As a software engineer who works closely with electrical and firmware engineers I know what you are saying is completely true.
The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? How can JLCCNC take ~$120 worth of raw material, CNC machine it into our specified part, anodize the part, and send it to Denmark for ~$120? Like what is going on?
Remember how Apple couldn't just pick up and move the production of iPhones to India or Vietnam? You need all the ancillary industries around the production to be there, along with being competitive and commoditized as well.
When a supplier has something go wrong a line of manufacturing doesn't go down. You go down the street to the same guy selling the same thing and have them pick up the slack. If you want a 1uF ceramic cap come hell or high water there's going to be a dozen people selling them all quoting a price a little above cost. When Apple moved production to India and Vietnam. When you hear Apple talking about a few billion in investment in Indonesia? This is what they're helping set up and what takes a decade to do.
Anyone can buy automation equipment but there's nowhere in the US you can do what JLCPCB/PCBWay do with PCB and electronics assembling because we literally don't manufacture all the ancillary stuff required in the US, little alone manufacture it all in the same place. If the SMT components are manufactured domestically say for military purposes it's going to be spread out all over the US because politicians pork barrel contracts for their districts and states.
You could setup next to a Mouser distribution hub but Mouser is a middleman and they have you over a barrel. What do middlemen do in that situation? They raise prices just enough to the point where it's uneconomical to leave.
You metaphorically need to invent the universe to make it work in the US.
You left out the part about dormitories full of modern-day slaves, complete with nets so they don't leap to their deaths. Generally this is frowned upon in the West. India and Vietnam wouldn't tolerate it either, despite being developing countries. Wasn't there a riot at Apple's India factory over work conditions or am I thinking of something else?
Bury this post all you want; I know a guy at Apple that saw the nets in person. It's quite a sight to behold and humbling experience.
Frowned upon, but you (the US) do have them: https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicid...
Seen them here in Germany, too: https://maps.app.goo.gl/vDSL4HeQrLLfYU2m7
Perhaps you'd like to elaborate on why you think it's not the same.
This university had three students jump to their deaths in 2010, out of about 26k students, compared to 15 in Foxconn's worst year out of 980,000 employees:
https://news.sky.com/story/suicide-nets-college-attempts-to-...
Population adjusted, what happened at Cornell University was as if 112 people rather than 15 had jumped in Foxconn.
Or this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Holmes_Bobst_Library
"""In late 2003, the library was the site of two suicides. In separate incidents, students jumped from the open-air crosswalks inside the library and fell to the stereogram-patterned marble floor below.
After the second suicide, the university installed Plexiglas barricades on each level and along the stairways to prevent further jumping. In 2009, a third student jumped to his death from the tenth floor, apparently scaling the plexiglas barricade.[7]
The library has since added floor-to-ceiling metal barriers to prevent any future suicide attempts. The barrier is made of randomly perforated aluminum screens that evoke the zeros and ones of a digital waterfall.[8]"""
2 out of 59,144 students would be equivalent to 33 out of the 980k Foxconn employees, double the number who actually jumped.
Foxconn is a place where people live and work. Not accessible to the public.
Where is the overlap?
Treating Foxconn as "a company" is fine for legal purposes, but it's on a scale of "one of the larger incorporated cities, close to the top 10" by US standards — or indeed "South Dakota". (Similar population, but Foxconn's revenue is about 3.7x South Dakota's GDP or 81% of San Francisco's GDP).
Compare to barriers around train/subway platforms, nets or high barriers on bridges. All sorts of things. It's pretty much a "large number of people living around tall structures" thing.
When I'm feeling negative, a Tom Gauld cartoon comes to mind: https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2xljaz/us_vs_them/
The riot in India was because they weren't getting paid, not because of the work conditions.
Also I don't think the suicide rate of those workers you are referring to is higher than the general population. There are simply lots of workers. For example, Foxconn has more than 1 million employees so it is normal that there would be some level of suicide within such a large population.
In their worst year, Foxconn had 15 suicides from 930,000 people for a rate of 1.6 per 100k[1].
The US region with the current lowest rate is the District of Columbia, at 6.1 per 100k; the US national average in Foxconn's worst year was about 13 per 100k[2].
Today, the USA national average ranks them #31 highest in the world with a rate of 14.5 per 100k, while China's national average of 6.7 per 100 is close to your best region (DC) and ranks them #122 (higher rank number means lower rate)[3].
Foxconn, in that year, had a workforce about the same size as the total population of South Dakota. South Dakota in that year had a suicide count of 139 [4].
[0] https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicid...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
[4] Page 5: https://sprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/South-Dakota-Sui...
