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China PM Wants to Rule Global Tech With India
GrumpyDeveloper writes "As reported in this Wired story, China's prime minister said Sunday that China and India should work together to dominate the world's tech industry, bringing together Chinese hardware with Indian software.
If American tech workers can't compete at the pennies-per-hour salary range, then they deserve to lose their jobs to the superior foreign technological forces. And stop whining about "oh, but I need to buy groceries" and "I need to save up for my child's college fund and my retirement".
At least, this is what I've heard.
I, for one, welcome our new high-school management retail wage-slave jobs of the future.
Is outsourcing to North America part of their plan :)
That said, the border agreement India and China announced today seems like a terrific step forward. I'm surprised it's not getting more attention. The two biggest countries in the world have been banging heads over that border for decades.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Cooperation between India and China is inevitable. Their feud stems from a small war and dispute over small threads of land. The benefits of their cooperation is far greater than the benefits of a rift, and both sides have seen this. Add this to a burgeoning ASEAN, and you have a truly global economic power.
Whether or not they succeed at dominating the tech industry is redundant. If they cooperate, even economically, they'd have a lot more say in the world than the either the US or the EU, over time.
Everybody will win from this.
Unless you are emloyed in America, making software or hardware for a living.
Please inform the masses on Slashdot how lowering the standard of living for those in say - America, Britain and elsewhere - is a winning situation.
Why would indians want to get mixed up with the Chinese? Seems like this would jeopordize their lucrative Casino businesses.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
Despite China's usage of FOSS, they're the only people I trust less than MS. Today's software overlords, the US + EU, is bad enough with managing things like privacy and fair use.
China's management of the internet ought to give us some idea of what they would do with a monopoly on internet tech.
Assembly Instruction of Very Fine Device.
Step 1: You should be opening the box now.
Step 2: Complete assembly is easy for you.
Step C: Begin use Very Fine Device.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Those in America and the UK, and other developed countries, are relatively better educated. As such, their occupational mobility is higher. Moreover, they have the chance to be creative without getting their hands dirty.
I've heard, on Slashdot no less, of Americans outsourcing their own work to India, pocketing the difference and spending their time at the desk learning. Specialization of labor has always worked, and may even be the reason we are where we are now.
The same thing we do every night, India...
Somewhere, there's a joke begging to be told.
Let's see if we're all still laughing in 18 months.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Except it isn't a matter of being unable to compete.
There is nothing lacking in the skill, talent and dedication of American employees. It is simply that employees in America have to pay American prices for rent, housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and health care. Corporations have the entire planet to search for qualified and extremely cheap labor.
If American tech workers had the entire world to choose from for sourcing out their necessary purchases for living, they could live cheaper, too. If Joe Techie lives in a country where a gallon of milk is almost $4 and the average cost of a house is $200,000 - how can you expect him to survive on the wages of someone who lives in a country where that would buy five houses?!
The gov of China knows that India is supposed to surpass them in population relatively soon. According to the CIA, by 2020 (15 years, folks...) a China/India duo would account for 36% of the global population. Western Europe plus the United States will only be 9% of the global population. With emerging economies, it is forecasted that we westerners are supposed to become quite obsolete.
China, knowing that by 2030 india is predicted to pass them in population, knows they have to act. Most of China's land mass is worthless, after all (why do you think Tiawan is so important to them?) so they have to position themselves as a solid consumer front.
The problem India/China will face: they'll be *consumers*. Being the biggest consumers has been a major harm to the US economy (trade deficits, etc). For our substantially smaller work force (1/5th-ish), we still produce twice as much as China does (see above CIA link). They need to seriously work on their production per-capita. That, and feeding those folks is already a serious problem. Production, on their end, is not just an industrial issue - its a natural resource issue.
The Western Hemisphere controls the food, and with it...we'll still control the wealth. If the US made some strong ties with South America, we'd retain power with even just 2% of the global population...put 3 billion people in an area that can only make food for 1 billion, and what does supply/demand dictate? It dictates that food prices will skyrocket, and non-food goods will plummet. Watches and games will become trivial, throw-away items (already are), but an apple...an apple will be valuable.
Premiere of China and the President of India are Scientists, one a down to earth Geologist and the other a rocket shooting Space scientist!
...
