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China to Be Laptop Leader
prostoalex writes "IMS Research says that by the end of the year People Republic of China might become world's biggest laptop manufacturer. The plants will be largely owned by Taiwanese manufacturers, though. Taiwan is current #1."
Hasn't china been the "leader" of manufacturing stuff foreverish? By "leader" you would think they were responsible for the R&D and design of the laptops, but from what I've read it just appears they can have more sweatshops than anyone else.
Frequency of stories about Chinese tech stuff certainly picked up recently. What's going on there?
The leadership we're talking about here is production only. I don't see how having more low wage workers to exploit equates to development leadership. I don't mean to use the word "exploit" too negatively though, this will probably be a good thing.
The more low-paid jobs available, the more competition for labour, and as a result, better working conditions and pay.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
Slave labor tends to reduce costs to just about the bare minimum. Maybe we'll start seeing some brand new $500 laptops soon. I kind of feel bad to think that a group of poor Chinese kids will toil for hours assembling my computer for pennies a day. Children get easily distracted, especially when they're worrying about their mother being tortured by the factory manager for falling behind in production.
China to be largest manufacturer of laptops....
Not to troll, but I think that a lot of laptops that will come out of china will suck, just like a lot of the other toys and electronics that come out of China. On the other hand, it probably would drive the price down enough for me to afford one in addition to my desktop. Personally, I won't be getting one of these laptops from China because I am a mac freak and never want to use any OS other than Mac OS X ever again.
I think that quality needs to be emphasized for electronics. Laptops are diing long before their useful life is up. Also, things that don't go obsolete very fast (DVD players, Stereos, VCRs, the like) shou;dn't break in six months. I know this violates short term business models (if it breaks they have to buy a new one and we get another sale). Planned obselescence is a terrible thing.
Help I'm a rock.
I think that we all know that mainland China manufactures a lot of stuff, but what does this prove? That cheap labor attracts business? It comes to me not as any suprise that this was eventually going to happen. A major leap forward would be that China has the most laptop users in the world or possibly that a Chinese computer company has outsold one of western counterparts, but this is really no big suprise.
People are finally realizing China isn't quite as bush league as they thought.
Seriously though, China is a manufacturing superpower. They have lots of high tech neighbors willing to put money into China (and they aren't doing so badly with their R&D either), a huge population, and a large/rapidly expanding production capacity. They really are in an ideal place to manufacture all kinds of electronics.
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Crudely Drawn Games
I dont see to many "Made in China" laptops at the stores here in Canada. The one i am typing this on is made in Japan (Toshiba satellite) and another major laptop brand Dell has all its production facilities in US except maybe the desktop units for the japanese market.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
I doubt Stallman would consider The People's Republic of China a TRUE socialist country. But anyways. Why does it matter that they use it? Are you saying because something can be used in a "bad" way such as you described we shouldn't do it in the first place? And about Microsoft being able to shutdown XP remotely. Would that really matter in a war? Would shutting down ALL their computers damage the millitary that much?
Sock puppets stole my sig.
Why do you think the US is so keen on coercing the world's nations into signing onto the WTO treaty? In the case of china, who has the power? The US, who buys all those goods? Or china, who supplies all those cheap goods the people of the US depends on?
China has a large and well educated population that is increasingly moving toward High Tech items, because other countires (such as Taiwan) have traditionally dominated these markets and have kept pries rather high. Using cheaper (criminally, but that's editorializing) labor they can bring to market a cheaper product (of similar quality). Heck, even software jobs are moving to south east Asia and the Indian subcontinent, in an airing of Talk of the Nation a few weeks ago, they were discussing the high levels of education and low cost of workers for fields from mechanical engineering, to software design and tech support in foreign countries, especially since the incerasing wiredness of the world and these countries in particular makes it easier (and more cost effective) than ever.
I think that in the next few years there will be an even greater outsourcing of these sorts of projects. India and Bangladesh are typically cheaper markets then China to work in, and we can probably look forward to those countries entering into these markets.
Now for my editorial, because I have to have it (you can stop reading if you'd like). with the US job market as tight as it is right now, it is a major ethical dillema to be outsourcing High paying jobs to countires where the worker that would make $60,000 a year here, makes $5,000 over there. It puts the US economy in grave danger of collapsing in on itself as these lucrative jobs are removed and th emarket has to return to a service and agricultural based economy (the latter of which is becoming a smaller employer but larger business by the year). In all hopes this would see the rise in the standards of living for the average person in China, Micronesia, wherever, but it doesn't seem like the transition would be quick as workers there would have to get it in their heads that they deserrve that amount of money. (To sum, it's like an emerging basketball trend, American players (on the whole) have no actual proficiency with teh sport (though they have a great deal of raw physical talent), and eastern European players do. This means an increasing influx of Eastern European players until they become complacent in their position and the Americans learn to play the game (with little things like passing, and team work)).
Ideally, (and I'm being naive) there is a way to protect American jobs while increasing (or ostensibly increasing) the standard of living in foreign countries. If the US government, or the AMerican consumer, would refuse to allow the sale of (or purchase) goods that were manufactured or generated by workers who were not treated equally to their American counterparts. Of course, in teh drive for cheap stuff there are no rules. [end]
Actually you should care. If China stayed a shithouse state then you're more likely to be 'nuked'. Look at how n korea is and how they envy the south. Not very peaceful there is it?
but I put nuked in commas because you wouldn't go attack someone that owes you $100b each year. Nor would you be building the worlds largest dam or the worlds tallest building or the world's longest trans-oceanic Bridge (completed) or the worlds biggest condom just to risk losing them all in a war.
Regarding your comment about 'who gives a shit', when the standard of living in China improves to the level of 1st world nations and the chinese people get smarter from the money their parents spend on their schooling (which they make by working like slaves in factories such as these laptop places about to be built) there will come a time when the people will in force demand for a more democratic govt. Sure these students might be a bit brainwashed but education unavoidably = free thinking and if they don't get what they want they will fight for it. Or maybe the country will change over peacefully. If it happened in the former USSR it could happen again.
The article doesn't mention it, but does anyone know if these laptops will use the dragon CPU?
j
TROLL? FLAMEBAIT?? Are you kidding me??
All the things I said are documented fact.
PROVE that stuff from China is high quality and not total crap. You can't because it is crap.
The only quality products ever to come from China where silk and chinaware a few hundred years ago. Now they just crank out cheap crap to flood Wally World with so they can the Chinese communist military machine running..
A HUGE percentage of the "goods" made in China are made by prison labor, namely political prisoners, I.E. those dissidents that oppose the State.
The communist government is murderous. Ever seen the video of Tiananmen square butchery??
How about Tibet? Or those people that just want to do that exercise thing in the park??
Boy, if you think that China is anything other than a murderous, oppressive country, you live in a bubble.
When you buy crap from China you HELP keep that system running. Every TV you buy made in China or Tiawan puts another AK-47 in the hands of a Chinese soldier that will use that AK-47 against his own people and will gladly use it against Americans if told to do so.
The Chinese are spoiling for war, they support North Korea, they've been caught RED handed stealing nuclear weapons secrets (W88 come to mind eh?), missle secrets, they are forever spying on America.
They even threatened to wipe California off the map with nuclear weapons if we interfered with them when they were reclaiming Tiawan and again if they weren't granted MFN trade status.
And we gave in to those terrorist threats. What's wrong with that picture eh??
You folks better come out of mommies basement and wake up!
Turn off the Sci-fi channel and take the red pill. Or just take the blue pill and be happy..
Your choice. No troll, no flaimbait, just truth..