Yes, "frowned upon" is the perfectly realistic way to describe it.
Dior was just caught using effectively slave labor including illegal immigrants in Italy (so they can say "Made in Italy" on the label), all locked in, working and sleeping in the makeshift factory, working round the clock shifts, operating machines with safeties disabled so they're more productive, making 2700E handbags for 53E [0]. The court just called it "Unethical Supply Chain" but no criminal charges. Luxury brands are put "on notice".
> thousands of small foreign-owned manufacturers supply luxury brands with goods that can claim the prized “Made in Italy” label but are produced at “Made in China” prices.
If you thought now you can sleep well but still buy cheap (or even a 2700E handbag) because your product isn't made in China, think again. And this isn't just Italy, it's everywhere. And it isn't just iPhones or Dior handbags, it's almost every cheap thing you buy. Business owners are greedy and chase profits, and customers are cheap and most just don't care beyond their own needs and wants.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2024/06/24/italian-...
You have the judicial system of Italy that is complicit in this behavior in this instance and others in different cases.
Although, it seems to be Dior's subcontractors: >found two of its Chinese-owned subcontractors based outside Milan had exploited their workers.
And Dior was not doing audits.
No comment in the article on the fate of the subcontractors who violated the law.... very encouraging.
You do realize the default state of humanity is living in the dirt and fighting off starvation daily right? It takes decades/hundreds of years to develop an advanced economy and fight for the institutions that enable this not to be the case. Undesirable manufacturing jobs lead to desirable manufacturing jobs (as is happening rapidly there!)
Foxconn not being a rung on the ladder in China doesn’t mean locals suddenly get American living standards, it means they never climb the ladder and get stuck with even worse alternatives —- I don’t think you realize the history of China is basically constant mass starvation:
These nets are everywhere here. In the our other building's (which is an R&D facility where nobody is a modern day slave by your definition) stair well, construction sites, bridges, etc.
I saw it all over Europe in buildings, bridges, etc.
Clifton Suspension Bridge in the UK is infamous for it, which is why it's now got a barrier up on the pedestrian section: https://maps.app.goo.gl/U1xYZHqhhxNoKMDV7
Or possibly politicians attracting investment to their districts for the benefit their voters. What's the alternative here, a centrally planned economy?
> because politicians pork barrel contracts for their districts and states.
> Or possibly politicians attracting investment to their districts for the benefit their voters
That's literally the same thing - you just gave the definition of pork barrel spending. It isn't purely bad, it's just excessive or unnecessary to benefit one politician's constituents.
And pork barrel spending is also literally a centrally-planned economy. It's the federal government saying "put this industry here" despite the fact that capitalism would not have put it there.
You didnt answer the obvious question of the why things are the way they are now? US used to have their entire electronic supply chain, save from raw materials, in USA in the 70s... So why cant US build its own Shenzhen or Hong Kong? taxes? corporate taxes are relatively low in some US states, infrastructure? US has all the infrastructure needed. Engineers? US claims to have the best universities in the world...
Economically speaking it was a big advantage because you could get all the gadgets manufactured at chinese wages for the last decades-- electronics made in the US will be more expensive even after all the necessary investments are paid for (duh).
A possible model sector for how this could look like is agriculture: Most nations subsidize the shit out of it to keep a good chunk of it local (~$20 billion/year for the US). You could treat heavy industry/electronics manufacturing the same way, it would just cost taxpayers a bunch and also increase prices in general (because you then poach manpower and capital from other unsubsidized industries).
Look at the existing issues with the Rust Belt as an example. The higher cost of labor could be offset by higher worker productivity. The issues are in regulatory compliance, demands from politicians and unions. As soon as a major project is announced, the demands start flowing in. Look at what happened with Amazon's attempted fulfillment center in NYC. Look at the amazing strategic location and port infrastructure of a city like Baltimore, and ask why it cannot attract more development. There are major political obstacles which need to be tackled in every case. Even California's failed highspeed rail project should tell us something.
I suggest you watch American Factory (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9351980/) to completely disabuse yourself of this notion.
Chinese engineer (in amazement) "You are allowed to do that?"
Yah, I need to watch that again.
>Among major economies and regions, the United States has the highest rate of production of goods and services per hour worked, with only a few small European economies outperforming it. Productivity rates in most parts of the world are well below the US’. Indeed, according to research conducted by The Conference Board, nearly 75% of the global population lives in economies where productivity rates are below the global average of US$21.6 per hour worked.
Of course, it may be reasonable to suspect that at least some of these productivity gaps are a result of different sectors which are served, ie manufacturing vs. services.
https://jacobin.com/2020/02/american-factory-julia-reichert-...
