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Hardware Manufacturing in China's 'Hot Zone'
solferino writes "'Anything you can make for $100, we can make for $40,' Chen says, summing up his commercial philosophy.
An interesting profile in Wired magazine of the computer hardware manufacturing 'hot zone', situated around the pearl river delta in mainland china, just outside Hong Kong.
The factories are mostly financed and operated by Taiwanese business interests. The article looks at life and business in the city mainly from the point-of-view of these 'foreigners'."
Overseas Chinese, especially Taiwanese, are not foreigners. Many of those over 50 were born in Mainland China. They're returning to their native land and regaining some of the money and property that was unjustly stolen from them.
Let's hear it for sweatshops!
May we never see th
$40 eh ?
Lemmesee, at the current minimum wage over there, this means that $39.96 is cost+profits and $.04 is the wage of about thirty 14 year old kids...
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
We want cheap computers, but don't care for politics. Lets use (next to) slave labour in a communist contry!
My biggest problem with semi-conductor companies producing in 3rd world contries is that these factories do no require much manual labour so the money saved isn't that much. Of course land and construction will be cheap.
It is also nice to see the communist government claiming to be more "fair" letting the "evil" market economy enter whenever it is profitable. This makes them even worse, clinging to a lye preventing the people to gain privileges and a better standard while letting the "right" businesses in. I can't help it, but I suspect that bribes and corruption is very wide spread in this kind of areas.
What made the US a super power? (Besides the threat of Nuclear War) The people in the US that were willing to work all sorts of hours. The US became the Hegemony because the US culture has, to varying degrees, penetrated every other culture in the world.
Now China has the most valuable resource: cheaper than hell labor. Now all China needs is to reinvent its culture (again, for the umpteenth time) and, again, the middle kingdom could be the Hegemony.
Well, anything you can make for $40 I can break for free!
Beat that!
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
EricKrout.com
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
But is the quality of the $40 one made "just outside Hong Kong" the same as the $100 made in the USA?
China is extremely hot right now. I know for a fact that many companies are getting serious about sending their manufacturing to China for cost reasons. Also, the Chinese market is growing at a rapid clip. It won't be long before they are sucking up as much oil as we are, and expecting a higher standard of living.
This might interest some people: The New Silk Road - Secrets of Business Success in China Today. As I indicate in my review, I think the book is good, especially for people who want a 30,000 foot view of doing business in China. I also liked Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China (ISBN: 0446673870). This Etiquette book is more ground level, "tactical", and person-to-person. Combined, these two books will give you a good taste for doing business in China.
In any event, I know that going offshore is having an impact. Not just in manufacturing, but in other areas too, such as programming. It is strange to see whitecollar jobs fly away from the U.S. to places like Hungary, India, Russia, and China. Why? Well, when I was younger, I thought these "brain" jobs couldn't be easily replaced by lower cost labor. Well, that's just not true. The internet has had a lot to do with that, of course. I'd be interested to hear what other folks have to say about outsourcing "brain" work.
How to Download YouTube Videos
American Translation: Anything that you can do for 100 dollars we can do for 40 but now its gonna be made out of cardboard, cheap plastic and rubberbands. Maybe a paperclip or two if necessary.
Yes, lets all assume its slave labor.
My father-in-law, now retired, was an electrical engineer in China. He made a decent living, by Chinese standards. How much did he make? About $125 US a month.
THAT is where the savings are coming from. You're paying 20 times as much here.
"It works" only if you are looking at the equation from the point of view of money. As the book "No Logo" explains well, there are similar economic zones in vvarious developing countries around the world where people are exploited to produce things at extra low prices so we in the West can get our fix of technology/fashion.
China has a terrible record on human rights and so is a popular place to set up sweatshops. The fact that they are owned by Taiwanese immigrants makes no difference - an exploiter is an exploiter no matter what their race!
I just wish there were more examples of companies using these services listed in the article so that we knew who to boycott!
A little planning goes a long way...
Sounds like the reasoning behind something mentioned under the Power Supply Review, a couple days back, regarding produce it fast enough and let quantity make up for the high failure rates.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
and in a related note, 97% of all statistics are made up.
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
See picture on the first page of the story.
Is that a mouse in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Man, if I had benefits like that at work, I'd work harder too!
When I was working for a designer lighting manufacturer as a network admin, we were currently in the process of moving our manufacturing process out of Germany over to China, for the simple reason that it was A LOT cheaper. Now, this isn't even electronics, merely simple electrical work w/ designer casings. However, I noted many a time that the German versions were much higher quality than the Chinese varients, though the Chinese ones were often 2x - 4x less expensive, though not 2x worst than the German ones. As far as electronics go, this is not surprising, but quality control is a MAJOR issue here. Things like Abit's exploding/leaking capacitors and such are signs of shoddy parts. There is NO point to buying something for 1/2 the price if you are going to have to RMA it in under a year.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
"any ting you want."
"Anything?"
"Anyting"
I liked the No Logo book. Naomi Klein takes examples of child/slave/appalingly cheap labor for making IBM hard disks (if I remember correctly). She mentions China as one of the top countries for cheap, slave AND child labor.
Let's hear it for China!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Amen brother.
I doubt that China will let freedom of speech reign supreme. Does anyone think these people want to make anything but crap wages their whole lives? Give them a better life, and you'll have the whole system collapse when they want something more for themselves.
Yes, I know the counterargument about this one. Heard it a lot. "Blah blah best wages they ever had blah blah." So here is my response.
Don't you want to make better wages right now? Doesn't everyone? What if they want to unionize? What if they want to speak out against unfair working conditions? What if the corporation is going to have unsanitary and toxic byproducts spilling out all over China...
