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December 11, 2005 2:30 AM PST
China overtakes U.S. as supplier of IT goods
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International Herald Tribune
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environmental laws, political correctness (form over substance)
then they would be as crippled as we are to respond to global
challenges. The US will continue to get weaker but that is exactly
what many that have established this climate want to see happen.
Please.
As the Chinese continue to expand their economy, they will be ever increasingly stepping on toes. The economies of the inflexable socialist wellfare states in the EU will really show the strain. Helloooo, across the big water...Like that 35 hour workweek? How about that 5 week vacation? Likely to soon be a dim memory. Free medical care? Long lines, a band-aid and out the door with a kick in the shorts. The best part is, the Chinese success will give the post-colonials someone else to kvetch about for a change. Oh no, I almost forgot. They even have more history, too!
The Sleeping Giant is not only awake, but flexing his muscles!
I do not look forward to a totalitarianistic government rule.
Our politicians and industry leaders have made a deal with the devil.
In our effort to hold back the communist surge in the 60s and 70s we had the Vietnam war. Now we are in bed with the Red Chinese. It is sad to say that almost 60,000 people gave their lives in vain.
The age of reckoning is coming and I don't think you are going to like what it has in store for you regarding personal freedoms and dignity.
35 work weeks and 5 weeks vacations and free medical care are good things. Since when did taking care of people become less important then corporate profits?
Sad country we have become.
It looks easy form outside but businesses in China have to face difficulties unamigined in US: power and wate supply problems, red tape, bureaucracy, corrupt offcials, ruthless police and law enforcement who can get anyone into troube if you even disagree with them, political and ethnic persecution ....., the list goes on.
So given the circumstances China's entrepreneurs are doing exceptionally well. China is an economic power despite the 'government' and not because of it.
Problems with utilities? They just exploit their labor even to a higher degree at those times, no doubt. Sewage backing up? Dump the effluent into the nearest body of water and get on with it. Safety? Zone that fireworks factory next to the school, the kids can work there after a day hitting the books, what's the worst that can happen?
The government there might be glacial in their response to change, but I guarantee there are those in the Chinese gov. that are greedy and power hungry. The ruthless way their labor are treated shows in the substandard products we often see, including my new Motorola cell phone.
Many of the common people there are little more than slaves. Ironic, when you condsider the dogma of the communists. That ruthlessness and the size of their labor pool is their strength. It's also their weakness.
welcomed in the home of mass production...
welcomed in the home of mass consumption...
China invaded Tibet, threatens Taiwan. Well who invaded the most countries in this world, fought the most wars, largest military budget, have the most military bases outside of their own country, set up secret prisons all over the world, said" international dun apply to us"?
Everything comes from China, US owes few hundred billions dollars in debt. US is the country that receives the most foreign direct investment from the world, US has a net investment from the world not the other way round. US owe people money bcos they consume more than they produce, no one can lend u money if u guys do not wish to borrow.
Come on,please do not keep looking for imaginary enemies to fight.
China invaded Tibet, threatens Taiwan. Well who invaded the most countries in this world, fought the most wars, largest military budget, have the most military bases outside of their own country, set up secret prisons all over the world, said" international dun apply to us"?
Everything comes from China, US owes few hundred billions dollars in debt. US is the country that receives the most foreign direct investment from the world, US has a net investment from the world not the other way round. US owe people money bcos they consume more than they produce, no one can lend u money if u guys do not wish to borrow.
Come on,please do not keep looking for imaginary enemies to fight.
It is the country that illegally invades other countries on a whim(lies). Tries to tell other countries what they can and can't do. Backs out of international treaties. Has done nuclear testing on its own people. Is currently trying to remove rights that millions have fought and died for. I could go on forever.
Who is the most power-hungry country in the world? Not China.
The USA is the biggest threat and rogue nation in the world.