>A day before she quoted Marx at the Oscars, Jacobin briefly chatted with American Factory co-director Julia Reichert about her democratic socialism and long history on the Left.
>At Saturday’s Film Independent Spirit Awards ceremony Julia Reichert mentioned “income inequality” during her best documentary acceptance speech for American Factory. The first film released by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, American Factory is about a Chinese capitalist who reopens a closed plant in Ohio, employing thousands of American workers.
https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5946906/
>The only effective means of worker power is through unionizing, and both Chinese and American executives resist it mightily, using pages from the exact same playbook, like targeting leaders and paying for propaganda campaigns. In a sense, the American executives going overseas was like finding a pool of scabs to cross the picket line. As one of the state congressmen observes in speaking to the workers, corporate profitability and treating workers respectfully via a living wage are not incompatible things, and it's shameful that they're treated that way out of unfettered greed in extreme capitalism. (Hmm, if only there was an international labor organization, lol)
>>The issues are in regulatory compliance, demands from politicians and unions. As soon as a major project is announced, the demands start flowing in.
Without getting into the weeds of the documentary's agenda or methods of argumentation - it isn't hard to see that the same methods employed on the mainland with low productivity per worker, will not magically produce different results in the US. Higher productivity, along with higher wages may require automating much of the production process. This may be more capital intensive up-front.
The USA for example includes about $7t of hedonic and imputed values that a) never happened in the real world, but b) exceed Japan's entire GDP.
Japan: Paves entirety of Yokohama
China: Tofu real estate and more...
I agree that it is silly. If the state or the public sector digs holes and refills them, it adds to GDP. Typically economists say, "Yes, GDP is a flawed metric, but it is better than no metric"
That said, we can evaluate the added benefits of automation and the productivity gains thereof, purely from first principles, without resorting to empiricism.
In the 1900s the USA took that crown. Most things became manufactured there. A lot thanks to Britain bankrupting itself to defeat Germany in WW1.
In the 2000s China has taken that crown. Now most things are manufactured there. But the owners and customers are in the US. The US corporations have outsourced their manufacturing to China and get rich from it.
And now the USA workers wonder if it was all actually a good idea?
The financiers are still getting rich and looking not to move their manufacturing back to the US but rather to a less developed and so cheaper country further abroad...
We were never asked.
Throw in the massive loss of manpower both from the war and from Spanish flu, then the damage from years of bombing in WW2.
It's largely about can you set up an effective ecosystem of suppliers.
The story of the Traitorous 8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight is basically the tale of how free-market competition spawns the economic prosperity of an entire region. In those times, Boston's 95 ring was the favored home of semiconductor tech, but the popular story goes that Massachusetts enforced non-compete clauses while California didn't, and the result was the ascension of Silicon Valley as people out west intermingled between semiconductor and computer companies, traded ideas, started new firms from those ideas, etc.
Shenzhen is amazing because it's an entire village of micro-manufacturies... one bodega specializes in one type of capacitor, a neighborhood specializes in rapid prototype boards, there's institutional social connections between all these folks so you can just run to the other side of town if you need something for this week's production run or if your assembly line controller board failed.
As for why we can't reproduce that in the US, my best guess is we've had the "get big or get out" mentality since Nixon. VC's won't fund a bodega specializing in some obscure electronics niche -- we favor rapid injection of capital into something that can quickly grow and dominate an entire industry. "Lifestyle business" is a pejorative here. The Shenzhen model on the other hand is an interconnected cottage industry village of generalists that focus on small runs of whatever Temu gadget is trending today and can rapidly change and adapt week to week. No individual bodega dominates, but as an ecosystem it does. Something something anti-fragile.
Yes, there are also the megafactories that make our iphones and galaxies and have dormitories for the basically-slave-level workforce, so the models do mix. But it's largely a different business mindset -- ecosystem vs. winner-takes-all.
As in I witnessed a bespoke electric motor manufacturer that was in the ground floor garage space with a couple of guys neatly winding insulated copper around an iron bar cut to the size needed (very large).
You might see a massive train motor and say ‘where’d they get the funding to start this bespoke train motor company’. But it’s literally a couple of guys in an area where they have another couple of guys make the custom brushes, someone else doing the housing, they wind on the coils and boom you have a bespoke motor manufacturer. No investment needed.
But I'm just an armchair commentator here. I hangout here cause I'd love to hear some better firsthand experiences if my story is off.
I would guess labor costs and practices are a big aspect. We send all our kids to stupid school instead of paying them pennies to get their tiny little fingers to work building micro-controllers for us and stuff.