No wait. We know that one already. Pollute away. Happens everywhere in starting industry. As long as the PRoC gets a little profit, its all good.
I am not saying that it isn't good for the Chinese people that they are getting manufacturing jobs. I am saying that we should excourage them to be as free and open with their work as everyone else. That we should not be satisfied until everyone is livign a standard liek we are, if not better.
Honestly, I really hate the idea that just because a bunch of people live under a jackboot thug regime, it means that they we somehow desrve to be better off and recieve the fruits of exploitation.
If the manufacturing is taking place in China and the money is going to China who is going to be able to buy the product?
For example, we are constantly seeing people being made redundant, unemployment rising throught Europe. I can only assume that the US is also suffering. In the long term if the production of most of our goods ships to China, the wealth of the nations will also be shipped there too.
That leaves us in the "West" impovrished, disenfranchised and unable to purchase any of these goods. Sorry to be gloomy but this is NOT good news.
As I sit here and look at my compter:
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Well, for starters, China is a communist country, which means that business IS properly poltical in their view.
The seizure of assets by China years ago, as well as the present opening up of the market, are both political issues, and there's little you can do to change that fact.
...manufacturing 'hot zone', situated around the pearl river delta...
Reading this gives me creeps, even though I'm not a radical tree-hugger. Seriously, what are the policies of the Chinese government on industrial pollution? Let them all dump as long as cash flows in? Or something more sensible?
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
That's just too damn many people. Apparently, they can make those 40 dollar items by brute force. Hell, they could make diamonds by having everyone pile on a piece of coal.
It can't be slave labor when people do it willingly. Assume some hero liberal had the power to remove these "slave" driven corporations. Do you think those people who have now lost thier jobs would really be better off? If so, why don't they just quit, if it would indeed make them better off? Here's a thought. Maybe, just maybe, those people know what is best for themselves. I know it's hard to imagine for a "westerner" that people in other countries actually have the ability to think and make rational decisions...
A modern day witchhunt.
Anything you can make, We can make cheaper-
/.ers suggest to contribute to the solution? Stop buying consumer goods made in China? Write to congress? To be honest, it seems rather hopeless.
We can make anything cheaper than you!
--
Now seriously. This is really sickening:
No reliable legal system enforces contracts. Theft of intellectual property is routine. Business disputes are often settled by hired thugs; on occasion, those thugs are the local police. But though it can feel like Dodge City, Dongguan works more like 19th-century Manchester, as perhaps the world's most extensive and systematic exploitation of transient labor by mobile capital. And the people who oversee this system -- and profit handsomely from it -- are the officials of the world's largest Communist Party.
While I am not an blind supporter of Amnesty International, I think they are spot-on with regard to China."
We have normalized trade relations with them, coddled them, and deceived ourselves under the banner of "engagement." We should not accept super-cheap components as a result of slave-labor or child-labor. Communism is bad enough, but now we have the worst of both worlds - totalitarian communism and ruthless robber-baron-style capitalism.
Let me be clear - I have nothing against Chinese people, just their government's practices.
What do
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
that many of the West-based posters here talk about inexpensive being bad quality and Asian factories ran as sweatshops. It's in the political environment many of you were raised in.
Almost all your political foes are of opposing principles from which you hold. Wake up call: your ideals (often misquoted as democracy) are not as free as you see it.
</offtopic>
These sweatshops amount to a whole lot of (for example) the electronic things you use. I dare say that the computer you're using right now also contains these cheap components. Without these inexpensive products, the US economy no matter how massively independent you thought it was, won't be the way it is today. Why do you thing that China (which has so many times be flamed as a human-rights offender by the US) is a preferred trade partner? I guess when it comes to making uncle sam's pocket fatter human-rights can fuck off and die.
Now think before you post anything mindless like sweatshops and poor quality goods from China, Taiwan or any other Asian economy... your lovely AMD processors too come from an Asian country, Malaysia.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Business done for a long-term return is done quite differently from a smash and grab, always have a suitcase packed and an escape route planned business. The political climate ensures that those who know the PRC best (and these ROC entrepreneurs qualify) will practice smash and grab business. Westerners who don't understand that are likely to get burned.
The political climate is part of the business climate and relevant, especially in an article that explicitly brings it up.
Right...we just pay the import tarrifs/overhead of the stores we buy from when we purchase the same items here.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
I read the entire article and fail to see how your post has anything to do with it.
Do moderators even read the subject at hand before they mod? Or do they just mod on which one "sounds" cool/hip/post-moderern?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
No, no that's the PLA run factories that are a slavers dream. They use prisoner labor. At least these ROC run factories pay above average wages and start to climb the PRC up the long road to capitalist wealth.
Can't you realize sarcasm when you hear it?
May we never see th
If you stick enough factories into a place, even the PRC eventually runs out of unemployed and then labor competition will drive prices up just like every other place.
The main gripe of these MBA's et al seems to be that their counterparts graduating across the Taiwan Strait in China seem to be lined up for fat salaries (China style) even before (now where do we remember this from?) graduation or (horror) are even dropping out of college just for the money.
"'Anything you can make work for 1 year, we can make work for 4 days,' Chen says, summing up his commercial philosophy.'"
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
"It was a dark and stormy night. My name is Jonny Wong. I'm employed at a company in Dongguan that makes the ~/` key for keyboards."
"We've been having problems with a competitor that makes Black ~/` keys. Ours are white or ivory. They're trying to muscle in on our buisiness, they want to take our 2/3rds of the market."
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
In the mid-80's I worked for a company that sold clone IBM's (who didn't in those days?). The owners had contacts in Taiwan who were saying that if we could ship over a motherboard, or anything else for that matter, they could reverse engineer it and have it produced in a few months.