Your are stupid to think that China would start to cause trouble militarily, well they might with Taiwan. The more economic power one weilds, the more careful they tread. Money is power, and people with power get fearful of losing it. Starting crap around the world will make China lose its money, and therefore, power. Why do you think the US is getting more and more totalitarian at home and agressive overseas? Because we are in decline economically.
more oriented toward education than the average American (I am
American, wife is Chinese.) I have two words for the people who
think that the Chinese will not overtake the US in technology and
economy.
Intelligent Design!!!!
It is a a debate in the US and THAT SAYS IT ALL!
printing presses, water wheel's, gunpowder, silk, pasta, etc, etc ,
etc?
As a species we're consuming more natural resources than the ecosystem can replenish. That's a bad thing. So, in 50 years when there's no more energy to power your TV's and no more fuel to power your cars, your kids can all be happy in the knowledge that, when the chips are down, you argued about China...
Stunning people, stunning. Get some perspective.
There are only 3 ORIGINS for the sources of energy on this planet. The Sun, nuclear, and geothermal. That's it. Think about it. Naaaaaaaaaaaa! Don't click that mouse on reply yet.
The universe we live in is still energy rich. Our solar system is NOT going downhill entropically.
Hydrocarbons running out? Good, the're an ecological and political nightmare. Hopefully we'll keep enough for lubrication, naaa...let's just go 100 % synthetic.
After the last big, fat Griswold's Leviathan model SUV runs out of gas, and we complete the changeover to an energy source portfolieo that is friendlier to everyone, one of the big challenges for the world will be FOOD. The way the Chinese are screwing their enviroment, and each other, they are going to be hungry. India too.
So, if all else fails, we can get rich going agrarian. Hydroponics, of course.;-)
How much will a hungry man pay for a burger? Depends on how hungry he is.
have something to do with it?
And then I thought to myself, what does this incredible manufacturing powerhouse known as China actually produce. Little woven baskets, and a few TVs, maybe DVD players, IPODs, cheap PCs and stuff. The same kind of stuff Japan used to produce when we convinced that it was only a matter of time before THEY took over the world. What really happened to Japan? They became US!
Pretty soon they too began having China, or somebody elsebuild all those little widgets everyone WANTS, but no one really NEEDS.
What did they keep? The things everyone absolutely must have, cars, timber, paper, steel, food. They kept the same kind of things we kept in the 2nd renaissance of manufacturingthe things people will buy no matter whatno matter how bad the economy getsthe things people MUST HAVE to survive.
There is this constant voice in this country that keeps repeating how all of our manufacturing is gone, and how we've just magically morphed into this exclusively services-based economy. It all sounds so neatyet it's mostly complete ********. Nearly all GM, Ford, and Chrysler products are made here. My Honda was made in Ohio. My buddy's Camry was made in Kentucky. The VW products, like the Jetta , are built on the east coast. Precisely what segment of US manufacturing has actually left our shores? Big steel maybe?
Bad news, China wants to become US too. They would rather own Taiwan and have them build all those cool electronic widgets, while they concentrate on bigger and better things. If the Chinese ever build a consumer product as complex as a car, do it in China, and do it wellwe are truly screwed. Good newsmy Chinese electric scooter lasted about a month. Technically, there is no reason they can'tthey have the bomb for crying out loud. For some reason they have chosen to weave baskets and DVD players and sell them to a mostly ambivalent US consumer. So, if my Philips player was made in China, and my shoes in Korea why are the guys over at Nike so rich they can pay Tiger Woods (one guy) $30M a year just to wear their shoes and hit their golf balls?
Is it because all those Asians are exploiting us?
Most academics in my field are now raising the question why the rise of China has been perceived as a threat to US global power at all. For years the US sold the lie that China is a threat to our way of life like the USSR was, yet we have seen more world prospesity with the rise of the Chinese economy, that ever before in the history of mankind. The global comodity market is driven by China's growth. China is already the worlds 3rd largest economy and is set to overhaul the US by 2027 to 2030 (based on current projections that take into account an anticipated global resession round about 2011).
Oh, in case you have been feeding off the US propaganda, The biggest US investor (bonds and stock market) is the Chinese government. China has been financing the US deficit for years.