And will only be increasingly robotic with advances in AI.
- Anything you can easily automate (like pick & place machines for electronics, industrial robots for welding/assembly) will be automated anyway (no advantage for the US as location there)
- Even if you have 100% automation, you still need to pay (mainly) local workforce to set the whole thing up, and a lot of those jobs are even less competitive in the US wage-wise (construction crews, etc.)
Neither of those calculations is probably going to change much in the next decades. If you want to keep low-wage industry (like PCB assembly, heavy industry etc.) in a country like the US, then you will need to subsidise this with taxpayer money one way or the other (tariffs are essentially just that).
Agriculture is an example where this is already done (for obvious reasons related to people not starving in a trade crisis). But this is somewhat expensive (US agriculture subsidies are ~$20billion/year).
I think this will happen, and that some degree of it is a good idea (for strategic reasons), but framing this as a benefit for the average american is pretty much a lie-- because in the end, the taxpayer is on the hook for those subsidies, all those industries products are gonne get more expensive and other sectors are gonna get dragged down, too, because they have to compete for talent and might suffer from foreign trade retaliation.
Also note that this development (low-skill manufacturing migrates to growing, lower-wage country, then the migration propagates up the tech level) is something that occured basically exactly the same way in the past (with Japan in the 1990s).
> now they have all the factories and they also have rising standards of living so ... seems to be working for them?
This is basically the point of international trade.
Things also worked out for the US, because they reaped the fruits of that cheap Chinese labor-- all-American electronics would have been significantly more expensive.
I'd also like to point out that those living standards are WAY below US levels-- there is absolutely no way that US-americans with comparable education levels would be willing to work in comparable conditions.
Note also that artificially messing with this process has consequences: If the US had forced electronics and heavy industry to stay fully domestic starting in the 80s or so (with tariffs, regulations and subsidies), then their products would have stayed much less affordable for decades, and a lot of bright STEM graduates that made software/CPU development/Hi-tech happen might have taken cushy, tax-payer funded jobs instead...
If you watch manufacturing videos, its crazy how many people actually come together to make the cheap mundane things we take for granted: For example, count the number of people who touch this random RGB bluetooth speaker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U
Maybe you could automate that, but it really would be more effort than its worth to set up robots to make what I assume is a fairly cheap product.
The goal isn't to have 50 people selling a batch of capacitors for $10, it's to sell them to Alfie for $6, Barbara for $12, and because it's absolutely critical for Colin he gets to pay $623
The western world is about maximising the value middlemen can extract.
Component availability has nothing to do with that, JLC have always been way cheaper than US/EU board houses even before they started doing assembly services
It’s not really a secret. They have cheap labor. Very lax environmental standards (big deal for PCB manufacturing). They have a high density of manufacturing and production. One factory can get their materials and machines from other factories nearby. Their government manipulates exchange rates.
People are also quick to forget US companies that serve these same markets. OSH Park was doing cheap PCB panel share before JLCPCB was a common name. Boards manufactured right in the United States. They don’t have the volume of JLCPCB but they’ve been doing cheap boards for hobbyists for a long time: https://docs.oshpark.com/services/
This is not the price you get from China, but this is still a pretty damn good deal. When I was in college, $33 each was great (this was before JLC and PCBWay), and I would say the same for most hobby projects.
It was actually only recently that China low volume manufacturing beat out OSH Park for very small boards once you factored in shipping.
For the record, college was more than 3 years ago for me, and $33/board (last I checked) does not beat any of the other prototyping services except at very large sizes - they go up to 60 sq in for that price.
Chinese wages are higher than those in Mexico for example.
If you've seen enough people graduating into non-working class, or you have had yourself, that changes your perspective.
Suffice to say don't underestimate the work ethic and skill of Chinese laborers.
I grew up in Europe, but am now living in Singapore. It's interesting: despite all the PRC's advances and progress in the last few decades, they are still the poorest Chinese-majority country. You can go even wider, and look at countries with sizeable Chinese minorities, like Malaysia or Thailand, and I think you will find that the average ethnic Chinese person there also makes more than the average ethnic Chinese person does in the PRC.
I haven't checked the numbers for all of the relevant countries, but I think it's fair to say that by and large, PR China has the poorest ethnically Chinese people.
Even by global standards (compared against all countries) it did fairly well. By socialist standards it did really well. By German standards, it did so much worse than Austria, Switzerland or West Germany.
I don't think you want that for Canada. And that's pretty much a best case outcome.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese
how to quantify "by and large"? there's not many chinese people outside china and most of them left china in the last 100 years in search of better lives.
and usa and singapore are rich?