In those day's multi-layer mobo's were not common and ASIC's were rare so it was not too difficult to do. The reason they could cut their costs was the fact that there was no real innovation just R&D (Rip off and Deploy).
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
There are 225 million chinese unemployed (counting both rural and urban unemployed) in the PRC that would desperately want these jobs. Out of an estimated 800 million strong labor force that works out to about 28% unemployment. The unemployment rate in the US, last I checked, was 5.9% and people are already very nervous about jobs, nobody's hiring, people are taking a lot more abuse from their bosses, etc.
Get real. As long as PRC employment is so high, people are going to be scared to lose what they have. So what kind of companies are going to go to such a country where the politicians are all corrupt, the bureaucracy is mind numbing, and objectively the whole government has no business being stable with multi-year 20%+ unemployment levels and growth petering out? You betcha you're going to see lots of sweat shops. If the world's really lucky we're going avoid seeing the prospect of a chinese civil war complete with nukes tossed around. But we need to be very lucky for that to happen.
Does anyone know of a list of computer hardware that is actually made in the US? What companies acutally still make things here? Or for that fact electronics in general? or heck even more just items in general??
Ah, yes.
You see, a few people protesting sweatshops *do* have a valid point -- if what they're doing is specifically trying to get existing sweatshops to pay out more money.
The thing is that the entire movement was started by and is a tool for the US labor protectionists.
What you're doing right there neatly falls into the propoganda being put out. You're trying to avoid countries with "unfair labor laws" *entirely*, not trying to figure out what companies there pay their workers more. You're simply avoiding non-US products.
And in doing so, you cause far more damage to the "poor, exploited" foreign workers than the Nike-buyers. You see, the reason those workers are working under such extreme conditions is because they *have* to to avoid starving. Companies can get away with said wages because people there are *starving*.
So, you've been swayed by AFL/CIO images of "giving a poor, exploited foreign worker better wages", and are ending up depriving them of jobs and starving them. Wonderful.
Until there's a labor *shortage* instead of surplus in said countries, there will never be wage increases. Not going to happen.
Ironically enough, buying products from companies with production facilities in said countries is likely to help the workers, since it increases demand for local labor. If the levels of demand can produce a labor shortage...then sure enough, wages will rise.
Any other solution, like government-mandated minimum wages, just produces inflation, as the enconomy corrects itself to keep the buying power of those on the bottom the same.
May we never see th
Trade the word Taiwan for the US and "renegade province" for "nation" and think on that for a moment. We are gleefully tearing our manufactureing base apart for cheap labor and the resulting cheap goods. Once the conversion is complete and our nation is 90%+ 'consumer' and 10%- 'producer'.
What does that bode for the US? What does that bode for the Western World in general?
I think that the long term effect for China is that the nation does change into something else. Too much money, influence, and information is feeding into that nation from the "outside world" their wall will fall too. What the long term effect is for the West? I do not know.
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
I liked the No Logo book. Naomi Klein takes examples of child/slave/appalingly cheap labor for making IBM hard disks (if I remember correctly). She mentions China as one of the top countries for cheap, slave AND child labor.
It is a good book. I learned a great deal and she documents all of her sources with an extensive bibliography. While there are many potential upsides to globalization of manufacturing and trade, we in the first world have really failed the people in the third world. We have relaxed the restrictions on capital, but not raised the bar on things like environmental standards and working conditions. Who would have thought that feudalism was a viable alternative in 2002!
It is a shame that the moderator who decided that my post was flamebait hasn't taken the time to read the book.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Who said RCA was well built in 1975? Sony cleaned up the electronics market by 1985 by making stuff that was superior.
Today, much of what Sony does is not superior because they have opted to use Chinese slave labor. Seen a dream cube lately? Twenty years ago they were rock solid with a flourescent tube display that auto dimmed but was bright enough to see in daylight. Today, that same machine has a poorly fitting switch and cheap LEDs for a display. But then again, who esle is making anything? The dream cube sits on a shelf next to an even more repulsive RCA from a similar factory.
Wait did I say "slave labor"? Yes I did. China is a command economy run by a party which will enforce it's line by death. No dissent is allowed because there is no free press. Workers may flock to this place, but that is because they are left with few alternatives. Comfort is realative and people are easier to control when you make things we take for granted special and only for the privaleged. Most people, even the special ones are have little choice about what they do. As in 1984, purge is continual for the special.
This system is only working for a few, and only because they have a free economy to sap. Look at the former USSR, now that you can. They had a highly technicaly educated society, yet most things we take for granted were rare, vehicle ownership, TVs, even radios in a country that would love for everyone to have propaganda everywhere! Most if not all women were forced to work so child rearing was communal, as it always was for peasants in Russia. The command economy works by creating artificial scaricty. Without trade with free economies, most ordinary people lived only to labor in what we would consider poverty. This in a country with more land mass than any other and vast resources. Bigwigs lived well, sent their children to good schools and risked a bullet in the back of the head. Communists are always like this. The only difference betweeen China and the former USSR is that countries of the free economies are dumb enough to risk all their capital in a place that will surely take it all when the money stops flowing in.
The article sums it up nicely as it tells us the sickening life of self abuse in wine slop the lucky live we pay for and then the average story. This is you, and the woman is your would be wife:
In background and motives, these workers differ little from Zhang Ping, the hostess at the nightclub. She graduated from high school in Harbin but flunked the college entrance exams (only about half of test takers pass). For two years she worked for 200 yuan a month in a state-owned wholesale company, but it went bankrupt. Then she tried a stint behind a sales counter, but no one was buying much in a city with 25 percent unemployment. Finally, a girlfriend from down south wrote to say there was good work at the nightclub.
