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Dell To Leave China For India
halfEvilTech writes "India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, told the Indian press that Dell chairman Michael Dell assured him that Dell was moving $25 billion in factories from China to India. Original motives were cited for environmental concerns. But later details come up as to Dell wanting a 'safer environment conductive to enterprise.'"
Dell spokesperson denied the story this morning. Who's editing today, me?
a 'safer environment conductive to enterprise'
Read as "safer from industrial espionage and nationalization"
Oh wait, that was their Customer Service department. I wonder how that experiment went ;-)
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Sure that wasn't "conducive"? I know Dell is an electronics manufacturer, but the company itself is likely non-conductive in the first place.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
We don't need China. It's just nice to have cheap stuff, and they make stuff cheap. If no one was buying, they couldn't sell. Its kind of like economic mutally-assured destruction. Despite what the Reaganites may want us to believe, demand still has just as much power as supply.
Wouldn't it be even better if it was built in Twin Falls Idaho or Austin TX?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
India is a democracy with a much better record of treating its citizens as free human beings. It also doesn't seem to have the taste for global imperialism that China does. In China, you can disappear for protesting on the street. In China, you put in an application if you'd like to move to another city. In China, the internet is filtered. India should be a great friend of the United States. Americans have a lot in common with them, and in that part of the world, America could use more friends.
India safer? In some ways I suppose but it depends on what you are talking about. The Indian government is less draconian and less likely to try to compete with you. Expropriation is probably less of a concern in India. The rupee has somewhat better convertibility than the yuan and currency flows are less stringently controlled. Plus there is a much larger contingent of English speakers than in China. India's legal system is slightly less hostile to foreigners than China's though both are to be avoided if possible. Freedom of speech is obviously better in India though China doesn't have quite the death grip on speech everyone here seems to think they do.
On the other hand, India's infrastructure is badly trailing that of China, there is less foreign capital to improve things, corruption is a huge issue in India, business regulations are as bad if not worse than China, and transport costs are somewhat worse. Despite the number of engineers, India has less experience with certain types of manufacturing. India is a democracy (which is good) but that doesn't always make doing business there easier - in fact it often makes it harder due to populist policies.
There has been something of a "gotta be in China" attitude but China isn't always the best place to make things. There are places with cheaper labor (Vietnam for instance) and places with better logistics (Singapore) and places with expertise silos (Japan) that might make better choices. Plus betting everything on China is risky by itself. Doing business in China is hard, risky, requires constant oversight, and a long term perspective. Anyone thinking they can just produce stuff cheaply in China with little difficulty is going to lose a lot of money very quickly.
I've done global sourcing in both countries - it's difficult no matter which way you go. I've personally been in a factory in Chengdu where parts for Dell computers were being assembled. Moving production from China to India might be a good idea from a diversification standpoint (bad idea to do everything in China) but it's only marginally safer in my opinion depending on exactly what one means by safer.
When since the death of Mao and the rise of the "Gang of Seven" has anyone thought China was Communist? That is like calling the old Soviet Empire a Communist state. They are a totalitarian dictatorship. Just 'cause they call themselves commies, that doesn't mean they are. To quote I-don't-remember-who (maybe Hunter Thompson?) "Communism has not been tried and failed, Communism has not been tried."
Please don't dominate the rap, Jack, if you got nothin' new to say.
taiwan is an autonomous, rebel, province of china. they don't answer to beijing. the only reason most conuntries don't recognize taiwan as independent is to avoid diplomatic tensions with beijing.
if you hate mainland china's abuses, buy from taiwan. that's money that doesn't go to beijing spend in censorship.
What ? Me, worry ?
Well, that's almost Flamebait..like saying 'Canada is part of the USA' IMHO
Without rehashing all the history, the modern reality is that the (current) Taiwanese population would not consider themselves part of the Chinese Socio-Political system any more than the Tibetans would.
No, Taiwan isn't part of the People's Republic of China.
You may not realize this, but Taiwan is part of China.
The truth of that statement depends very much on whom you ask. As things stand Taiwan is de-facto an independent country. The People's Republic of China (mainland) maintain that Taiwan is a part of China, whereas the Republic of China (Taiwan) maintains that they are actually the legitimate government of China and that the PROC has no sovereign authority. However Taiwan has had to take great care to not antagonize the PROC due to the threat of invasion.
In other words, it's complicated.