> [...] there's not many chinese people outside china and most of them left china in the last 100 years in search of better lives.
Wikipedia says:
> Overseas Chinese people are people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan).[20] As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese.[8]
40.3 million is quite a few. And they form significant minorities in many South East Asian countries.
But you are right that eg Germany or South Sudon don't really have enough Chinese people to really say much about them there.
Because allowing countries to maximize their comparative advantages is great for economic growth. It doesn’t make sense for every nation on earth to have their own copy of every industrial sector. We don’t need all nations to manufacture their own jet engines, oil tankers, t-shirts, and Tylenol. Trade is good.
The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new. Half of century of economic policy can’t be reversed in 5 years.
You're kidding right?
Just one example around free market: China's private sector has lost ground as state sector has gained share among top corporations since 2021 https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-privat...
China is always a 'security threat' to the US since 1946, but it never get a high priority untill now
- 1946-1991 Cold War with Soviet - 2001-2017 Global War on Terror in MiddleEast - 2018-now Trade War and Chip War with China
I highly doubt the memory capacity of americans, it seems like americans can only remember things that are "present"
it's just like the meme
1. Remove the chip 2. Overwrite Iraq -> China 3. Insert the chip click 4. "China is our destined enemy"
Only because its been recently revealed that everyone is a security threat to the US.
So in reality, not so much.
That’s what I was taught when I grew up in the 1989ies.
And as far as I can see, that idea comes from China simply having grown its economy to a size comparable to that of the USA, nothing else?
But everyone during the Chinese miracle growth (from 1980's to today) expected China would've become the largest economy in the world by the 2020's. I guess people just didn't really take that seriously until it actually became true?
While you were basking in your arrogance, they overtook you. And now you have to deal with that. People are literally saying how they cannot do their jobs now that their stuff is not coming in from China. Why is that? You thought you were exploiting cheap labour, but meanwhile you were making them smarter with every bit of "menial" work you gave them. Now they can do anything that you can do, and a lot of it they can do better and cheaper. You are more dependent on them then they are on you. But your ego refuses to let you see it.
Here is some comparison from an uneducated nonprofessional...America is a company masquerading as a country. China is a country run like a business. Once you know the difference it will inform you of the way forward...Dankie
wow, didn't expect to see such insight here
Now China is very strong, and the west exerts very little influence
Meanwhile this is a thread about the US tech and retail sectors being unable to survive at all without imports from China.
Turns out offshoring was one of the most self-harmingly stupid decisions in US economic history.
Still - at least it prevented worker unionisation. So that was such a win for corporate America.
My memory is not very good, but it seems that something similar has happened 4 years ago, do you remember?
Now the time has come and we're in the middle of it. At least, I hope this is not just the beginning.
But your last sentence is true. Politicians and corporate executives failing to accurately extrapolate long-term consequences have not done us any favors over the past 50 years, and now we’re super fucked. It’d be hard even if we still had a competent government instead of the smoking ruin in progress.
(Thomas Friedman and his globalization-is-brilliant shtick making people think this was all OK wasn’t great either.)
Because the West has to actually follow environmental and safety regulations. As opposed to write them down on paper and wipe your ass with it when the West isn't looking.
Evidence: I watched a tour video from one of these Chinese PCB houses and some of the workers were wearing surgical masks.
Not for COVID mind you, for presiding over open vats of boiling poison that would need a chemical respirator in any responsible country.
... that can only exist because they can circumvent them by offshoring all their production to the East and South. If they actually wanted to comply rather than bypass said regulations they would have to curb consumption for which there would not be support.
But that's the nitpicker in me. The general point that our over-consumption drives like 80% of the bad things in the world still stands. The only real solution is to consume less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
Fixed that for you.
Due to underdeveloped economies, developing countries cannot avoid economic dependence on developed countries, especially in areas such as high technology, equipment, and precision instruments. However, this dependence varies depending on the development stage of each country. For example, African nations primarily require food to sustain basic living conditions.
Regardless of their specific needs, this situation has resulted in a unique exchange mechanism: developing countries must offer their best products in exchange for goods from developed countries. As a result, people in developing countries are unable to enjoy the finest products produced in their own countries, and sometimes not even second-tier products, as these are reserved for foreign consumers.
The U.S. market features products from various countries and regions, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Jamaica, and Mexico. The world's finest products flow into the U.S. market in exchange for U.S. dollars. As everyone competes to obtain dollars, competition intensifies, leading to high product quality and low prices. This has created unprecedented prosperity in the U.S. market. This outcome is a result of market mechanisms and the benefits that the U.S. has gained from the global status of the dollar, established by the Bretton Woods Conference after World War II.