No. Country GDP $US billions
1 USA 10,208
2 Japan 4,149
3 Germany 1,847
4 United Kingdom 1,424
5 France 1,307
6 China (exc.HK) 1,159
7 Italy 1,089
8 Canada 700
9 Mexico 618
10 Spain 582
First, very few Chinese are personally benefitting from the economic "miracle" the boys in charge there are trumpeting. Only a hundred million or so are actually manufacturing products that bring in any substantial foreign money, and it is only a fraction of that number that actually can afford any of the products they're building. The vast majority of the remaining billion or so are living a hand-to-mouth existence. No one outside Beijing really knows how many mainland Chinese citizens there are - estimates range from 1.2 to 1.6 billion - I suspect that even the Party bosses may not even know, given the lack of open information sharing, inside or outside the government. Those people all have mouths that they expect to be fed into the indefinite future, as three-plus generations of communism have brainwashed them into believing that the government will provide everything they need (or, at least nod your head in agreement in public, even if you know better - such a pleasant place and way to live, don't you think?). The Party has no idea how it's going to be able to feed all those people, much less the eventual multiple billions that are still coming, even with a fraction of a percent population growth rate over the next 30 - 50 years.
They've already found all of the people who are going to be able to work in the factories already built, much less any more to be built. It has to do with education levels, especially for making things like electronics hardware - ask Intel how they have to help get effective electronics manufacturing curricula established in tech schools and community colleges in the area where they build their chip fabrication factories (fabs). This is because they now require that everyone working in a fab have at least the equivalent of an associates degree in EMT so that the workers don't make mistakes that could cause the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in production (when you have to shut down a fab, you're potentially throwing away products that each take upwards of three months to make it all the way through the production process - there are millions of chips all in some phase of production at any one time). This is why production yield is the sine qua non in that business - if you're not pushing millions of something out through the loading docks, you're out of business.
There is already a shortage of skilled factory workers in mainland China for the middle-tier products, to the point where hiring managers, who used to have thousands of candidates to choose from (and who made most of their income from bribes, BTW - when's the last time you had to pay off your HR weenie in cold, hard cash?). Even at the low end, there is trouble in paradise - rural workers are paid so little, working so long, forced to live where no one else will (usually, 50+ year old abandoned government-owned factory and slum buildings), and get virtually no medical care or other benefits, that they are just giving up and going home, because at least there they are with family and friends and can try to feed themselves with what they can grow. There have already been riots involving hundreds of thousands of people that rarely make headlines in Western news, and their government's answer looks very similar to what happened in Tianamen Square, but without the world-wide publicity, since public international Internet access outside the government is about equivalent to a few hundred MB/sec - i.e., essentially non-existent. The same is true for satellite communications, fiber optics, and microwave relay. So, the labor pool of educated workers is already what it's going to be for another decade or more, until and unless the next generation can be trained, and you can't build effective schools and educated students overnight.
Another looming problem for the Party bosses that may overshadow everything else is that there are 40% more men than women of reproductive age now in mainland China, due to the one-child laws of the past few decades (now, you can have more than one if you can prove you have the resources to raise them to adulthood - translation: can afford to bribe the right officials), and the widespread availability of sonogram machines, which has allowed the selective abortion of baby girls. That means that there are a bunch of ***** guys looking for girlfriends, and eventually, wives and mothers, but the cupboard is already bare. The few times this has happened in human history, the outcome was generally massive civil unrest, and eventually, the fall of an entire civilization. One way to cure this problem was to start a major war with one or more neighbors, and let God sort 'em out. Anyone who thinks that South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, etc. This is also becoming a major problem in India and Africa (can you spell Rwanda, Ethiopia, etc.?), as boys are considered to be good luck, while girls mean things like doweries when they get married, risk of pregnancy and more mouths to feed, and being able to make much less money, if any, so you can live comfortably when you're too old to care for yourself. Ask the average mainland Chinese worker what his retirement fund is worth and you'll get a blank stare, since they're now dying of things like emphysema in their 40s in the extremely polluted industrial cities. I suppose that's one way we could solve our Social Security deficit problem.
