Right, maybe EU shouldn't have let the German car makers get exception after exception to keep building legacy vehicles until China a actually figured out how to make the next gen cars.
Japanese and EU car makers also had all the time in the world to steal Chinese tech and engineer for EVs, instead they ignored it altogether.
Made in Germany used to be synonym of cheap and bad quality in the 19th century.
Made in Japan also used to be cheap crap invading American's markets.
This is just history repeating itself, you steal IP, make cheap knock-off, get good at it, start innovating.
For the record, GERMANY was notorious for this. Go back to British news pre-WW1 and you'll find they said the exact same things about Germany that they say about China now. "This Autocratic, collectivist-cultural threat to democracy is stealing our inventions and out producing us! We must stop them!"
This was a little over a century ago, it's not as long as you might think.
Turns out that growing industrial nations always steal knowledge from established industrial nations in order to get on even footing and/or overtake them. The US did it to Britain as well. They weren't even subtle about it. Hamilton straight up said that America needed to break British export bans on manufacturing tech in order to be a world power. His treasury department supported the illicit acquisition of British blueprints, machinery designs, whatever manufacturing secrets they could get their hands on. They recruited British and Irish textile workers and artisans, helped them smuggle this stuff out from their factories and emigrate to America.
The U.S. Patent Office under these policies granted monopoly rights to individuals who introduced vital machinery smuggled from Britain. It was way more blatant than anything we get from any country post-WTO.
Because they can only build something after stealing existing tech, their EV’s really only came about after Tesla moved into China. Sadly you want to do business in China you need to share everything with the govt.
Bullshit. China's EV dominance stems from advanced battery manufacturing (mainly the ability to make okay batteries at a very cheap price) that has been a focus of the country for around two decades. Tesla's gigafactory in Shanghai was built in 2019, by then an average workhorse BYD, despite having shorter range and fewer smart features than a Tesla Model 3, was much cheaper to buy and maintain.
Copying is a way to fast track learning. Everyone does it actually, they just ain’t so brazen about it because of stronger IP laws. But the Chinese are definitely ahead now and western countries are struggling to keep up.
We all first learn to play other people’s music and cover their songs before we start composing our own stuff. But make no mistake, the Chinese are genuinely innovating now.
I honestly agree with you, and anything otherwise is protectionism or mercantilism in disguise.
Ideas should be copied, and replicated globally because this is how we improve these ideas, and push forward our collective wellbeing as a species. The fact that China can produce cheaper EV models is proof of this in practice.
What Tesla, and what the US wants, is a total, global monopoly on a product so they can then dictate the market to extract maximum capital. They want techno-feudalism, and ironically it is the communist state that is undermining those efforts.
The EU and the US simply should have adapted. It is a straightforward competition but the problem with the West is it is innately tied into the liberal theory on politics which is an absolutism of the individual which informs everything from law, to economics. Rules on state aid are simply that - rules. They were decisions adopted on the basis of them being conducive to some abstract promotion of the individual. What we should have done is reevaluate that assumption and find a way to compete. The West is stuck in a crisis of imagination. We've built a very specific type of worldview and we cannot escape it.
Thank you. EU harvests what it has grown. Wellfare state became freeride state, regulating and taxing everything just to keep low value jobs highly paid. The EU will also never learn that people are not slaves to a government. Ah well, at least EU workers can feast on untaxed super wages and enormous cost bills they get for managing all their stupidity.
Sure, check out what Merkel did. I.e. in 2013 She interfered with EU emission regulations to help Mercedes and BMW when China was having survival of the fittest systems fast iterating electric cars. She was doing everything possible to protect VW and other German manufacturers in the name of protecting jobs and EUs green transition and emission rules were pushed and weakened all the time. In 2023 Germans secured last minute loophole to their ICE cars so they won't get banned entirely in 2035.
This is essentially corporate welfare, they were protected from the need of competing in the name of jobs preservation only to find out eventually that they have become legacy and tens of thousands of jobs will be lost because no one wants their cars anymore. She screwed over EU with her doubling down on fossils with Russia instead of sustain the pain and build out the renewables and nuclear like China did the same period.
Europeans should get used to the idea that companies need to be left to die out if they are not able to compete instead of kicking the can down the road and when everything eventually falls apart blame immigrants and poor people.
The problem with what you're describing is not corporate welfare, which isn't actually anything like the problem most people describe it to be.