Free room and board for slaves and whores who work overtime everyday, how repulsive. That's what you get without laws, contracts and free speach. Surely our trade with such an economy is dragging us down more than it's lifting them up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As I like to ask my boss:
You can have it
1. Better.
2. Faster (sooner).
3. Cheaper.
Pick any two.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Anything you sell us for $40 we resell for $100 elsewhere
---
Just how are you going to boycot?
I doubt many people will pay $300 for a mobo and
$600 for the processor just so some guys in china they never heard about will make money.
So, for $200 you'd be willling to sell your fellow human beings into serfdom.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As an expat who has lived in Asia for 11 years, roaming factories and companies both low and high tech all over the region, I must say that this little expose` on Dongguan was pretty damn accurate. The article and several posters did, however, miss a few points:
1. The savings these mfg companies realize compared with US or European based is not only labor and tax. Industrial environmental waste processing is next to nill in Southern China. The place makes Taiwan look like a park refuge, and I tell you, Taiwan is no place for a scenic vacation unless you are into touring large polluted industrial zones, most of them abandoned now. For most tech companies, waste processing is a large cost, sometimes MORE than labor in industrialized nations. That is why so many fabs get moved over.
2. Software piracy is an issue, but it is not SAP, Oracle, Sun and our favorite M$ that lose out the most. Most of these Taiwanese companies are using native Taiwanese ERP software. About 50% of it is pirated, and the other 50% is licensed legally from the Taiwan ERP co's with branch offices in China. Either way, Taiwanese ERP software is WAY cheaper than western solutions.
3. MS has taken a "soft stance" on piracy in China. If they took the same stance they did with companies and individuals alike in China as they have done in Taiwan, there would be an exodus from thier beloved desktop. Taiwan has cracked down hard over the past years, but because the general public can afford it, they still shell out for MS solutions. If China cracked down like that tomorrow, it would not fuel massive MS sales, but would fuel a massive move to GNU/linux and other solutions.
4. I have watched foreign buyer after foreign buyer be entertained daily over weeks of factory visits in China. As a marketing and sales department, try to imagine the budget a firm would need to do that with clients in New York, London, or even Nebraska for that matter. You just can't get your clients so happy for so little after a hard day's work anywhere in the world. And, thier wives are not around and yes there are plenty of things for the client to do at night. And, happy clients come back to buy more.
5. A LOT of Taiwanese money in China is the result of one or a combination of the following:
a. Taiwan firm borrows heavily, boss runs off to China with all the money, firm goes bust. Boss starts new factory in China with money he never has to pay back.
b. Taiwan firm gets money from Taiwan investors (or private lenders), runs off to China, gives shareholders minimum or no return (or defaults on private loans)
c. Taiwan firm has uncompetitive business but nice pension fund built up. Taiwan boss transfers pension fund to China, starts new factory. Taiwan employees left with nothing as Taiwan company goes bust.
d. Taiwan firm some how burns down in flames, literally!!!. Fortunately, boss had insurance, and decides that the insurance payout is better invested in China. Oh, and he had two policies so doubled his capital.
Of all four above, I have personally known of a firm in each case that has done it and got away with it. Cheap capital (as in extorted), is just another competitive advantage these guys have.
So, why does China let them get away with it? Because China is the next manufacturing superpower. That's right, in 5 years you will be lucky if you can find 10% of the goods on US shelves made in the USA. Even if they have the tag, those goods are probably assembled in the USA from components and sub assemblies made in China, Mexico, Indonesia, India, or wherever it is cheaper than the US. There are just too many arbitragers out there looking for a buck.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
I'm currently driving a 1986 Honda Accord that has 245 THOUSAND miles on it. The worst problem it has had so far was the alternator needing to be replaced. It runs great still. Heck, the radio doesn't work and the heat/ac is broken. But it drives!
I love Japanese cars.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Here's the way it works. The guy in the article says that what other people can sell for $100, he can sell for $40.
This doesn't mean that the world gets a motherboard for $40 instead of $100. It means they get that motherboard for $99, with the difference of $59 dollars being split betwen the entrepreneur and corrupt local officials. The workers aren't heroically sacrificing to provide the world cheap goods, they are sacrificing to enrich a class of parasites.
The kind of massive labor cost differential could not last long in a place where government officials are responsible to the people, and the workers had a right to independent unions. It is supported by a government that is run like a mafia to exploit the labor of the workers.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
'Anything you can make for $100, we can make for $40'
I can produce $100 bills for $100 each. If I can purchase some from you for $40 each (and I want real US $100 bills, not those cheap counterfits), I will buy all you have.
Hmmm... but I guess you guys don't actually make money, do you?
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Should just be a slashbox that has all of the wired headlines in it, then whenever Wired updates the headline goes there, and all stories about wired articles are automatically rejected.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
As a chinese student studying in US, I do have something to say.
a lley/43 5 0115.htm [siliconvalley.com]
> by Anonymous Coward
> Overseas Chinese, especially Taiwanese, are not foreigners.
> Many of those over 50 were born in Mainland China. They're
> returning to their native land and regaining some of the money
> and property that was unjustly stolen from them.
Usually every time Slashdot has a story anything related to China, communist bashing usually follows. You know this world is full of catch-22s. Nationalist's land taken over by communist. But wfterall, what the United States did build on is their strong military power. Quoted from Black Hawk Down, "When bullets go pass your head, politics go right out of the window." But guns speak for politics. Every countries struggle like this, think about history of Texas and Israel. They fight. Power struggle.
