transferred an insane amount of technology to China. But those managers got their bonuses and are long-gone...
And sure Chinese labor isn't as cheap, they've moved up the value chain some, but it is still cheap enough compared to US wages to make items and ship them here - particularly with China's lax environmental and labor laws.
The relocations to even cheaper labor-rate counties are still an improvement, as at least they aren't creating all levels of strategic disadvantage...
Western MBAs and politicians think they know that manufacturing is just a fungible commodity and think that we're exploiting cheap Chinese labor to 'drive shareholder value'.
While they have this myopic focus on quarterly results, the CCP has a 100- and 500-year plan, and is happily exploiting that myopia for strategic economic and military value, including subsidizing massive undercutting of entire industries in order to kill all but their own. The result is that they are gaining the deep know-how of manufacturing, the ability to compromise their adversaries' military gear at the component level, and the ability to choke off supply chains.
Although there is still barely time to repair this, it will go down as a strategic blunder of historic proportions.