What you're describing is a form of protectionism. And it's just as destructive as what you're saying - inefficient companies and systems are allowed to continue being inefficient without actually suffering market consequences for their failures. It's an attempt to keep money local, but it ends up hurting the local area in the end because it's a major market distortion.
This is basically the same logic Trump & Co uses for tariffs - local forcing good, blah blah. Canada has run a lot of protectionist policies (locally, not saying nationally) for a long and and it has substantially hurt them over time.
The issue that the world and Europe in particular will face against Chinese manufacturing is they have been playing this long game for a while. Europe is too high and mighty to do deals with questionable African leaders/countries. So China controls vast amounts of supply chains now. As someone in the exploration industry I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Good mining projects get put on hold because briefcases full of cash are getting flown in and palms greased. All of a sudden the project either stops or it remains in western hands and several Chinese shell companies enter the share registry and the plan suddenly changes to processing in China.
They can make cheap cars because they have secured the resources at source with the belt and road initiative.
Implementing large scale adoption of electric cars on the population at the cost it takes for German car companies to make them would be hugely costly. Like I said China mitigates the cost with state subsidies and full supply chain control. They have resources cheap because they debt trap the countries with the raw materials.
European corporations when they export manufacturing to China to claim profits: haha yes yes
European corporations when China builds itself up and becomes competition and not just slave labor: what the fuck? this is colonialism!!
It is interesting that capitalists claim that competitions drives innovation and keeps prices lower, but when capitalists meet real competition they constantly whine. I wonder what's that about.
Most European countries have lower median salaries than the United States. Sure they have a strong welfare state and universal healthcare, so you don't need as much money necessarily, but Americans still make a good amount more.
The strong welfare state and universal healthcare is basically funded by very high employee contributions. lose those jobs you are about to find out how much our welfare depends on middle class contributions.
Equally, the EU didn't have it's manufacturing hollowed out the same way. Partly cos the lower salaries meant the savings were less, and partly because the cheaper countries with easy export links to the EU joined the EU.
Labor costs don't matter much as long as you avoid labor intensive industries.
That link above shows that American manufacturing output per quarter this year is at about the same level as it was in 2005 adjusted for inflation. This is in spite of the fact that the manufacturing industry needs to employ about 2 million fewer people than we did back then.
South Korea and Taiwan both have large manufacturing industries despite having higher wages than the vast majority of countries on earth. Why? Because they focus on high margin industries that need a dozen college graduates rather than hundreds of dropouts per factory. Again, there's no reason Europe can't do the same.
If you're looking at it from that angle (particularly in the short term, ignoring automation and efficiency gains) you'll never make manufacturing boom again, any more than if you try to do everything you can to bring all the jobs that people had prospecting or tending to crops by hand.
You're being misled by averages, and averages tend to mask geographic impacts. In other words, if Boeing increases output by 1 plane, that masks $248m of plant closures in the Midwest.
If you could look at communities in the 1990s that had manufacturing and see them today, you would see a lot of factories in the 1990s which are now gone.
Also, automation is a red herring; if jobs were lost to automation instead of China, we would still see factories operating - but with less workers - and lots of things that still said "made in USA". We don't.
Automation leads inevitably to consolidation. When you make a machine that can replace 3 people’s jobs, what usually ends up happening is that one factory gets marginally bigger and 2 others close.
>if Boeing increases output by 1 plane, that masks $248m of plant closures in the Midwest.
So this means that, the best way to boost manufacturing is to focus on differentiated, high margin products where we have a competitive edge? Makes sense.
>if jobs were lost to automation instead of China, we would still see factories operating - but with less workers - and lots of things that still said "made in USA". We don't.
It's certainly a combination of the two. Heavily automated American factories are competing with heavily automated Chinese factories. And I judging things by whether or not you personally see "lots of things that still said "made in USA"." doesn't make sense.
Firstly, we consume a lot more shit than we did in decades past. But beyond that it exclusively focuses on durable goods sold to consumers which isn't the entire economy.
You're forgetting about that fact the we are the largest manufacturer of patent medicines. One region in Indiana is responsible for half of the world's orthopedic implants, we make about half of the world's MRIs, Micron and Intel both have multiple semiconductor fabs in America and have for decades, the vast majority of cars sold on the road are made in America, just to name a few things.
Actually I like that you mentioned airplanes because that's a big one, but so are airplane engines which come from different manufacturers. For example, GE Aerospace holds 14% of the jet engine market, while also being part of a 50/50 joint venture (CFM) with a company that has an additional 39% market share.