About the topic
Could Chinese Hardware & Indian Software be married to produce the World dominating Tech Industry? Is it a mere whimsical dream of the Chinese Premiere or is it a real workable proposition to tilt the balance of the World's technological power base? As the wise sage said "Time will tell"!
Curretly though, the traditional rivals are ready to bury the hatchet over the common border they share and also have set a target to raise the bilateral trade to $30bn by 2010 from the $13.6bn in the last fiscal. The two countried have signed a dozen agreements today, ranging from phytosanitary protocols to more open skies, and China is backing India's bid to the UN Security Council.
So for the time being, they do seem to be working together to the mutual benefit of the two Asian behemoths. Also, if the friction is diffused the world has one pair of nuclear neighbours to worry about!
-- Prem
Aiming to tweet on a rice
Really all the whining is about exchange rates and super-artificial economies.
Indian worker do not work for substantially less benefit than US workers - the trade issue people are talking about refers to a pure exchange rate problem.
One could even argue that Indian tech workers reap a substantially higher benefit than their US counterparts when you take mean deviation in standard of living into account.
This is exactly why import tariffs were invented, and curiously, this is what you get when you don't use them.
But how long will that last ? Once their workforces see the wealth that they are generating they are going to want a share of it, that is going to lead to demands for higher wages. This has happened before (see Eastern Europe).
Part of the West's wealth relies on an imbalance of income -- ie the West relies on low wages in Africa/Asia to supply them with cheap food/goods/holidays/... This is not to say that things won't change: they will -- there will be an averaging of standards of living; we in the West are going to have to accept a reduction in our standards of living or work much harder for it. This is good in global terms.
Where will the world's workhouse be ? Africa ?
BTW: Anyone remember 20-30 years ago the golden future that was painted for us -- that automation would mean that no one would have to work more than one day a week (or something like that). Whatever happened to that dream ?
Am I the only one bothered by the fact India is keeping the pro-Tibetan protestors out of the picture?
Seems money is all that matters in the world. So much for the hindus living up to the Srimad-Bhagavad Ghita. =\
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
As far as the current wages for "IT" professionals in India go, they are among the top paid people in the white-collar industry. They can afford to live a lifestyle that may be at the very least considered as upper middle class in most societies.
When most Americans hear about "pennies-per-hour" salaries (which in itself is an exaggeration), software professionals are being exploited as "slave labor" in "sweat shops". This view couldn't be further from the truth.
The truth is that "IT" professionals are being paid princely salaries by Indian standards (similar to how it was during the boom in the Silicon Valley). The cost of living in India is *way* low compared to the US. For comparison, a loaf of bread costs about 10 Indian Rupees or about 25 US cents. A large pizza at Pizza Hut/Dominos would cost about 100-300 INR, which is about 2.00 to 6.00 US Dollars. A low-cost meal in an average fast-food type restaurant would run you about 25 INR or less than 1.00 USD.
That's about all I have to say in this rant. Comparing wages without taking in the cost of living into account is crazy, but I guess it's convenient to ignore making misinformed arguments against "outsourcing" (which the corporations are responsible for, btw and not Indians who're "stealing our jaabs") and dissing Indians for being ready to work at lower wages.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I can't wait to read the manuals!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Please inform the masses on Slashdot how lowering the standard of living for those in say - America, Britain and elsewhere - is a winning situation.
As slashdotters are so fond of saying in P2P stories - your business plan is flawed and its not up to us to sustain it for you. You arent entitled to that higher standard of living, and if someone can undercut you then you need to compete in different ways, add value to YOUR version of the product, entice customers to buy from you rather than the cheaper alternative.
Let's see if we're all still laughing in 18 months.
Meanwhile, the US has spent itself into such a massive hole that it can't keep up spending for education. Even colleges have had to turn away students because they've laid off so many staff.
An economy isn't so much based upon money, but on ideas and when there's poor education then the flow of ideas is stunted.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Then you are pretty ignorant of American history.
Americans were confronted with the same situation in the 1980's when the Japanese behemoth swamped American auto and steel production, leading to the "Rust Belt" throughout the American Northeast. America recovered via the IT and telecommunications industries.
We're now confronted with the same scenario as China and India move into IT industry, threatening American businesses and jobs much like the Japanese did in the 1980's.