For human right records, China certainly does not have a word to say. Lest not forget Tiananmen Square, but watched out for next 5 to 10 years. Power struggles and in-fights in the regime be taken account over this
>Asia feels heat as sofware piracy rises
>http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconv
>
>Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday software piracy was on the rise worldwide and
>China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia were the "hotspots" in Asia
>where major counterfeiting activities thrived.
Yes, you are absolutely right. Now think about this, if you are a student, your monthly wages is less than $125 USD and you want to do 3D graphics just like you slashdot readers do, will you choose to buy a Maya 4.0 student version for a pirated $4 USD CD or $400 USD student version ?
Globalization hits every corners of the world. China is forced to open its market and they have to change, but standards has yet to follow. You really can't compare the wage of average Chinese wages with a piece of Microsoft Office.
By the way, ask yourself, did you ever you Napster, LimeWire, Gnutella and Hotline grab your favourite MP3's and Warez ? Pretty much the same moral story you know. It spares money (for more beer).
And of course again, that's why Linux is pretty hot. Watch out for the Redflag Linux.
> by aburnsio.com
>About third-world outsourcing brain work: don't do it.
>
>Every company I've heard of doing this, and every programmer I've talked to that's had
>to work with these third-world outsourcing companies, has had absolutely nothing good
>to say about it. There may be exceptions, but in every case I know if it's nothing short of a disaster.
>
>I don't want to sound pompous and say that third world programmers are no good, but usually they are no good.
First, think about should you classify China as a third-world country. Frankly it's kind of hazy to classify it between developed country and developing country.
It really depends on what kind of jobs for outsourcing isn't it ? Humans are hard to manage anyway. My analogy is to think about long distance love. Some do work out some don't. I bet you can't ask them to to a lexical analysis stuff but I'm sure most Chinese CS students have no trouble competing contracts on Visual Basic and MS SQL, and many MCSE, Cisco and Orcale stuff. In case you don't know, many favourite CS books in the States such as "UNIX Network Programming" by W.Richard Stevens have been licensed by academic publishers of Tsinghua, (I got one for $9), so watch your back and work hard on your CS class......
Watch out for Microsoft Research in Beijing. They do a lot of SQL stuff don't they ?
>by Astrorunner
>"any ting you want."
>
>"Anything?"
>
>"Anyting"
I don't find this particularly funny. There're many good Chinese that speaks English well too, those who speaks English AND Chinese well will earn a lot there. I know many Asian American friends see this trend.
And again, many Japaneses don't speak good English, but money speaks, saving speaks. Look at your logitech mouse.
Processor prices are limited by yield (aka. how many good processors come out of the factory) which is entirely limited by technology. Their fabrication technology is not better than ours right now. If anything, it is far far behind. There is no way that they can produce chips cheaper than we can.
Of course they could possibly get some non-proprietary hardware cheaper, and make their workers work for less. However chip errors occur because of microscopic particles in the air and slight jolts and bumps from a mechanical handler. These are not things that foreign manufacturers have a better handle on than we do. The number of working dies(the chip before its packaged) per silicon wafer is the most important factor in chip price.
'Anything you can make for $100, we can make for $40,'
I heard Olin King, former CEO of SCI Systems, Inc., say something to that effect about 25 years ago - and they made it to the Fortune 500 on just that kind of attitude.
Unfortunately, there were no karaoke hostesses in Huntsville, AL., at that time.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
I can do you one better. We have a car that was developed jointly by Chevrolet and Toyota, and assembled in Fremont, CA, US. It is basically an '86 Toyota Corolla with Chevy badging. Ugly little car with a weird beige paint job, but damn, it runs and runs and runs. The original sticker says that it does 25MPG in stop-and-go city driving and 30MPG on the highway. It still maintains that kind of fuel economy today, 16 years later.
Shows you what a little cooperation can do...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I'd say one indicator of exploitation is where people work in very unsafe working conditions, with little chance of improving them, and suffer health problems as a result of working. A second one is child labour.
I accept that the reason people work in these conditions is because this is better than the option (starving). But do you approve of child labour or unsafe working conditions? Don't you think we should be trying to find ways to improve social as well as economic conditions?
I accept that protectionist first world countries are terrified of trade barriers coming down because there won't be any industry left in NZ or USA or UK or other first world countries if companies can outsource their production to developing countries for far less cost. Joe Public will be happier when his new auto and tv cost less.
And, oddly enough, this lack of IP law does have consequences (in this case, leaky capacitors screwing up most motherboards coming from Taiwan in the last 6 months) in a global economy:
Read here and here.
As much as a lot of Slashdot readers might not want to hear this, when information is totally free, things suck. Things also suck when rules put in place to protect information are enforced too rigidly or unevenly. The secret is to find a moderating system that finds the proper balance - something that Lessig has been saying all along...
That is all.
It was a matter of unique geographical location that saved the US and let it keep its toys to make bigger toys. No bullies grew up in our backyard. That is the real secret of American dominance. Perhaps people forget it because they are determined to stick with one idea, rather than be equally proud of the truth. There's nothing shameful about being in place and taking advantage of chance. To pretend that a "can-do" spirit was responsible for everything America has now is a rather biased and reckless opinion of history. You'll find inspirational spirit and exceptional people in every culture on earth- America was just in the right place at the right time.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
There is much more to the equation than cost of labor. Today labor only constitute 15% +- of cost of product. A few month earlier to market will negate any cost advantage that you will find off-shore. Maybe the stagnant PC industry is an exception as the concept of early to market has gone. Read: No innovations.
Help fight continental drift.