However, the massive influx of foreign products into the U.S. has also impacted its domestic industries, causing factory closures and rising unemployment. This issue cannot be ignored, which is why the forces of free trade and protectionism in the U.S. have been in constant conflict.
— Wang Huning, America Against America
as long as the US still export USD to exchange products, this situation will not change
> how these Chinese firms are so cheap?
believe me, we don't want this, we have no choice, just like all other 3rd countries, cheap products, cheap minerals, cheap men and women, all running to the US to be exchanged for dollars
This is also why GDP is extremely misleading. PPP is supposed to account for these differences but often is often wrong by a rather wide margin for many critical industries.
[1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/bottled-w...
Chinese local officials are expected to meet and exceed targets for GDP growth. Investment is GDP growth, so officials are incentivized to build lots of flashy projects to boost growth even if there isn’t a clear need for them.
The central government is so concerned with local government spending that has resulted that it has ordered 12 provinces to halt new projects: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-orders-indebted-lo...
The local government debt burden that has resulted has also started resulting in other services getting cut, like local bus services ceasing to operate. What good is a high speed rail line you can't get to? https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Chinese-bus-crisis,-a-new-bu...
i'm really curious about how you get those information about china, because those information are mostly target to domestic chinese, rarely go abroad, the ultimate purpose of these information is to privatize state-owned enterprises(or opposite, it's complex, even for most Chinese live in China)
like,
> It calls on them to ensure that funding for public transport is included in their budgets, so that they can provide bus service operators with financial subsidies in a timely manner
if you know more abt it, you'll know the bogged bus service is a very classic example to show what'll happened if you handle your public service to a private enterprise, yes, not like China Railway, that bus operator is not a state-owned company, which was threating local gov for subsidies, would be better if they managed to force the local gov acquisite their shit
i sincerely you to dig more by yourself, be cautious with your sources
and if you want to know more abt the debt crisis in China, welcome to ask, a little tip, the keyword is 'bridge', not 'bus' or 'railway'
China Sees More Stations Shut Down as High-Speed Rail Debt Crisis Deepens https://english.pardafas.com/china-sees-more-stations-shut-d...
China’s High-Speed Rail Is Dead: Over 4,000 Ghostly Stations, Billions Spent, No Passengers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhclmurNUuw
Land sales/leases are one of the few ways the local governments can make money, so they overdid approvals and subsidies.
The Communist party also imposed strict capital controls so the middle class couldn't invest worldwide. Combine that with a cultural desire for housing, and you have a huge over investment in Chinese housing.
Of course we've asked ourselves that, we know the answers too! Manufacturing costs are so low, and the cost of shipping is so low.
I recently made contact with a manufacturer at a trade fair in Europe.
I was wanting a sample of their product, they had one at their stand - I had it in my hands - but due to time constraints we didn't have time to seal the deal on the day and I had to leave town.
So they ended up taking the item all the way back to Asia, and then a week or so later air-freighted it all the way back to Europe. Shipping cost was approx USD55, they shipped it out on a Friday, it was delivered on the Monday.
This is the long con of Reagan in the 80s: extracting value and diverting profits from households to shareholders will only get you a few decades before the last well-trained, well-funded workforce ages out and no one’s left to prop up the scam. In SimCity terms, the US is collapsing from High-Density Industrial to Medium-Density Industrial because all the schools had their funding cut for 50 years while the city budget has Commercial taxes set to 0%. The solutions are similarly apparent to any SimCity player, but deeply unpalatable for the real-world beneficiaries — the 0.1% — that are now accustomed to their diverted income. Ironically, one of the best ways to learn more about the grifter’s mindset is to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; not because she proposed a workable solution or because it’s a good or bad novel, but because her portrayal of the grifter sociopathy is dead-on accurate for what we now see happening. Or, watch the TV show Leverage; the villains are often a stellar model of the same.
No affiliation except that I like to look at naked PCBs.
We have our own PCB shops but they are like double or quadruple the price of Chinese shops because of labor costs and a lack of investment capital to introduce automation.
> Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap?
As said, extremely low labor costs plus ecosystem efficiencies. When the shop making capacitors by the container load is one block away there's barely any handling effort or stockpiling required, whereas domestic Western shops have to keep much more stockpiles.
I've tried to get PCBs fab'd stateside and I think its multidimensional. I didn't NEED to get them made stateside, but I wanted to try. The price for a board for a run of ~150 fairly simple PCBs was 2-3x what the chinese fabs offered. On top of that, American fabs are typically for ITAR/defense contract work. They'll snub their nose at small orders, give you the runaround, etc.