Speaking of pollution and health problems, check out live video of any large Chinese city on the WWW, especially in the industrial Eastern and Southern cities. There are 20 cities the size of the top five U.S. cities in population, and their population growth is going to require building the equivalent of 100 more cities of these sizes over the next 50 years, assuming the growth rate doesn't increase at all over that period. With even just 100 million people doing higher-end manufacturing, they are all making enough money to have multiple children, but what happens if their jobs go away well before they are able to retire? People in China are not only living and working in conditions that make the cities in the Northeast U.S. in the 1850s - 1960s look like pristine environmental wonderlands, but they've picked up all the worst of our personal habits, like smoking (and they were already drinking themselves into oblivion, as about the only thing poor people can do to drown their sorrows is make rot-gut in whatever container happens to be handy). As a result, the deaths alone from pollution-caused cardio-pulmonary diseases like emphysema, and lost productivity and health costs treating things like severe asthma are tens to hundreds of times worse than in developed nations. It's estimated that fully 40 percent of the current labor force will be dead before they're 55 years old (the average life expectancy in Russia is now a horrifying 57, and dropping every year, due to a variety of deadly diseases that are the result of an inadequate health infrastructure, rampant chronic pollution, and the corruption and lack of a free press that makes these conditions possible in the first place. This doesn't even take into account the official denial of an AIDS problem, and the increasing likelihood of an influenza pandemic evolving out of a readily human-transmittable version of the bird flu. Remember how fast SARS spread? It only killed one in 20 infectees, overall. A full-on influenza pandemic would kill at least a third of the population, and possibly over 90 percent, if adequate health care isn't available. People in Chinese cities live a lot closer together and in much larger numbers than when the last large-scale pandemic scoured the planet in 1919, and long-distance travel happens much more readily among a much larger portion of the population, even in China.
If you remember the price of gasoline and other energy commodities spiking the past year or so, just wait until the Chinese economy starts that giant suckin' sound as even those 100 million newly-minted workers/consumers have enough to finally buy cars, heat and air condition their homes, get refrigerators able to hold more than a day's worth of food (it's very common everywhere in the world outside the U.S. to only have room for a day or so's worth of food), and otherwise start living the life of Riley while he was out of town. Ask the countries bordering the South China Sea (which is estimated to be the next Saudi Arabia in terms of oil reserves, second only to the Caspian Sea in estimated production value) about their big neighbor to the Northwest and what they're doing with their Navy and a small cadre of troops on the reefs and rocks there that were under the control of other countries close to forever before (some of which were colonial powers, but never Chinese). They are going to make a bad problem much worse, and remember the problems of pollution mentioned above? Well, they don't do anything about vehicle pollution, either. Oh, BTW, if you think their pollution problem is only theirs, you might want to note that the pollution from their factories and cities has started showing up as adverse effects on trees in the Pacific Northwest, and crops on farms in the Midwestern U.S. If you think they're going to squelch their short-term growth in order to reduce pollution, you need to go back and look at what control a totalitarian state really has. Besides, the people buying cars won't care about pollution until they start dying of it, and by then, it will be far too late.
Another problem is what to do with all those rural peasants who don't (and will likely never) have the education needed to become part of the industrial work force, but still insist on being housed and fed (since the State has been telling them that's why communism is so great for so long). Part of the answer was to embark on huge public works projects like the Three Gorges dam, which will provide the equivalent of 12 nuclear power plants' worth of electrical power, but at the cost of having to move at least three million peasants from land their ancestors have lived on for millenia, into what are essentially high-rise apartments, that are completely culturally foreign to the peasants. There already have been riots over this, and there will be long-term social strife as future projects like this attempt to relocate large groups who already hate the Party bosses in Beijing for what's already happening.
