Slashdot Mirror
China Overtakes US as Supplier of IT Goods
Ant writes "CNET News.com is reporting that 'after almost a decade of explosive growth in its electronics sector, China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest supplier of Information Technology goods, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.' From the article: "The most spectacular demonstration of China's ambition to become a consumer electronics heavyweight came in May this year when Lenovo, the Chinese computer maker, paid $1.75 billion to buy IBM's personal computer unit."
if only their government didn't suck ass, they could be so great. they have immense cultural momentum, a well reasoned and disciplined populace, and a penchant for churning out intelligent people.
The day IBM sold it's PC business, this was only to be expected...
In other news, India overtakes the US as the leading Supplier of Software Services... not too long either.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
China has nowhere near as many IP lawyers protecting their "valuable intellectual property" as the USA.
Frankly, after the shootings the other day in China I wish we'd stop doing business with them. Our relationship with China is nothing to be proud of.
The Red Dragon awakens...
From the article:
Also, China's efforts to impose its own technology standards across a range of consumer products, including mobile phones, digital photography and wireless networks, are widely interpreted as a strategy to dominate the global market for information technology goods.
That approach will probably serve them quite well within their own borders, but I don't see how they can hope to impose their own standards on the rest of the world. There are already standards (e.g. 3G) in place across the globe, accompanied by hardware produced by manufacturers in several countries. The Chinese standards would have to displace the incumbents (so to speak) and become widely adopted by those same former incumbents. It sounds like a very difficult - if not insurmountable - obstacle.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
JP Morgan and some other firms are now outsourcing finance positions to India for the first time. If the US doesn't wake up and go for FAIR trade, FREE trade will cut all of our collective throats.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Because the companies can no more survive without employees than they can without customers, giving the employees a powerful bargaining position. This is the reason labour rights have progressed over the last century or so. As we (the workers) are not prepared to accept peanuts for our labour, the only way to keep industry in western nationa is to impose minimum labour standards on all companies we do business with
What we have at the moment couldn't remotely be called free trade.
Deleted
our new chinese overlords. Better than the old ones...
I'm not so sure.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I guess giving patents to everyone for everything, lengthening copyright to forever and a day, and criminalizing minor infringements didn't work. Which is funny given that the proponents of this IP regime argue that this is what the USA can make money selling.
Now if only the EU isn't so dumb as to fall for the same rubbish....
When I was growing up in the 80's, there was a big anti-communist thing going on (Most notibly, the great war epic Red Dawn). There was also a big "buy American" movement due to a strong Japanese economy. Now we have a communist economic powerhouse and noone seems to be raising a stink. Why is that? My only thought on this is that with China, US executives are still making money. The Japanese kept everything from manufacturing to management in-house. China just does the manufacturing and leaves the US management to their big salaries. I think you will only see the "Made in China" issue come to the forefront when they start managing everything, thereby screwing the US upper management.
I'm typing this on a 12" Apple PowerBook. Made in China. It's currently charging my 'Assembled in China' iPod. These would be tallied into the Chinese total, though they are clearly 'American' products and the bulk of their profits go to the (shareholders of the) American company.
While the advances in the Chinese IT industry are nothing less than phenomenal, I suspect that it will be at least a few decades before The States is knocked from the #1 position in IT.
In an oblique way, TFA says the same thing:
It is foreigners who have driven much of the growth, with heavy investment from global giants like Intel, Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft and Cisco Systems. Figures from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce show that companies that had received overseas investment accounted for almost 90 percent of 2004 exports of high technology products.
Oh yeah - and this OECD study only measures exports, not production. With Americans also leading the world in resource hoggery, American production may still lead Chinese production.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Don't forget that having a minimum wage can result in less jobs in some areas. It can also cause some jobs to disappear entirely, as the cost would be too high. The obvious solution is to allow illegal immigrants to work at illegal wages :-). On the other hand, higher wages (and less jobs) tend to motivate people to learn more (so they can compete, but also because the pay is better), and to replace dull jobs with robots whenever possible (robots are only as valuable as the equivalent human labor).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The only reason America was better off the latter half of the 20th century was because it wasn't devastated by severe war during the first half.
Remember, significant portions (including the populations) of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium was destroyed twice during the first two world wars. The western Soviet Union took quite a beating, too. Of course, Greece, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Japan, China, Korea, and many Pacific islands were also quite devastated by conflict.
It's no wonder that those who were able to progress, rather than rebuild, took the lead.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
"China is quickly becoming an innovator and, as we know, it has the money to turn those ideas into weapons," he said.
Why is it that commentators and news writers are always paranoid about China becoming a dangerous military superpower, yet apparently noone has a problem investing billions of dollars in the country as well as freely using their cheap labor to manufacture goods? Wal-Mart says about 60% of their goods are manufactured in China. Why all the paranoia if we are so willing and able to use them to make a profit?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Unions are specifically exempt from anti trust law by statute. So are the Major League Baseball Association and insurance companies.