And now, as in the 1980's, Americans worried about their jobs and their families, as would ANY culture facing the demise of industries. But we CHANGED then, and we'll do the same now.
It's called the process of creative destruction, and American industry will rise again, much like the Phoenix of lore. Contrast that with what Europe attempted by protecting its industries rather than letting them go and you'll see who had the better model.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
If capital is free to move about the globe but labor isn't, then all that the owning class has to do to keep control is to keep moving from the rich, expensive countries to the poor, cheap countries. They let the rich countries become poor again, and then move back.
It's all about cheap labor, and if you think it's "Us" (the US and the West) vs. "Them" (China, India, etc.) then you have bought into the lie that the ruling class uses to keep control.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Don't get me wrong: I actually think that globalization is not such a bad thing (assuming some semblance of fair market practices - but then again, read Arundhati Roy for the dark side of the World Bank, globalization, etc.) I live in the US and because I live in a remote area I only telecommute so I both compete with foreign workers and also receive a fair amount of work from companies in India and Europe. It is all a matter of trying to stay competitive in the amount of work done per $$.
Where I think we really have problems is in our educational system. In the 1970s, most articles in ACM journals were written by Americans. Now relatively few articles are. In the US, we have the top end of the IT food chain covered - by this I mean super creativity, capital for investments, etc. Anyway, it bothers me how few young people that I talk with have any desire what so ever to pursue careers in science and engineering.
-Mark
China has a long way to go towards enabling personal freedoms before this will work. China may have the high tech labor force but the specifications are still being written in the United States. This will not change until the centralized Chinese communist system allows decentralized freedom and entreprenuership. The Chinese system of a huge labor force and relatively few real leaders will not scale to the level of decision making and innovation that a system based on respect for dissent and personal freedom will. China needs more leaders to make this work and their current system fears that level of power sharing.
In the very short term it's great for consumers because prices are low. However, in the medium term, a slew of jobs will be deprecated in non-Indo-Chinese nations as the industries relocate. This will cause all sorts of economic and political headache as people will fight the change with tariffs, stressing the system which will then snap nastily when all local demand will vanish and companies go belly-up. Those folks who have enough foresight will work to develop new industries that provide the higher value required to support "western" wages. So, eventually things will shift again.
This is simply the economic cycle on a global scale instead of many small local ones; when any area gets an advantage, wealth shifts there for a while, but it will eventually shift somewhere else again (maybe South America? who knows...)
Savings are only great, also, if people use those savings to save and hedge against disruptions, not if they use it to buy more expensive luxury items and to improve education to better cope with change.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
There is nothing lacking in the skill, talent and dedication of American employees.
Sure there is. I agree with much of what you have to say, but that is all beside the fact that American workers are unmotivated and incompetent in many cases. The CEO of a company I used to work at had already run three companies into the ground by doing really stupid and greedy things that made him rich but killed the company. The vast majority of workplaces in the U.S. offer no profit sharing or reasonable incentive plan. If you work twice as hard you get paid the same, but are more tired and stressed. American employees lack dedication for a number of really good reasons. They don't benefit when the company does. They may be fired not because they don't work hard but because the company wants to cut corners or outsource. Executives usually have a different health plan and benefits package than the regular employees. Basically, companies don't treat employees very well and don't feel responsible for them in they way many used to. As a result many employees don't care about working hard or well. This is a huge disadvantage compared to some other cultures.
Hmmm... Yes, there's no way that the USA would ever do anything like that, is there?
I think that it's fair to say that this is the first time in history that people everywhere else see America whining about its inability to compete.
One ought, of course, note that America has existed for only a rather short period of History thus far.
In that light, the quoted statement is really just a rather bland observation... unless of course you are so devoid of historical perspective that you think America is somehow special and will not fade like all previous empires.
In times past, the American workforce was something to admire. I don't think that's the case any longer.
That might have had something to do with having non-bombed-to-pieces infrastructure and a greater abundance of non-dead men than its European counter-parts after WW2.
Though I suppose it also might have been one of a host of heroic inimitable virtues that only Americans possess in the world.
Urgh... can't decide whether to be opinionated or ironic.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Somewhere, there's a joke begging to be told.
Yes there is: in 2010...
Chinese businessman: I'll never buy from Ching Computers again!
Indian businessman: Why not?
Chinese: I called their customer support yesterday, and some guy with a heavy accent starts saying: "Howdy y'all, wassssuuup?"