As was mentioned, the Chinese do hold hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. debt, but the problem they have is how to foreclose on it in any large-scale way should the U.S. default. Due to a nearly complete lack of amphibious ships, and the combatant ships and aircraft that need to protect them, the Red Army can't even cross the ~75 mile width of the Formosa Strait to invade and take control of Taiwan, so how are they going to take possession of anything they hold a note on in the U.S.? Sure, they can make a nuisance of themselves for a while and make it hard for the U.S. to go into any more debt, but what do you think is going to happen to all the jobs in those shiny new (well, except for the pollution covering and corroding them) factories we were so nice to build for them? You can be sure that the Party bosses are losing sleep at night at the thought of losing their biggest market, not to mention the source of all of that technology that has created all of those jobs, and allowed them to ride around in Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and Ferraris (Beijing and Shanghai now have the fastest-growing luxury car dealerships in the world, but you can be sure it isn't the factory workers buying those cars).
China is also wasting vast amounts of money on prestige projects that will have virtually no payback, such as their manned space program (made possible with U.S. technology, of course, when one of the U.S. spacecraft manufacturers illegally transferred upper-stage booster techniques to the Chinese, to make possible launching U.S. commercial satellites more cheaply).
A lot has been made of Chinese innovations such as paper and gunpowder, but virtually all of them either existed elsewhere around the same time and were just being used differently, or there was a bi-directional transfer of knowledge when they became known about by the counterparts. A lot of this had to do with how the discoveries were applied - the Chinese used gunpowder for ornamental purposes such as fireworks, while the Europeans developed such chemistry into much more practical applications for civilian, as well as military, purposes. The development of dynamite, TNT, and eventually, nuclear power, would probably never have happened in China, because what were they going to blow up - rice paddies and the sands of the deserts of the Western provinces? While the Chinese have operated ships along coastlines for millenia, they still don't have a blue-water Navy, and it never occurred to them to develop clocks that could be used to cross oceans, much less study and understand the true nature of astronomy, which made world-wide navigation feasible (vs. astrology, which many cultures have wasted time on), not to mention breaking the code on Newtonian physics (along with the differential and integral calculus that had to be invented to make this possible). This isn't to say that Chinese people aren't capable of such major advances, as those in Silicon Valley and other centers of technology development have amply demonstrated, but it isn't going to happen in a totalitarian state where you aren't allowed to freely express your opinions, on top of an Asian culture where publicly criticizing and disagreeing with elders (especially Party bosses) is not only not encouraged, but can get you landed in prison, or worse. It will be interesting to see how long the Party can try to control the Internet in China, especially with all those nouveau riche high-tech workers able to afford laptop computers, cell phones, and broadband access. Worst of all for the bosses, they want their MTV, too.
So, the huge dilemma is that China's industrial production is growing faster than its labor pool, food production, health infrastructure, and energy resources and distribution can possibly sustain. They have some severe social challenges facing them in terms of the gender gap, educated labor gap, health care gap, energy gap, and all of the other problems that are mounting, all at the same time, and across the entire country and population. The only good news for the rest of the world is that, precisely because of their historic regional isolation, problems in China will only translate into a rise in manufactured product prices back to a more sustainable level world-wide and corresponding stabilization of employment and trade. Besides, who is China going to sell its cheap products to if everyone else who used to buy their things is unemployed or dead? The Baby Boomers in the developed countries will start to retire in large numbers around 2010, and so the demand for what China is making now will increasingly drop off, until the peak passes around 2020, or so (assuming being laid off in their 50s doesn't make buying any more Chinese products, much less retirement, impossible, first). The population in Japan is going to drop by half over the next 30 ~ 40 years because of the delay in young women today getting married and bearing children until their early 30s (if ever). While the customer base in China may be increasing over the long term, that 100 million is nothing compared with the billion, or so, people who are their customers this week, and the former won't be able to replace the latter.
As the Chinse curse/bid-farewell says, "May you live in interesting times."
In any case, All the Best,
Joe Blow
Remove the biased lenses and see the world.