Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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...
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 ?
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!
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
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
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)
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?