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China Wants To Be a Top 10 Nation For Automation By Putting More Robots In Its Factories (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: China is aiming for a top-10 ranking in automation for its industries by 2020 by putting more robots in its factories, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said. China's push to modernize its manufacturing with robotics is partly a response to labor shortages and fast-rising wages. But the world's second-largest economy still has far lower robot penetration than other big industrialized economies -- just 36 per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2015, ranking it 28th among the world's most automated nations. By 2020, it aims to boost penetration to 150 per 10,000 workers, IFR said in a statement, citing Wang Ruixiang, President of the China Machinery Industry Federation. To help reach that goal, China aims for sales of 100,000 domestically produced industrial robots a year by 2020, up 49 percent compared with last year, the IFR said in a statement at an industry summit in Shanghai, where the Chinese federation's chief was speaking.
What could possibly go wrong?
Um, what kind of robots are these?
And yet Trump keeps telling his rubes that jobs are coming back. They are not coming back. Workers will be replaced by robots. How he's going to force companies to manufacture in the USA without adding legislation (because he said he would reduce legislation against corporations) is beyond me...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
OK, fine, but are there any social changes to go along with that, like say a 10 hour work week and guaranteed minimum standard of living?
And I want that '95 Chevy that you are buying from me to run like the best Ferrari you can imagine. Automation is what you do when machines are cheaper than people. And China isn't running out of people any time soon.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Watch out If any of the robots build themselves legs so they can climb to the top of the factory and jump off. They may have become sentient.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Human labor is now too costly to make America cost competitive with the rest of the world. A massive roll out of robots will be needed. Pity the poor humans who have been priced out of the workforce.
$30k/year for a human who works 8h/day, 5 days a week.
$30k/lifetime for a robot who works 24h/day, 7 days a week.
Who is going to buy all this stuff if they don't have jobs?
Because 600,000,000 sexually frustrated Chinamen that can't find wives because they can't find jobs is going to lead to a stable society.
But isn't their entire economy built upon their abundance of dirt-cheap labor? This would be incredibly disruptive to their entire way of life.
China has an endless supply of people that will work for next to nothing. You'd think they would be the last ones to be looking into robots.
If you are going to automate an entire factory then why would it matter where that factory is? If we are going to go down the fully automated track then the factories might as well get built locally.
It might not make sense at the present but you have to look at decades from now were most of the Western nations would have automated and will produce cheap crap themselves instead of importing them from China.
Millions of chinese worker now without jobs, seek employment abroad. ...
After millions of Chinese stole our jobs, Americans are now revolting against the government in order to kick all the Chineses out of the country and build a wall across both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans to prevent their entry again.
I think this is a mixture of forward thinking and xenophobia. China is a major importer of industrial robots, and Japan is a major exporter of industrial robots. http://www.worldstopexports.co...
For most basic manufacturing jobs cheap labor can't compete with good automation.
why use china robo factory when you can do the same in the USA with quicker and cheaper shipping + less risk of the 3rd shift making cheap knock offs.
So, what do we need them for then? We already make our own robots. I guess we've reached peak population finally. I also read that most millennials do not want children (no source, sorry). With good reason, I'd say.
Who is going to buy all this stuff if they don't have jobs?
And there lies the heart of the problem: purchasing power is coupled to having a job.
As technology marches forward, that coupling has to be let go. Or at least loosened. The majority of the population needs to have some purchasing power even if there's no job for them. Think basic income.
The alternative: (almost) everything automated, production equipment (including robots) in the hands of a few corporations & the billionaires at their top, with the rest of the population jobless / out of money (and in the extreme case: out of housing or food). Great recipe for say, a nice little civil war. As it has been several times in history.
The automation itself isn't a bad thing, it increases productivity so we can have more nice things or do fun stuff more of the time. But the fruits of that increased productivity should be divided somewhat evenly over people. If it ends up in the hands of a few you have a recipe for disaster.
The challenge with automation is what to do with the displaced workers. In Western societies, expectations for quality of life and income levels are already established as fairly high, which complicates discussions of replacing employment with a universal basic income. If you are faced with the transition from employment with a decent standard of living, to a UBI covering only the bare necessities of life, that doesn't look so attractive. While urban China is seeing the same trend, rural China not so much, and that's where many of the migrant workers that support the manufacturing industry are coming from. If your options are a life of back-breaking drudgery in the fields just to stay alive, or that same UBI, the choice suddenly looks a lot more attractive. The numbers are huge, but that is a scaling problem - if the numbers add up for one robot factory and 1,000 people, they will still add up for a million factories and a billion people.