It is my pleasure to be helping you today. I understand you are trying to move your factories from China to India. Just a moment and I will bring up your account. Ok I will look up moving your factories from China to India in our knowledge-base. Have you tried plugging in your factories?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
No, the mainland is an autonomous, rebel area controlled by Communist bandits. Taiwan is the seat of the Chinese government.
My company did. We abandoned a brand-new billion dollar semiconductor fabrication facility. Officially it was because we didn't have enough work to fill it along with our several other (non-Chinese) fabs. Rumor says it was at least partly because we were tired of competing with ourselves and our fourth-shift output. However, it certainly wasn't anything to do with fear of nationalization or the unpleasantness surrounding that Australian Rio Tinto executive who was arrested and is currently being tried in China for (again, rumor has it) not bribing enough people, although I think that should be at least considered. Since the Rio Tinto trial was front-page Wall Street Journal news yesterday, I'm guessing that today a lot of people who make outsourcing decisions are thinking about it.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
The USA, it's safer and conducive to enterprise, and with the economy in the pits a great time to negotiate with state governments, not to mention the karma factor Mr Dell.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
LOL, lower castes? In which century are you in? Of course I am not claiming everyone in India receives the same opportunities and rights. The rich can always maneuver themselves out of courts/police, keep themselves safe from murderers, have their children well educated, get their children and themselves jobs. But it happens in every country, not just India.
Thanks! Thought I was signed in but oh well...
Taiwan follows the old government that existed prior to the "cultural revolution" that spawned the current Chinese Communist Party government.
When you say cultural revolution in the context of China, you are actually talking about a fairly specific event that occurred long after the civil war that resulted in the schism between Taiwan and mainland China. The Cultural Revolution occurred in the late 60s whereas the KMT's retreat to Taiwan occurred around 1950. The communist party in China preceded the cultural revolution.
I could just as easily say that the six counties of Northern Ireland are controlled by Monarchist bandits and that the national capital of Northern Ireland is Dublin.
Obviously we're talking about who has the monopoly of violence in the case of the ROC v. the PRC. For all intents and purposes they're separate countries, but if you want to play that game the Communists successfully overthrew the Nationalists quite a long time ago. It was a net negative for the people of China, but it is an accurate representation of the facts.
I can't speak for "everyone"; but I'm not using the term because "fascism" also has a number of salient and distinctive cultural features that distinguish it from other flavors of authoritarian or totalitarian and capitalist society.
Fascism, while annoyingly mutable and difficult to pin down, is more specific than Totalitarianism, which is itself more specific than Authoritarianism. The three are(roughly speaking) visualizable as a set of concentric circles, with fascism in the middle, totalitarianism around it, a little ways out, and authoritarianism outside that, again a way further out. Each time you go in one ring, you exclude certain forms of political organization. Just to make things hairier, neither Fascism, nor Totalitarianism, nor Authoritarianism have neat links to specific economic models. There are some implications and exclusions(for instance, you cannot run a command economy on a national scale without a political system that is Totalitarian in character, you cannot run a Totalitarian or Fascist political system without an economic system and technological base capable of sustaining centralization, and self-identified "fascists" will oppose self-identified "communists" and vice versa); but no neat one-to-one correspondences.
Consider, for example, a Fascist Totalitarian Capitalism vs. a non-Fascist Totalitarian capitalism: let's say Fascist Germany vs. one of the hard-right "banana republics" established by US interests in South America. In both cases, "communism" and "communists" will be explicitly rejected and violently suppressed. In both cases, a form of capitalism will be the economic mode, albeit(because of the totalitarianism being rather corrosive to rule of law) with certain amounts of cronyism creeping in. Look at the differences, though: In a fascist state, the espoused aim of the crony capitalism will be restoration of national greatness in the face of perceived degradation, humiliation, or decay(seen as brought on by some combination of liberalism and external forces plotting along with internal enemies). In the banana republic case, the aim of the crony capitalism will be the enrichment of a foreign corporation or corporations, who in turn kick back a slice of the money to the local strongmen who keep riots to a minimum and the proles in line.
In the Fascist arrangement, the cronyism is seen as a bargain, mediated by the totalitarian state, between the power of industry and the "People"(in an ethnic nationalist sense, not a communist "proletariat" sense). In order to restore the glory and (military) power of the nation, strategic industries will be favored, and any leftist labor movements that inconvenience them will be intimidated, beaten, or sent to the showers; but the bargain is seen as a populist one: the favored industries enjoy substantial perks; but are supposed to be bound to the national interest, not to profit maximization. Layoffs to please Wall Street would not fly in a Fascist state.
