Slashdot Mirror
The Coming Decline of 'Made In China'
retroworks writes: Adam Minter documents the move of Chinese steel mills to Africa, and speculates that China's years of incredible rates of economic growth may already be over. This one steel mill's move to Africa, by itself, increases Africa's production by two-thirds. "The officials in Hebei Province who oversee the company may have felt they had no choice. First, they undoubtedly faced political pressure to reduce their environmental impact in China: reducing production of steel, cement and glass -- all highly polluting industries, especially in developing countries -- will have a direct impact on Xi Jinping’s pollution goals. (Starting in Hebei will have the added benefit of cleaning up polluted, neighboring Beijing.) Second, Hebei may simply be at a loss as to how to scale back businesses that they recognize have become massively bloated. Officials in China’s construction-related industries clearly have too much capacity and too little demand." It's also possible that these moves will be encouraged by China's transition to clean economy, though that could be a bad thing for pollution in Africa.
And what will all our fine corporate interests do when they run out of wage slaves?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Haven't you heard? Manufacturing is coming back to America, bigtime. It's just coming back automated. Relatively few jobs are coming back with the manufacturing.
Hate to sound like a luddite, but what's a person to do for a job? Farming is automated, manufacturing is automated, even service industry jobs are becoming automated (self checkout at grocery stores, robotic stocking, brick and mortar retail dying out in favor of Amazon). Driving/shipping jobs are going to be automated.
And there just isn't much economic demand for lots of engineers and scientists and artists--a few of each can serve the entire planet and thus everyone who labors is trying to "supply" a few jobs with little demand for labor. And we can't all just doctor/nurse and sue each other. I don't see us making money entertaining each other either, there have to be people who can afford and pay for entertainment. Wages are going to crash, then what?
-PM
Developed countries don't need to promote population control - it happens by itself. Every developed nation except for the United States (which has large amounts of immigration) has a declining birth rate. And, yes, it is a problem for retirement schemes.
Americans won't stand for "slave wages" in Africa.
Most Americans are unconcerned about the working conditions of the people who make their products. Even those who express concern are often using it as a cover to push for protectionist policies that hurt the very people they claim to be helping.
They would boycott anything "made in Africa" because they'd fear the workers are slaves.
Most bonded labor (slavery) occurs in agriculture. Manufacturing jobs almost always result in a huge improvement over rural poverty. Such a boycott would be harmful and counterproductive.
Building a factory in most African countries is far too risky. Even if the wages were zero, you can't make a long term profit if the government nationalizes your factory. It's also not worth building anything in places where the government might decide to tax away or otherwise take the profits. Moving production to Africa won't be a trend until honest government prevails in Africa.
It's not really about genes, it's about education and economics. As women become more educated, they start to take control of their own reproduction, and that inevitably means lower birth rates. And as for economics, in undeveloped countries, a large number of kids is economically advantageous, as they serve as a work force for whatever business the family is engaged in. In developed nations, large numbers of children is typically an economic drain (since you're more likely to work for someone else as an employee), not a financial advantage, so there's pressure to have fewer children.
My mother and father both came from families of five children each. That generation had considerably fewer children themselves - around three on average. Children from those families (my generation) had fewer still, averaging about two. So, within my own extended family, I've seen the exact same trend that we're seeing nationally. As such, anecdotally, I'd have to disagree with your prediction, as I've seen evidence to the contrary across three generations now.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Haven't you heard? Manufacturing is coming back to America, bigtime. It's just coming back automated. Relatively few jobs are coming back with the manufacturing.
Hate to break it to you but manufacturing never left America. Ever. It's a popular meme to claim that the USA doesn't make anything anymore but it is not and never was ever true. The US manufacturing sector, by itself today if it were a country, would be one of the ten largest economies in the world by GDP. The only country with a manufacturing sector of similar size is China and by dollar value they are roughly the same size to within a percentage point or two. And China has only caught up in the last few years despite having 5X the population. China does a lot of the labor intensive manufacturing and the US does a lot of the capital intensive manufacturing. That proportion will change over time as wages change in both the US and China as well as in other places.
You are correct that the relatively proportion of jobs in certain types of manufacturing is going to fall similar to how it did for farming. But this is not a doomsday scenario. It means that labor pool is now available to do something else that previously was not possible. If we all still had to work on a farm then the internet would probably have never come about. If you use people to do what a robot can do, then you are necessarily wasting resources by not utilizing people to their fullest capability.
Hate to sound like a luddite, but what's a person to do for a job?
The exact same question has been asked at the start of every technology advancement and the answer is the same as it has always been. Something different. Probably something you are having a hard time even imagining right now. As an example you're complaining that we shouldn't have accounting software because it took labor and thus jobs out of accounting. Would you seriously argue that computers have eliminated jobs because we need fewer secretaries now? It's an absurd argument because it presumes that the amount of economically valuable work out there is fixed and not growing or growing too slowly.
Farming is automated, manufacturing is automated, even service industry jobs are becoming automated
Umm, there is PLENTY of valuable work that cannot be economically automated. I run a manufacturing company that does assembly work. There is NO automation that can economically replace what we do and none likely within my working lifetime. Not because the technology doesn't exist but because humans are more flexible and economic in plenty of circumstances. Automation is useful but the limits on it are economic rather than technical in most cases. If you need a small quantity of something produced, it is difficult or even impossible to economically automate that in most cases. Same with creative work. Same with complicated work. For automation to replace all people you will have to develop a robot or other automation that is as capable as a person AND less costly. We are no where close to that occurring.