It would be ironic if "communist" (in almost no sense of the word) China managed to pull off a UBI, but would also offer huge propaganda benefits for the Chinese Communist Party, and Chinese nationalism in general (a potent and growing force). For that reason alone I would not be surprised if the government is thinking along those lines.
Of course, then there's the question of what all those people do with their free time. Go ladders? Rioting in the streets to bring down corrupt local officials? Setting forth in rowboats to defend the nine-dash line?
Interesting times...
Universal health care and low cost education are needed in the USA.
and we need to get rid of the 2/4/6 year piece of paper education that we have here.
To all appearances, Chinese businessmen (as well as their government, of course) treat their own people like automatons to start with, not like human beings, so of course it seems like a no-brainer to dispense with as many troublesome, cost-ineffective, high-maintenance hoo-mans as possible. After all, it's completely unfair that these 'hoo-mans' demand pay, rest, bathroom breaks, etc! What do you mean, they aren't capable of working 24/7/365? Obviously they must be lazy and entitled and should be eliminated by nice, clean, quiet machines.
What the fuck, China? You have over a BILLION people, and you want to put as many of them out of work as possible? What the fuck do you plan to do, grind up half of them to feed the rest with?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
power for bots....
Because if we manufactured here in the US then we can't burn billions of tons of high carbon heavy grade crude sludge to power those container ships that fill the pacific with a slowly swirling morass of plastic for sea birds to choke on, etc;
Carry on...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
why use china robo factory when you can do the same in the USA with quicker and cheaper shipping + less risk of the 3rd shift making cheap knock offs.
Because in the USA you can't simply dump your waste in the stream behind the factory, power costs half a much, and there's far less regulation required to build such a factory.
Polyandry.
Not sure if the average chinese gal either naturally lubes enough, or would be down to keep a bottle next to the bed, but 2+ guys, besides giving her more opportunities to get off daily/have an emotional attachment to at least one, would also help ensure the household is more financially solvent than attempting either a two spouse working, or a stay at home and breadwinner spouse family being economically solvent.
It's too bad society has done such a good job demonizing it based on (same problem as the current economy!) privileged assholes using their privileged positions to abuse the underclass (be it workers, or in the case of polygamy/bigamy, young and naive women usually from a servile religious background.) Rebalance it so everyone male, female, or a mixed pairing can pool their resources sexually, emotionally, and economically, and all of a sudden the economically disenfranchised may be a lot less disenfranchised and a lot more aware than their monogamous abd easily distracted predecessors ever were....
It might not make sense at the present but you have to look at decades from now were most of the Western nations would have automated and will produce cheap crap themselves instead of importing them from China.
Automation won't keep manufacturing in China, maintaining parity with the west won't do it. Outsourcing is a royal PITA and there are many problems. There has to be a huge saving to offset the overhead and inefficiencies of outsourcing to make it economical. A wage gap was once part of the "savings" but that is shrinking and robots won't offer much savings either.
The other "savings" is basically that everything sold in China is at a 25-30% discount due to the "engineering" of the exchange rate. This may maintain outsourcing, not robots.
It might not make sense at the present but you have to look at decades from now were most of the Western nations would have automated and will produce cheap crap themselves instead of importing them from China.
But it still doesn't make sense at present. And my bet is that in the future, those Western nations will develop that newer automation and then build and deploy it in China because that's where the world's industrial base will be.
Recent history has shown us that an industrial base is quite mobile. Provide manufacturers an incentive to move that is also approved/tolerated by consumers and the base will move. What may keep manufacturing in China is the "engineered" exchange rate that make everything available at a 25-30% discount.
pffft. The cost of shipping? The cost of shipping is mostly dependent on the cost of fuel, and then the interest on the cost of the ship. Interest rates are real low right now, and ships can just travel more slowly to reduce fuel consumption. 20 mph too fast? 10 mph will only use a quarter of the fuel. You can do stuff like that when a few dozen people can operate a ship carrying 10,000 containers.