In the "banana republic" arrangement, the cronyism is an bargain, more or less explicit, between an external corporation and the local elites. The bargain is, the local elites keep order, protect the property of the crony entity by force, and crush any labor movements that are seen as threatening. In exchange, they get a cut of the profits(without having to possess any technical capacity themselves) and all the usual perks and pleasures of power. Not only is this arrangement not about "national glory", it is exactly the sort of humiliation that can make (depending on conditions) either fascist or communist economic populism compelling. If the local elites feel sufficiently mistreated by the outside entity, and have some sort of cultural mythology to draw on, you may see a fascist reaction. If the local elites are too weak or lack any useful cultural mythology, and the lumpen proles are too bitter about their obvious economic oppression, an attempt at commuunism may occur.
Given that China does have a strong cultural mythos to draw on,
Yes and no.
It simply isn't possible to be "Totalitarian" unless you can, in fact, centralize the levers of power in a political unit into the hands of a Supreme Leader(and, in practice, his cronies and right-hand men). Otherwise, you might have a sort of autocratic feudalism, where the King can do whatever he wants; but he has to ride right over to where he wants to do it, with his sword and his cousins, and wherever he isn't, some nobleman holds sway; but you won't have a "Totalitarianism". To do this requires substantial resources. Bureaucracy, guns, mass communications, transport assets, etc. If you don't have those, you can't have "Totalitarianism".
On the other hand(and this is where Papa and Baby Doc, and the poor bastards in Haiti come in); because of globalization and trade, you don't have to be able to generate those resources internally as long as you have some means of buying them. In the case of Haiti, a mixture of exploiting US/Soviet tensions for handouts, misappropriating aid money, and selling off timber concessions, provided those means. This is how, while Haiti itself didn't really have an economic system productive enough to support much of anything, there was a sufficiently productive economic system feeding the Duvaliers.
Nations with natural resources that are either trivial to extract, or easy enough to extract with foreign technical assistance, are commonly vulnerable to this pattern. Anybody who can gain power(usually a charismatic populist who wins the last real election, or an ambitious soldier with some guts and a lot of luck) can then bankroll a Totalitarian regime by strip mining, or selling the rights to strip mine, the place and buying the materiel he needs from outside, and the support he needs from inside.
Perversely, this often leaves such nations worse of, even compared to other repressive regimes. Trujillo, say, just next door in the Dominican Republic, was every bit the Totalitarian bastard that Duvalier was, if not worse; but the DR is way less fucked today than Haiti is, in no small part because Trujillo spent much of his reign building wealth(and then concentrating it in his own hands, of course). While Duvalier sold the place off to pay for his regime, Trujillo had soldiers gunning down the poor people who attempted to enter "his" forests to try to make a living. Serious dick move; but one of the reasons that the DR hasn't had all its topsoil wash into the sea.
This is sort of the mean, ugly, step-child of the idea that free trade and globalization will spread political freedom to go with the economic freedom:
Traditionally, a dictator's ability to run the place into the ground was limited. If you don't pay the soldiers, they'll have your head on a pike. If you can't afford to arm them, the starving mob will drive them off, and then have your head on a pike. If your infrastructure rots, you'll find yourself ruling an area of about a week's march from your palace, and nowhere else. To succeed as dictator, you pretty much had to keep at least the economy going(doesn't mean you can't torture lots of people, or disappear your opponents, or have your pick of children delivered to your palace pleasure-pits daily); but does require that society function to a degree, that there be some amount of rule of law(even if it only applies to petty criminals, not to grand ones like you), and so forth.
In a global economy, by contrast, these requirements only hold if your country has literally nothing worth mining, or selling off, or otherwise exploiting. If you do have something, you can always find somebody willing to hold their nose and do business with you. If your resource is merely valuable(diamonds or teak, or cocaine, say) you may have to deal with various more or less shady characters. Criminal syndicates, scruffy ex-easter-bloc arms dealers, that sort of thing. Not a crippling problem, "Pecunia non olet" and Kalashnikovs work just fine once you brush the dust off. But if your resources are strategic, boy, you are golden. Run a virulently repressive theocratic monarchy? If you will sell oil, the US will be your best buddy, sale of advanced weapons included, no problem.