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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."
What's going on is that the Chinese are 123 billion people, and the state controls everything. So:
1. Government produces Laptops
2. Government prevent any other laptop from being sold
3. They are #1.
Ain't that easy?
In the other news, Taiwanese that are #1 on laptops may become number 1.
Wow.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I'm more concerned about the missle manufacturers producing parts over there. The DOD seems to have lost their fortitude when it comes to executing people for treason. Perhaps that will change before they nuke us for interfering with Taiwan.
I think laptops fall into the category of toilet paper and rice balls. Who gives a shit. Nobody's gonna die cause your crappy Dell can't run WinblowZ 2010.
More competition for very low paying jobs puts the people in general at a disadvantage. Who will care that you are sick and can't work if 2 million other people can fill your place and are EAGER to do so?
Sock puppets stole my sig.
This is what people used to say about Taiwan, and before Taiwan, Japan.
Now, Taiwan is responsible for producing a number of Apple's computers. They also supply memory to computer manufacturers all over the world.
Japan started out life by creating second-rate consumer goods like watches and cameras. While their watches haven't improved that much (j/k), Nikon et al produce some of the best cameras you can buy. Not that it was always like that. And what about Honda/Toyota, etc? When they first came out, those were the cars you bought when you'd just been declared bankrupt. Now, they're some of the most reliable cars you can buy; Japan pushed the just-in-time production model and numerous other innovations, and their automotive industry is one of the most vibrant in the world.
And so it will be with China. So while now you might say how crap they are, there's a US $100bn per year trade deficit between the US and China in China's favour (I think that figure is correct), and all that money will continue to go towards making China the new Japan.
-- james
>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.
The problem with business man in general is that they drift where the money is, and care less about the impact to their own country (if they even consider Taiwan to be a country in the first place, regardless if they were born there).
The impact to the shift of labtop industry from Taiwan to China (by Taiwanese company) are two folds.
First, China gains a competitive edge to the industry, and to the overall economy of China and can later be used to bargain against Taiwan. (Heck, China already is using the new found money from its booming economy to buy 3rd world nations' support against Taiwan)
Second, Taiwan loses leadership in the industry, the economy suffers, unemplyeement rate increases due to the moving of manufacturing plants to China.
Most Taiwanese people still fail to realize that China is still a hostile nation towards Taiwan. And China still threaten to invade or bomb Taiwan if Taiwan refused to reunite with China.
God.. I mean... can you imagine American business man supporting Iraq so that Iraq has more money to build missles to aim at US ??
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
China has set a goal to be a world leader in semiconductor manufacture and a competitive force in software development in the next few years. I'm sure there will be more news to come.
Language is a major roadblock for Chinese IT. Either you have to learn english or use a cumbersome encoding system to work in Mandarin. This will work as a slowing factor in software development and motivate research into new data entry methods.
"Wages will go up, and quality of goods will go up - and with it, the prices of the goods. A hole will open for another poor country to start producing the "cheap junk"."
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Once the companies leave then a bust cycle will begin. There will be a prolonged period of unemployment and depression/recession. Eventually the standard of living will be pretty much where it was before. Maybe once the cambodians (or wherever the jobs went) get uppidy and demand more money the jobs might come back but more likely they will migrate to africa or someplace even more destitute.
Eventually some country will imprison a sizable minority of it's people and offer their labor for cheap to companies. This form of legalized slavery will start another chain reaction and before long a sizable chunk of the humans on this planet will be imprisoned and enslaved. People will be jailed for having one to two marijuana seeds for ten years and in prison they will work for AT&T making telemarketing calls.
Oh wait a minute that's already happening right here in the USA.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispa
http://www.prisontalk.c
http://kcd.com/goa/issues/2000/q1/Jail.h
I am sure these kinds of prison labor programs will be expanded hugely in the US and overseas. Imagine a couple of million slaves in china, US or africa manufacturing toys or sneakers for next to nothing. Of course the US prisons will have to degrade to the level of chinese or african prisons to compete.
War is necrophilia.
From a european perspective, this isn't news. we've always had respect for the chinese and their economic might.
You americans have a fair amount of
unreconstructed Colonel Blimp in you.
cheers.
The Taiwanese constitution itself insists that Tibet is part of China
Yes, and the Taiwanese constitution also insist that Taiwan is a part of China, The Republic of China that is (which is what Taiwan's official name is).
...jobs, jobs, and more jobs. I'm leaving South Korea to work in China soon, and I couldn't be happier.
Tech is just one part, but business is booming, and now is the time to get in.
"Republic of China" does NOT mean Taiwan is a part of China! It is merely stating the fact that the true Chinese government is actually in Taiwan. (say what you posted to any Taiwanese, I dare you)
It seems to me like the Taiwanese have moved their production to China where labour is cheaper. Similar to how companies that moved their call centres and programming teams to India are now looking for even cheaper places.
What bugs me is that I'm an unemployed programmer, and I can't compete with people who consider 4000/year a good wage. Plus, anyone who employs me needs to pay tax, social security and contribute to my pension.
Where will it end? Is someone gonna code for food?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Apparently you know very little about Mandarin, or it's input. For Japanese input, there is a big speed penalty. But Chinese input is faster.
Most people in Taiwan use either bpmf input or canjie. Most people in mainland China use either pinyin or canjie. Bpmf and pinyin are phonetic input methods which are approximately the same speed as English. Canjie input is based upon the structure of a character instead, and is MUCH faster than English input. I can type over 200 words per minute with canjie, and many professional typists can type at over 300.
There is no "slowing factor" in typing Mandarin. In fact, I would argue that by lacking a meaning based orthographic system, that English is a "slowing factor".
China will own IT.
I'm a gnu world man.
Another person that doesn't understand China.
Nepotism and lack of transparency are not as big of problems as you think they are. If you are a Western company doing business in China, you will most likely find the brother-in-law of the Politiburo, put him on your board of directors, and pay him enough so that he doesn't mess things up for you. It doesn't cost that much more than a good lawyer would, and if brother in law of Politburo one demands too much, you can always drop him and go to nephew of Politburo two. (I'm oversimplifying. In most cases, you probably don't want a nephew of a Politburo member. The nephew of the county administrator would be more useful, but you get the idea.)
China is not Communist in any meaningful sense of the word. About 20 years ago, the Chinese leadership figured out that Communism doesn't work, so they junked that system.