--western businessmen hauling their assets to china are short term thinkers and profiters who care not about anything but money. They sell their soul for a few more dollars. This IS going to bite all of them in the butt when china is strong enough and decides that the middle eastern oil fields are their's for the taking. And every time a US company closes shop, lays off and fires workers and moves to china, they also layoff and fire customers. And all of them doing it? The US is headed towards utter bankruptcy soon, IMO. We got strong and grew the world's largest and most successful middle class by being a manufacturing country, and trading within our own 50 state "common market" union. We bout/sold/traded with our neighbors inside the States, this WORKED and worked well for many years, but NO, got to let some CEO's suck down a few zillion more.
/rant
Bottom line it's a heinous security risk being financial enablers of china-just read their own public docs on who they consider their prime enemy, and we are destroying our economy and improving their's as fast as the fatcat CEO's can pull the plug and move to china for a few years short term profit, which will dry up eventually as even at reduced prices with no one working no one will be buying anything. If this move to china crap worked, we WOULDN'T be running a hundred billion plus trade deficit, so there's the dang PROOF it don't work. the only thing china is buying from us is advanced tooling to make more tools and to get stronger, while we layoff people, close factories and become dependent on them. this is NUTS!
And they slap lie about so many things, take unemployment figures. They don't count long term unemployed who have exhausted unemployment insurance benfits but are still unemployed. Try doubling the "official" US dot gov figures for a more realistic number. Cost of living-try re-adding in food and fuel like they REMOVED from the official US dot gov data figures a few years ago to keep the numbers lower than they really are. And how about the corpro/fascist theft of money where the "government" give tax breaks to companies moving to slave/serf nations like china? If that ain't a ripoff or whut. Takingmoney at gunpoint out of Joe USA workers pocket so the company he works for can have their management close shop and move to china. ya some real mastermind economists at work there on that one. short term thinking leading to short term profits and long term DISASTER.
And freeking illegal alien invasion, completely totally irresponsible and out of control, T-totally. Our small county has to build two new schools and the hospital is seriously running in the red to support the masses of ILLEGAL aliens who moved here in just the past few years and get away with breaking the law. A few local big fatcats make money off using these people, everyone else gets their property taxes raised to pay for these profits. Regular folks who only a few years ago could afford a very modest home with one spouse working and the other actually raising their children at home like God intended now have to work two jobs for the same place and have their kids dumped into the lowest common denominator brave new world creche "daycare" where strangers raise your kids. Ya, compete my butt, hard to compete when it's ignored the "recent arrivals" live 12 to a one bedroom apartment, run the same twelve from the same old ratty van with some plate slapped on it and no nuthing else.
The "second worlding" of the US is in full swing, won't be long before there is little left of the middle class. I am old enough to remember any normal blue collar job could afford home ownership, car, and a flock of kids, now that just ain't happening too much more. These globalist goons want a two class society, I call it technofuedalism, the elites, then everyone else. Throw the serfs a few bones now and then and use their mercenary paramilitarypolice to keep the populations in check, EXACTLY like china, which is their model poster boy nation setup. masters/serfs. Gee what a swell model to emulate-NOT!
Here is decent url for anyone interested in being part of the solution rather than the problem when it comes to purchasing products.
http://www.buyamerica.com/home.asp
As to the rest, we have an election coming up, do research see how your local congress critter bozos have been voting on freedom and on USA-first economic issues, and vote accordingly, ignoring those stupid D or R labels. If needs be vote third party or independent, ANYTHING but voting in the same old tired and disastrous loyal to the NWO bozos we got running things now if at all possible.
It's amazing how much you can cut costs when you use slave labor.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I bought my car to go places.
I don't know why you'd rather push your car then ride in it, but that's your choice.
Nope, they just need to change the laws to create a larger prison population, providing a nearly limitless pool of cheap slave labor.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The average age of death for industrial workers in Europe at this time was approximately 40. I assume your posting was a troll. Certainly it was anonymous.
It probably has more to do with the fact that IBM has had a horrible problem with quality problems in their hard drives, turning them from everyone's favorite and most trusted hard drive to the manufacturer that no one will ever buy from again because they had so many failures. If I'm not mistaken, that entire line of bad hard drives was manufactured in the Hungary plant. I guess Hungarians can't be trusted to build high-quality high-precision components, so they're moving someplace where people can.
I think you missed what I said. I meant that people the whole world over need to live better. I don't disagree with your points. Nor am I some kook lefty. If I was a kook lefty, I would assume that everyone around me is not as eduated, blindingly noble, and clued in as I AM. I don't believe that at all.
I beleive we should never be satisfied with other people in terrible poverty. Just like the USA is never satisfied with a country until elections occur. As for the Chinese people... MORE POWER TO THEM. As for the Chinese government... screw them. If that make me a lefty, then you really need to establish a difference between what a lefty and a hardcore, freedom nut righty like me really thinks. Cuz it ain't the same.
Also, food aid is usually a UN situation, the last time I checked. Those derelict-duty model-humpers in the UN can't keep their own countries in check, and then try to pass legislation that is biased against those that can.
Oh, and if your nation has a name that has not changed since the time before the bible, Torah, or the al'Quaran, perhaps you need to be taken off of the "developing countries list." That isn't development, its retardation.
While China may indeed be a source of purported 'cheap' labor, one should really pay the country a visit, and try doing business with these people to see their true colors, and really see if China is the most viable option for long-term stability. I'm an American businessman in the import- export business, so as you might guess, my frequent travels take me to many places around the world, on every continent.
I wanted to share my experience in the "great" country of China, in the very part described by the article.
So, I was in Shenzhen China last December for about a week on business. A bit of background: Shenzhen, like Hong Kong and a few other places, is a "Special Economic Zone" that the Chinese government set up to try and give foreigners the illusion that China really ISN'T a drab, decaying fascist state that's economically languishing behind the rest of the world. Here, rules are relaxed and capitalism is encouraged, not surppressed. Well, let me tell you this, if this is China's best, then I'd hate to see the worst.