I think the idea that they are attempting to impose standards is misplaced. I suspect that their main motivation is the desire to have standards that don't involve royalty payments -- at least, not external ones. It's a massive drain on profitability to be paying per-unit license fees on all these things.
Another thing to note about standards is that they are primarily a matter of ubiquity. You really don't have to care what encoding your digital mobile phone uses, or your video disc uses, etc., so long as its quality is "good enough" and you don't run into compatibility issues. Microsoft knows this, and uses their dominance of the desktop as leverage: if they want something to be a de facto standard, they just include it in the next Windows service pack. So long as enough goods are manufactured which support a particular protocol, that protocol becomes a de facto standard.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I've read a lot of posts about how the US is becoming a services-based economy. I have news for you, the services are being offshored as well. I went to my doctor for my annual physical last month, and while there was a nurse in the office performing the physical, the doctor was on an LCD screen from his office in, you guessed it, India.
Did you also know that there are law schools in India now that teach AMERICAN law and not Indian law? I'm guessing that paralegals and other support functions in Law will shortly be available for cheap offshoring.
I used to think that Medicine and Law would be the last things to go, but it seems I was wrong about that. As I scramble to find a safer profession than Engineering, I'm not even sure where to go. I thought of teaching, and then realized that there are movements afoot to move this overseas, too, with a cheap security guard in the classroom to maintain order and a cheap teacher overseas in front of a camera.
So, while it's not so untrue that America is becoming a services based economy, I think it would be more accurate to say that it is becoming an UNSKILLED or lesser-skilled services economy.
The Chinese have a lot of advantages. The first is sheer numbers...a higher number of people can be educated and work in the technology field. All other offshoring destinations (India, etc.) have this same advantage. The second is control; the Chinese government can still crack down and force people to do things that may otherwise be unpopular. The Soviet Union was famous for this when they forced the industrialization of Russia in a very short period of time. The third is an educational advantage. The only way to get ahead in Chinese society is education, and it seems from the numbers that parents drum this into their kids' heads right from the start.
I think that one of the things we could do to reverse the trend is to find a way to graduate more students in math/science/engineering. They're being scared off because they think that the only jobs left in this country will be in management. I can't say I blame them either.
Application denied forever. Comeback in a thousand years and maybe we lets you back.
England? Read up on their empire and it is their politics that led to the whole mess in the middle east with how the formation of Israel was handled, they should have created a palistine at the same time or at least given Israel better borders (the whole golan heights issue is because it gives syria a very easy front to attack from and a very difficult for Israel to defend). Oh and who created the situation between India and Pakistan.
So the axis nations are out. Maybe france? Can you say vietnam? No thanks and that leaves out the US as well. China is out for obvious reasons. Russia? Oh boy no.
Maybe a small country like say my own the netherlands? Nope, indonesia and our other former colonies show that we are just hitlers on a miniature scale and anyway our behaviour during WW2 was appaling.
The belgians? Please they got a goverment so corrupt that it makes the italians look capable.
Australians? Maybe after they do somthing to right the wrong committed against the natives.
It doesn't exactly leave anyone? Sooner or later pretty much every country has done stuff in the last century that shows that if a country/society/ethnic group has a change they will murder rape and slaughter those they think of as less important.
The only reason some countries at the moment behave is because they would get their asses kicked if they didn't. Nazi sympathy in germany is still sky high but the russians would never tolerate them getting in a position of power to the power that be in germany sit on it at the moment but still refuse to deport war criminals or lock them up.
No kiddo, no country can take the moral highground. Wich isn't going to stop anyone of course because rule one of real life. It ain't bad if it is you doing it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Of course, the rise of China COULD have been prevented by simply not buying goods made in China, but that's never going to happen. Case in point: go look at your Christmas lights. Where were they made? That's what I thought...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Ahh, okay, today's reason for going to war: Mr. Saddam Hussein.
Do you even know that the US administration was on best terms with Saddam even when he was already killing kurds with nerve gas and that Mr. Rumsfeld served as a special envoy to Iraq during that period?
The US administration probably had a couple of reasons to invade Iraq, but humanity was certainly not included.
As do american police; and your point was?
You are a complete asshat. The American police routinely shoot protesters? America has its problems, but to compare its treatment of citizens to China only demonstrates that you are an ignorant fool.
Northern Ireland has democratically voted to remain part of the United Kingdom.
If Americans would've only realised that, they might not have funded the IRA and their terrorist activities.
Absolutely right. It is the poor, poor, executives that make the sacrifices here in the US while the over fed, over indulgent, over rich workers make out like bandits.
Actually that is the way it was before unions caught on. You had super rich and super poor in the US. Unions equalized things for about 60 years. Now the wealth differences (as measured by ratios) are growing again. I hope you like the 1890-1920's because we are headed there again.
Table-ized A.I.