Wages may not be inflated like they've gotten in the US in the last 50 years but that doesn't mean there won't be any work anymore. It just will be different than it was and some places (like the US) may experience a reversion to the mean on wages. I know that uncertainty is scary but the notion that automation is going to eliminate all jobs is just ridiculous.
Easy thing to say when you aren't the guy working 16 hours without a break making over-priced iShinies.
Yet, if you actually ask factory workers in poor countries what they want, one of their biggest desires is for LONGER HOURS. Many of them are rural migrants, often women, separated from their spouses and children. Their focus is on making as much money as possible, in the shortest time, so they can go back to their home village. They are not interested in TVs in the break room, spacious dormitories, or other things that YOU may think are important. Stop projecting your values and priorities onto people that you know nothing about.
Instead of looking at factory workers as unthinking drones, that need first-world do-gooders to decide what is best for them, perhaps you should consider what they have to say, about their own lives:
Do campaigns for “ethical supply chains” help workers?
The voices of China's workers
If Americans wanted to help the Third World out, they could eliminate their agricultural subsidies. That would lift most of Africa out of poverty in a single year.
The Elite China has no soft corner for their own brethren from the interior. They would happily out source and drive the wages down even further if they could get a few more yuans. Exactly like our US corporate titans who would out off shore everything to increase their income, and keep the income off shore to reduce taxes. Neither of them have a shred of kindness to rest of their own countrymen. It is them who are looking for low wages across the globe. They are as shortsighted as the oil men who triggered the Iraq war in 2003 hoping to lock in the Iraq oil for themselves. They may be able to start something, but they may not be able to control it very well.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Easy to say when you are, if the alternatives are starving on the street or working similar hours in a field for lower wages. Just because the jobs suck doesn't mean that they're not better than the available alternatives. The problem is that this used to be a stepping stone to a modern economy and is now just a stage when a country is exploited by companies that can easily move to the next target.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The problem is that this used to be a stepping stone
Factory wages in China are rising by 10-20% per year. That is far faster than wages grew in the west during our industrial revolution. So a factory jobs is not only still a stepping stone to a better life, but more so than ever before. They are going from rural poverty to a middle class life in a single generation.
just a stage when a country is exploited by companies that can easily move to the next target.
Because Mozambique has the same supply chain efficiency and infrastructure as Guangzhou? Sure. Good luck with that.
I expect they don't feel they can ask for more money per hour. They're left with only one option to earn more, which is to labor more.
This is what happens when there are a lot of jobs that don't require a whole lot of skill, or require skills that the employer can teach to nearly anyone, fairly quickly. All workers are replaceable, and there is no benefit to individually trying to make gains because one will just be let go. That's why unions came into being, because if everyone or nearly everyone was involved, then it's a lot harder for the employer to fire that vast a portion of the workforce without putting themselves out of business.
I'm not going to deny that unions have their problems too, but labor strife as business came into direct conflict with organized labor is why we have safer workplaces in the United States and overtime when exceeding forty hours for most physical labor jobs.
China is going through what the United States went through 80-150 years ago, and they're going through what the United States started going through heavily in the late eighties and nineties when outsourcing overseas started becoming commonplace. That's a tough spot.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
tbh though, do we really want to outsource our food production?
You have that backwards. The west over produces food, and dumps the surpluses onto third world countries at subsidized prices. This helps urban people, who tend to be better off, but hurts poor rural farmers, who cannot compete with western mechanization, yet have no alternative markets.
Free trade in agriculture will mean that America/Europe can focus on crops that benefit from high levels of mechanization, like corn and soybeans, while poor countries can focus on labor intensive crops like strawberries and mangoes. Everybody wins. This has already happened with agricultural trade between America and Mexico, helping farmers and consumers on both sides of the border. It could happen in Africa as well.
Another ignorant Westerner projecting her own values on a foreign society. Being paid "peanuts" in Western currency is actually quite a lot in Chinese yuan. It's certainly more than they could make back on the farm. Maybe we should actually talk to these people instead of assuming that we can hold opinions on their behalf?
Workers are mobile and they know it. Wages are up across the board in China, and not going down anytime soon. The workers will move across the street to a new factory at the drop of a hat. "We are holding a knife to their throats"? WTF? Are we in Bizarro World? Have you even been to China, or talked to a single worker? Who is "we"?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
For education and economics, 1000 years is a long time. At current rates of change, a very long time.
For Human genetic evolution, 1000 years is barely long enough to be noticed.
We will have worked out how to live sustainably on this planet, or how to expand to the stars, or all died off before human genetic changes of the kind you are talking about are a population growth issue.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
they are paid peanuts.
A typical factory wage in Shenzhen is about 2500 Yuan per month. The direct exchange rate for that is about $300, but the PPP is more like $1000, because basics like food, rent and transportation are far less expensive. In a two income household, that is about equivalent to $24k in purchasing power. That is not rich, but certainly is not "peanuts". It is a decent middle class income.
> "it's OK for a Chinese factory worker" to work in what we could consider to be inhumane conditions
I work for a multinational, and when I go into one of our JV plants, they're mostly indistinguishable from conditions in our Canadian, US, and Mexican plants. The only real differences are the prevailing wages and social security system which is not typically considered part of the wage, and in China, it's a huge additional cost because it's not just retirement social security but things like housing, etc.
They don't work much overtime, as our production and sales are predictable. Instead there are multiple shifts (more jobs for more people).
Google- and Apple-style transportation is free. Lunch is free (and quite good). Families are together at night and weekends.
While there are property bubbles in some of the famous big cities, one can still temporarily purchase a home in much of China are very low cost compared to say, middle America. Food is cheap. Consumers goods are cheap. Health care is cheap.
Life is good for these people.
--Jim (me)