Anyways, when I stepped off the train from Hong Kong (which was no paradise itself, as that place has gone down the shitter since the Brits left) I was shocked. The whole place smelled like a combination of vomit and dog shit that had been left out in the sun for a day or so. And it was probably BECAUSE there was vomit and dog shit all over. I almost retched, and I've certainly been in some sketchy places in my travels but NOTHING like this.
People spit everywhere. Trash litters the streets. I found myself looking DOWNWARD much more than looking FORWARD when I walked.
Noise pollution is endemic. It doesn't help that their infernal language consists of abrupt rapid fire tones that is a cacophony for any human ear to bear. How do they speak and listen to that shit without going crazy all day long is beyond me.
Anyways, Chinamen stink -- literally. There is no concept of personal hygiene whatsoever. Meetings with even top officials were hourlong sessions of having to endure hot sweaty bodies and rancid breath eminating from mouths missing a few teeth. Geez, at least use deodorant for crying out loud.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and double-standards from the highest levels of government on over are the norm at the same time China opens up to the world. Foreigners get charged as much as five times for transportation, lodging, food, and everything else.
Traffic is horrible. Rules are non-existent except for at traffic lights: red means to go fast, green means to go REALLY REALLY fast.
The Chinese people themselve are pretty apathetic and everyone just wants to get out of that hell hole, so you see smuggling rings shipping people out hidden in truck beds and ships, all too often with tragic results.
The whole country, in my assessment is a lost case. Even the cheap labor can be found in Southeast Asia or Mexico. Same goes for pirated stuff -- SE Asia and Eastern Europe will keep on churning them out.
Anyways, the one redeeming quality were the girls. I paid 100 yuan (about $12 US) for a great fuck, with a 16 year old who seemed quite new and "unblemished" if you get my drift. Boy, was she tight, made all the right noises, sucked and fucked all night long and let me cum all over her. Much better than even the vaunted Thai whores, and worlds apart from anything in Las Vegas or in Europe. Best bargain I have EVER found in my life!
So yeah, screw the hell hole that's China. It's a lost cause of a country suspsended by a hollow facade of so-called new capitalism that's just show more than anything.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Until there's a labor *shortage* instead of surplus in said countries, there will never be wage increases.
Somehow I doubt there will ever be a shortage of cheap labour in a country with over a billion inhabitants, at least in terms of making goods for countries like the US which have populations of 1/3 of that or less.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
It matters a lot to a country how well my software streamlines production.
Have you heard about the curse of efficiency?
Every inefficiency has some group of people feeding from it. This inefficiency (and their living) is paid by the general populace through the taxes or higher purchase prices.
Making some inefficient process efficient causes these people to lose their source of living. Since we have both democracy (one person - one voice), consumer-driven economy (then more I consume, then better it is for the economy) and more or less advanced social institutions (nobody dies from hunger; society feeds them one way or another), the government is directly interested in preserving these inefficiencies.
However, it can't always stop the progress (if we can call it progress).
As for the US becoming a superpower, WWII played a great role as an enabler. However, it was not the biggest contributing factor. The biggest factor is IMHO competitiveness that is engrained in the American culture. It has always been survival of the fittest until the most recent times when whiny leftists took over the media.
I've had big article on the subject, but it is in Russian. This article shows real goals of globalization, and why/how it is gonna work. It shows why the globalization is absolutely necessary to save the humankind.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
There's also the issue of income relative to expenses. If your rent is $1200/month, a wage of $125/month sounds horrifying. If your rent is $50/month, an income of $125/mo. is no worse than the rent-to-income ratio for labour in the U.S., and in fact is relatively better than what some Americans make. I know when I was a kid in U.S. farm country during the 1960s, *half* of what we made went to pay the rent... and we didn't live in a mansion by any stretch.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I remember when Chinese computer components first came into the local market (Los Angeles) in large quantities. At first they were complete crap, cheaply made and clearly with no concept of quality control, and could be counted to barely scrape by and have a short lifespan.
:)
But 3 or 4 years ago, that began to change, and now Chinese products are pretty much on a par with everyone else quality-wise. I no longer cringe when I see "Made in China". This is a good thing all around -- I can save money buying a product whose quality I'm adequately comfortable with, and the money it brings Chinese workers is surely welcome there as well.
It's been the same for every startup-manufacturing process in every country -- they all take a while to get volume and quality on an even keel. We old folks remember when a Japanese car was a wobbly tincan with wheels. About the time Japanese quality went up, Korea came on the scene as the next big cheap manufacturing base, and at first everything from Korea sucked too. And if you go far enough back, you'll find 19th century Europeans' complaints about those manufacturing upstarts in America, flooding the world market with cheap crap.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
There are two problems.
_ 43 /b3805001.htm
1) You don't have the need for a 1000 more educated employees in France; you can't afford to pay them more, and you can't just educate 1000 uneducated workers that lost their jobs.
They won't care much about somewhat* cheaper prices in stores if they don't have any income. And they will need to be fed by the society through the taxation of ones who still have jobs.
2) Look at Taiwan and Japan; as soon as manufacturing took off there, it became inefficient just to use foreign designs and have foreign managers. Modern production requires a lot of skilled professionals, so they invest money in local universities and schools.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02
In a short time they take over design, then they take over research. Who cares than that a company is partially owned by some American investors?
Majority of the American population are not these investors.