When working with Chinese fabs, the main downside is the time difference. JLC and PCBWay have both been great to work with, offer a good price, especially for a hobbyist(which is important if you want more hardware R&D).
It's an optimized market, isn't it? Didn't it naturally go this far?
The lack of manufacturing in the US can be linked to the lack of investment from the low savings rate as the flipside of high consumption, and a strong dollar (relative to surplus countries like China) that both boosts imports, driving consumption even higher than lowering savings rate, and weak export competiveness.
That lack of savings manifests as the Current Account Deficit, and normally the dollar should weaken due to it, strengthening exports and naturally rebalancing the trade. Unfortunately, because the rest of the world does the opposite in having an abnormally high level of savings, they push all their capital into the USA. This overall appreciates the dollar, and is good for the finance industry, but persistently doing this for 40 years has basically destroyed US manufacturing.
For all the supposed panic and importance of this process, the poster didn’t do even a google search of this issue
So on the surface, this looks more like corporate welfare to FedEx/DHL.
Import tax and tariff relies on clear and accurate import declaration.
For DHL/FexEx imported package, you can fine them when the declaration isn't right.
For USPS imported package, you can't fine USPS -- they didn't know what's in package when it arrive. You can't fine Hong Kong Post or China Post, because they are not US entities. Rejecting parcel in bulk is one of the reasonable option if they can't get the shipper fill in the correct declaration form.
Or you could do what pretty much every other country in the world does, and fine the recipient.
USPS forwards packages from HongKong Post and China Post -- they don't have direct relationship with the shipper.
FedEX/DHL, otoh, have their local office in HongKong and China, they help the customer do declaration and inspect them before seal.
When FexEX/DHL package got the declaration wrong, they got fined. When USPS package got the declaration wrong, they are hand-tied.
And while waiting 15 years for that to become possible, just move that US based R&D to countries not ran by idiots.
I blame myself for not immigrating earlier. I had a chance to move overseas for a least a year and I didn't.
- overcoming environmental regulations
- a more disjointed government that changes hands every 4 or 8 years
- competition from, well, China
- US dollar making exports very challenging because of strength relative to yuan
etc
it would take, honestly, more like 30-50 years and/or a true forcing function like a world war (heaven forbid)
Some will attribute it to the proximity of factories to one another, collaboration between those in adjacent industries, culture, government intentionality, a general lack of enforcement on IP as long as it favors China… but the truth is if China along with every alternative adopted Western environmental and labor laws tomorrow, by mid-2026 there would be factories open in every town and city in the USA and Canada.
The West loves to play holier than thou while paying others to put their negatives on their books. Canada implementing carbon pricing and phasing out coal domestically while simply shipping it to Asia instead is the perfect example. Or banning single use plastic because we were shipping it to countries that claimed they were recycling it and instead dumping it into rivers.
There is no reason why we can’t produce things, aside from the fact that it’s unpalatable and often illegal to have to deal with the realities of manufacturing like toxic effluents and aerosols.
It’s why we tend to stick to manufacturing things that only involve assembling, processing, and welding materials after the bulk of the nastiness has been done overseas.
Canada's carbon pricing is to incentivize buying stuff that has less carbon emissions. there's nothing particularly holier-than-thou about it, its just there to get the infrastructure to swap.
If none of your R&D is in the US, you don't have to worry so much about them throwing a fit.
Had you read the article you would realize this only affects parcels sent through the mail.
Those aren’t affected.
Your fast prototypes coming by air freight likely aren't routed through USPS at all unless it's the last leg of a consolidated shipment that's broken apart once it reaches the US. Those would be using some other carrier to get them from China to the US and then USPS only inside the US. USPS all the way from China is slow.
Paying ~$30 for express shipping through DHL (plus whatever the new tariffs end up being) will still get you those parts in 3-5 days to most major shipping hubs in the US, your suppliers will just need to start filing the export paperwork correctly.
These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS.
Your Chinese suppliers can still ship by any of the normal commercial express shipping carriers as long as they understand how to file export paperwork or have an agent who can do it for them. Previously this usually added 1-2 days to the transit time over shipping undeclared "samples". Last year DHL moved to a paperless system and that extra 1-2 days delay is probably going away anyway. They may have even done it because they saw this coming. People have been grumbling about the de-minimis stuff for a while now.
The carriers do already have practice ramping up and down for Christmas and Chinese New Year so it seems plausible they could absorb significant extra volume in whatever time it would take to negotiate the leases on the extra flights they use during those times.