I'm quite skeptical of tariffs due to their history but some sort of reciprocal system seems to be needed. On a per nation basis low barriers to trade in both directions, high barriers to trade in both directions, but not low barriers in one direction and high barriers in the other. That is what really needs to be addressed, so its a little different than the historical protect a specific product/industry tariff. Its more of a protect an entire industrial base sort of thing.
I was with a girl last week, and she can vouch that we had 2-4 hours STRAIGHT with me only going soft because she pulled out to go get a drink or use the restroom. And based off HER experiences, there are more than a few guys who can last hours at a time (The average DOES seem to be 8-15 minutes, with 30-2 hour recovery time though, based on similiar questions to past partners. And guys wonder why most girls have underwhelming sexual abilities. It's as often their guy partner's shortcomings as their own!)
Agreed. But it's become pretty complicated. I don't think China has protectionist tariffs in place. What they have is artificially depressed currency. So effectively it's a high tariff on any imported goods. Plus the government also controls the value of certain items to try to gain a monopoly in that market. Look at rare earth minerals and solar panels. They driven the prices so low that it's not economical to mine most rare earths outside of China currently. Solar panels from China have put a lot of companies out of business.
You need to check you facts. Electricity cost in the USA is about half of China.
The CO2 from big container ships is also unelectable (per container), compared to the lorry that moves that container through the USA. The ship engines are big but they are slow-rev and very efficient. divided by the huge number of transported containers, it's just a few HP per container. These ships have also reduced there speed over the years, to reduce the amount of fuel needed to cross the oceans a lot. And lastly, all the big shipping companies are merging into just 3 very big companies, resulting in more scheduling options and fewer partially filled ships.
What says that globalism, as practiced & supported by his opposition, is inevitable? The fear of Trump shows that jobs can come back with his kind of citizen-first policies.
Those people who you call "rubes" are wiser for rejecting your clerisy - as the country has been worse for blindly accepting globalism. Citizens have rejected the false promises, especially those centering around trade, as they have only seen harm.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
How about not blindly following the UCLA revisionism of the Great Depression?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So when their 'artificial' depressed currency rose 30% the US's deficit got better didn't it? No it still got worse. It's a convenient excuse, but has no basis in reality. Just about any economist will tell you now the currency is within +- 5 % of fair value.
You spend more gas driving to the store to pick it up than it takes to send it 1/2 way round the world on a ship.
Kind of like how the US is forcing it's version of infinity-1 day copyrights on the world, to protect their entertainment industry.
Such a reciprocal system needs to take into account that one party is a lot poorer than the other. The current system of mostly free trade helps those poorer countries become a lot less poor. I think you need to do better than that.
Such a reciprocal system needs to take into account that one party is a lot poorer than the other. The current system of mostly free trade helps those poorer countries become a lot less poor. I think you need to do better than that.
Who says that can not be a consideration? Don't naively think reciprocal means "dollars", note that my post mentions "barriers" not "balance of trade" (i.e. dollars).
So when their 'artificial' depressed currency rose 30% the US's deficit got better didn't it? No it still got worse. It's a convenient excuse, but has no basis in reality. Just about any economist will tell you now the currency is within +- 5 % of fair value.
The deficit may be greater but the US dollar is stronger. Its the currency strength, not the deficit, that encourages/discourages trade. Just about anyone who had econ 101 will tell you that.
Don't naively think reciprocal means "dollars", note that my post mentions "barriers" not "balance of trade" (i.e. dollars).
I was naively thinking this was a selfish and futile attempt to protect developed world labor from reality. You know, I still think that is the case. The developed world doesn't need additional barriers, it needs economically healthier societies that among other things treat their employers better.
You did, when you said the barriers need to be reciprocal.
Don't naively think reciprocal means "dollars", note that my post mentions "barriers" not "balance of trade" (i.e. dollars).
I was naively thinking this was a selfish and futile attempt to protect developed world labor from reality. You know, I still think that is the case. The developed world doesn't need additional barriers, it needs economically healthier societies that among other things treat their employers better.
Again, you display a reading comprehension problem, arguing against a policy not being suggested. Again, from my original post: "some sort of reciprocal system seems to be needed. On a per nation basis low barriers to trade in both directions, high barriers to trade in both directions, but not low barriers in one direction and high barriers in the other."
Clues: (1) per nation basis (2) same level of barriers in both directions, i.e. "reciprocal".