Indian: No way! They're outsourcing to Americans?? Wow, how low can you go?
Back in the 80's when it happened, people asked "but what will we do now?"
The difference between then and now is that back then there was an answer. Both auto companies laying off workers and the government stepped in and provided retraining, job search and placement assistance, subsidies for those going to college. There was assistance for those looking for a way to pull themselves out of the rust belt.
Now that its my turn, what am I supposed to do? Nobody has answers, nobody is providing retraining, and the only government assistance I've seen is the unemployment office reminding me that I need to apply to N jobs every week and take the first minimum wage job that accepts me, or they'll cut off my unemployment. College costs are climbing as both federal and state funding for both grants and loans are going downhill. I ended up with a college loan from a private entity since Uncle Sam couldn't afford to let me borrow money from him.
I'm sure America will come through somehow, but this time around it looks like its going to be a very bumpy ride.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Incoming: 300 alarmist responses about how India and China and the rest of the Asian Tigers are going to own everything / run everything in 10 or 50 years, because they work so much harder than us.
Funny thing. 20 years ago it was the Japanese who were going to "own everything". It's actually funny (in a tragic sort of way) to watch movies from the 80's and early 90's, with their dire predictions of our impending Japanese Overlords. For a good laugh, go rent "Rising Sun" or even the Micheal Keaton comedy "Gung Ho".
In reality, Japan is slowly dragging itself out of a recession which has spanned decades due to the inept bungling of the bureaucratic masterminds who were supposedly going to guide Japan to a peaceful takeover of the world's economy. Heck, I even drive a Honda: it was made in Kentucky.
If you honestly think that China and India are going to surpass the West through the magical power of Central Planning, you haven't been paid much attention for the past 100 years or so.
Incoming: Hundreds of slashdotters raving about how hard Indians and Chinese work in school (quietly ignoring the vast majority who live in rural areas). Big deal. It didn't help the Soviets, did it?
China isn't going to be a frist-world country as long as their central government insists on tightly controlling the most important aspects of their economy. India is better off in this regard, but as an imperfect democracy I see them as a potential ally, not a rival. Indeed, the Bush administration is cozying up to democratic India specifically as a foil to totalitarian China. Smart move.
Most people even on slashdot are profoundly igrnorant of economics. For example, they routinely assume that economics is a zero-sum game. If that were true, we'd still be living in caves.
For the same reason that the US is supporting Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - both of which are fundamentalist dictatorships, and the latter a military dictatorship.
Kinda ironic, don't you think?
Ultimately, what goes around comes around.
What are you calling a recovery? The northeastern United States is still poverty-stricken (and I'm not talking about the Coastal areas). Infrastructure is decaying. Many of the region's lesser cities have become the worst minority ghettos in the country. The tech industry never came to the 'Rust Belt,' and it never will.
"America" as a whole will continue to prosper, yes. But each time a Big Change occurs entire regions become scar tissue, forever useless. It is a bit arrogant to consider this model of economics to be superior to any other.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I'll take protectionism for $200, Alex.
Thanks, but no thanks. Even Adam Smith admitted that while completely unrestricted free trade benefits the economic system as a whole, it can lead to regional economic disasters. He didn't see this as much of a problem because in Smith's time there was no such thing as globalization; nowadays a 'regional economic disaster' could encompass the entire United States. The wealth of the global economy can easily increase while the wealth of the United States, specifically, declines; the health of the system of the whole improves, but that doesn't mean shit to the citizens of the U.S. who no longer have a job.
As a U.S. citizen, I'm really not interested in pissing away my country's economic power to improve the global economy. I'm far more interested in the health of the United States than any nebulous 'greater good'. People who only have the fuzziest grasp of economics seem to think that free trade will automagically improve their specific lot in life, if given time; but Smith never said anything of the sort, a fact that many people are ignorant of, or deliberately ignore, or simply lie about because their particular delusion about what 'free trade' really means is their holy grail.
There is no guarantee that American industry will "rise again". The only guarrantee is that the world economy as a whole will improve in terms of absolute wealth. That doesn't mean that any of that wealth will be distributed regionally to the United States, nor that the U.S. economy won't decline over time. Anyone who thinks otherwise would do with some solid re-education in basic economic theory.
Max
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