For that matter customs processing also has experience managing the same surges.
I'd believe we might have some sort of own-goal planned for customs that could hang things up.
Nothing more American than the government attempting to kill competition so multi billion dollar corporations can get richer
That probably will work for like a week, considering how fast and reckless the administration moves.
not sure about other carriers but that doesn’t sound good
In my european experience, DHL is anything but fast when customs are involved. And I doubt they have the manpower to handle it for the new US rules.
> These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS.
Again in my european experience, the likes of Temu have solved the problem. You just order and a courier shows up with the taxes already handled. You paid Temu for them when you ordered and they paid the taxes for you at the point of entry to the EU.
Unfortunately they probably don't have a similar setup in the US, but they're likely to solve it much faster than DHL.
And of course prices will increase. Will that make them less competitive? Time will tell.
That's (historically) not the case for US B2B shipments. For those, DHL pays the duty as the shipment goes through customs and then sends an invoice after the parcel is delivered.
> DHL B2C shipments to the EU are generally held in customs until the duty is paid, which makes it slow but ensures DHL isn't left holding the bag when people decide they don't want to pay unexpected import duties.
Nothing is unexpected with DHL considering the amount of paperwork they want you to fill each time :) Even if you check "retain my data for next time and don't send me this form again".
They indeed send me a payment link and i pay for customs online before the package starts moving.
I don't do Asia->EU shipments but I get prototypes maybe 2-3 times per year from the US. We gave up on DHL and are using UPS now... they want 800% less forms, cost much less and take about the same time to deliver.
Unfortunately, with DHL this can even end up costing a lot of extra as they might even start to accumulate a storage fee as they hold the package while they make sense of the documents you sent them. :P
That used to be the case here in Germany until recently when they started paying the duty for you and then demand it at pickup along with a "small" markup (up to 1000% when the duty was low) for a service you never asked for.
yeah, but like with t-mobile, I think the US branch might be working better than what we are used from them in europe/germany.
You could literally just outsource your prototyping to me (I'm in Europe, EE with embedded programming skills and good connections to local 8--day turn-around PCBA production) and I'll ship them from Europe to US (using 1 day shipping if needed).
Ok, sorry for spamming, but my point is: there are ways?
The problem is that your important R&D purchases are competing against the lipstick order of the neighbors wife (or his own) or that cute little cat toy.
IDK who's to blame for if R&D then starts having problems, but it might be R&D department itself if they are happy to compete with lipsticks, in terms of shipping.
Move. Like the rest of us had to when all the tech was in the USA.
Any raise in cost will disappear and be absorbed as profit in supply chain shrouds of smoke and mirrors, permanently. Unless it legitimately costs slightly more money or causes any inconvenience to companies and we hear about it on the news.
This is also disrupting the nascent technology industries in the Caribbean and the Latin-American diaspora. For us specifically, it will increase our logistics costs by multiples and lead times by weeks.
I expect this will result in substantial schedule misses and cost overruns.
Edit: if you don't agree with something I've said, please comment and explain why. I really don't see how this is controversial.
There are shops in the USA that can do that work.
Oops. But at least big shareholders made a lot of money, and GDP is up!!
(I don't think most people realize how easy it is for China to f*k with the US for this very reason. Yeah, they'd also be shooting themselves in the foot, but they're a country that might be willing to do that if they had to, because they don't have elections to worry about.)
People demand cheap shit, and riot over expensive stuff. Hell Trump is arguably in power because people couldn't handle prices increasing since 2020 (despite wages increasing too).
> People demand cheap shit and riot over expensive stuff
Sure, agree. But moving manufacturing to China wasn't done under pressure of Americans protesting that prices were high.
I cannot take anyone seriously who thinks people care about "Made in USA" more than $10 sweatshirts and $50 dinnerware sets.
And by the time they wonder where the jobs all went and start griping about it, it's too late.
But it was a deliberate decision to offshore manufacturing that started the process (you can't sell cheaper goods until you start making cheaper goods abroad). Americans didn't switch from Kraft or Whirlpool or whatever to some Chinese brand. US companies offshored production.
And it's a small price to pay for the freedom of Ross Ulbricht and the January 6th patriots.
I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China. It's going to halt all our R&D for at least 6 months while we onboard domestic contractor alternatives --- which will also just generally be shit. Not to mention the American contractors WONT BE ABLE TO SHIP IN THE FUCKING ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS FROM CHINA THEY NEED FOR THE PROTOTYPES.
Every single R&D department in the USA just got fuuuuuuuuucked by this.