*Somewhat cheaper because the production and delivery cost is just a part of the retail price. Some goods have pretty high retail margin.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Cheaper labor is not just lower wages.
o ct 2002/tc20021023_1339.htm
2 00 2/nf20021023_1209.htm
It is also much less spent on benefits (healthcare), and labor funds, and labor-related litigation. Lawyers made EVERYTHING US EXTREMELY expensive.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Hi willis,
I know that pricing apps have to be updated very often (as new derivitavie pricing models on new products are developed). In practice, whould they just be quick hacks written in VBA (probably made by the trader or local quant) that just work, or are they "component"ized and put into the boring but stable framework you describe?
I know its a bit off topic, but I'm interested in this area!
thanks for your comment - i found it interesting and informative
i was the submitter of this story, and i was hoping for more comments like yours on the taiwan-china aspect which is discussed in the article. i've spent some time in taiwan (though none in china) and i find this relationship very interesting. unfortunately any mention of china seems to provoke some sort of blind response in a large number of americans and most of the comments prior to yours were disappointing 'china is an evil regime that exploits it's own ppl and is getting bigger all the time and we are scared' type diatribes that add nothing of value to the discussion
Anyways, remember when Honda and Nissan were crap in the 70's? Then NAFTA was signed and more than a 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the Southeast of America went south with the now famous sucking sound
Japanese cars weren't crap at all in the 70's!!!
It was just the American perception of Jap cars. My parents bought a Datsun in 72 and it ran just fine until they sold it in '87.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Here is the main article: http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/00 0763.html
0 0420.html0 1039-2.html where I talk about liberals and a bit about human's development.
;).
It has some links, but ones you must read are two Dolnick's articles.
Also of interest might be http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/0
where I talk about China and Iraq, and http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/0
If you have a feedback, publish it there or e-mail me to the address in the profile at cofe.ru (my nickname is mu-mu
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
No, no, don't get me wrong. I know that the conditions are comparatively much worse in the PRC under pretty much any circumstances. Any system with 225M unemployed (rural + urban) is going to have very poor working conditions for those fortunate to have a job.
The point I was making was that the PLA prisoner staffed factories do have a significant difference to the sweatshops run by ROC entrepreneurs. The sweatshop employees are worried about losing their jobs and falling back into the misery of unemployment, the prisoners in the PLA run system are worried more about beatings and executions than not being able to stay longer. I hope you would agree that it is a significant difference.
Nope, you have to have a significant part of your population outside of prison and the regime will become less stable the higher their wages go up. Reducing the supply of non-prisoner labor will drive their wages higher. Arbitrary arrest in a poor country constantly on the edge of starvation is not as serious as in a country with a decent wage rate. Once the income rises to a certain point, people won't stand for it anymore and they'll have the resources to work a change.
The real question is where are the relevant income levels and how will the crack up proceed.
They would flood the US like a tsunami tidal wave, just like they flood into HongKong now. And they wouldn't care about green cards either (maybe an armada of illegal ships like in Neal Stephensons Snow Crash).
So aren't you glad that China is communist after all? And don't you hope it stays that way a little longer?
Strange if you look at it this way, isn't it?
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
Actually, no I'm not glad they're communist. I have a fundamental faith that human ingenuity and hard work when encouraged by a governing system under the rule of law and aimed at human freedom makes a society that's alive, vibrant, and that creates more than it destroys.
Communism is a net black hole, a sink of corruption, human misery, and wasted potential. The few great things it achieves are far outweighed by the price paid, a price which the system spends an inordinate amount of time and effort hiding.
In reality if the criminal ancients who run the PRC all disappeared tomorrow, some would leave but a large number would stay, a situation similar to what really happened to most of E. Europe when the Berlin wall came down. You might get a million or two wave heading out but a lot of those people would head towards places with traditional, longstanding chinese communities because that's where uncle or cousin is already established with a job waiting for them.
Yes, it would be a pain in our ass for 5-10 years but frankly the PRC has been a pain in our ass for 40 years so I'd prefer the solution that led to a net increase in human happiness *and* eventually will end the problem.
I guess I was rather trying to ask hwo much people are willing to give up themselves as a price to pay for communism in another country to end. Or for the situation of others to improve.
You seem to express the hope that for you there would be not much change, because they would not come to your country.
To use your example, after the fall of the iron curtain a lot of german descendant Russians from Russia in fact came to Germany, because Germany has this strange law that grants them the right to do so and get German citizenship if they have german ancestors.
The net result is that some communities in Germany now have a population of up to 30% of these Russian Germans most of whom only speak russian and are unemployed. As you can imagine this is not appreciated by all and leads to conflicts.
So would you be willing to live in a community with 30% Chinese immigrants if that would mean no more communism in China?
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
I wasn't trying to say they wouldn't also come to the US, but that they wouldn't only come to the US. Some would be absorbed by traditional chinese expat communities around the world, others would try their luck in Canada, Australia, or South Africa, still others would come here. The impulse would be to make money with large numbers selecting the US but not all of them doing so. The effects of their arrival would be variable but let's assume the worst and that most of them would be illegals. Agricultural workers would suffer as mexican illegals were partially displaced by chinese ones, construction would have the same issue, there would be a gambling boom (and yes, this is from firsthand observation) and the local police would have to track a new set of ethnic crime families. In other words, nothing that we haven't seen before in the US.
The difference between the US and Germany is that in the US we make room for poor, hardworking people with just the clothes on their back to come in and integrate into the country. It's structurally set up that way which is a large reason why we don't have fool proof internal ID papers, entire industry sectors subsist on illegal workers, and many of our government segments won't admit to other sections of our government where the illegal aliens are even though they know perfectly well.
Would I trade a decade of inconvenience for the liberation of a quarter of mankind from repression? You bet, in a heartbeat just as I don't regret the liberation of Russia though we now have to deal with the Russian mafiya when we really didn't have to worry about it before.