Despite China obviously seeing a domestic aerospace industry as a national security priority, their Chinese built COMAC jets that compete with Boeing have CFM engines built partially or fully in the United States.
We still manufacture a lot, but what we do make is often precisely the stuff you never see a label on it.
Agree with you except on one point, but it's just a nit.
>their Chinese built COMAC jets that compete with Boeing
Those jets don't compete with Boeing yet outside of China. They're not certified, they have low production rates, and (like you said already) they're reliant on foreign suppliers for critical systems, which would be a bottleneck if they needed to expand production to reach mass necessary to compete outside of the domestic market (assuming they could ever get them certified).
Yes, I meant in a proportion of the economy sense, not in an absolute sense. As a proportion of their economies, the EU (and Japan, and South Korea) have kept (and even grew) much more manufacturing.
One of the reasons the wages are lower in Germany is because employers pay the most of the cost of health ensurence to employees. The Healthcare in Germany is not free.
Also, in Germany the welfair system put a lot of pressure to make unemployed people to accept any low pay wage with the threat of losing the benefit, even when the job pays too little to make people free from welfair system, which is annoying burocratic to remain in.
Why employed and unemployed people in the US have health care debts then? And why people in the US work in more than one job to become able to pay rent?
The first is because health care is more expensive and less predictable in America. Having health insurance doesn't mean that your healthcare bills are necessarily affordable.
The second is that there's a huge gap between incomes, not even including our oligarchs. There are enough DINKs making six figures in big cities to bring the average up despite there being more people homeless or in extreme poverty.
If you ever visit an American city you will see this visually. It's extremely common to see somebody with a Rolex and an Arct'eryx jacket, a woman with a Louis Vuitton bag, and a homeless person just on the same train car.
That means Healthcare in the US doesn't cover the all Healthcare bills like in Germany. But yet employers pay the same as in Europe for employees healthy care? And still the wages are higher?
So if there are more people in the extreme poverty and poverty, that means the wages in the US is nit higher in Europe, except for some people in the city making the statistics on avarege higher. Did I understand correctly?
And if there is more people in homelessness, how can that be if you say that the wellfair is the same in Germamy?
In Europe it is also common to see somebody with expensive brand clothes in the same bus or train where a homeless is sleeping drunk.
Yeah but again our welfare state is so superior to the point where if you look at major life metrics likes years alive, healthy years, obesity, education the uk would rank first when compared to the us. It’s really what do you get for the wage and US us is a mile behind the western world but they get the illusion of number big to make themselves feel good.
That's false. Japan for example, beats UK easily regarding years alive, healthy years, obesity etc etc but Japanese gov spends WAY LESS money on welfare per capital compared to UK. So your logic is just false. Same for Singapore. Singaporean gov spends less money on welfare per capital compared to UK when yet, beats UK easily in terms of years alive, healthy years, obesity etc etc.
That’s because Japan and Singapore are also a lot better than the us 😂 just google images ‘if the uk were a us state’ literally the first one shows how the uk mogs the us and yeah a lot of other countries also do
There a reason why basically 0 Europeans migrate to the US while us mostly receive those from the third world
You made a false claim that more welfare spending equals longer healthy years and less obesity and I used facts to prove you were lying. And instead of providing any logical rebuttal, you just strawman because you have no fact. Good to know 😂😂
Also, data proves that more Europeans migrate to US than vice versa.
No I said we have superior welfare spending and superior life length, I did jot say they correlated although they quite clearly are. But factually you’re wrong. Everyone knows the us is far fatter than everywhere in Europe. Even in the article you cite, 10% of us migration is from the eu and rapidly falling with the majority coming from the third world to the us. You literally fact mogged yourself furthering the point that literacy and numeracy rates are also far higher in the eu 😂
>our welfare state is so superior to the point where if you look at major life metrics likes years alive, healthy years, obesity, education the uk would rank first
This is what you literally wrote. Seems like you don't understand what you wrote. It literally connects stronger welfare to healthy years and obesity and I used facts to prove that's a lie.
I see that you still have zero fact to rebutt my examples with Japan and Singapore. Until you can provide one single fact, nothing you say matters. And the article I shared shows that more Europeans immigrate to US than vice versa and you have zero fact to counter that.
Clearly not a lie though is it…
But that was the point lots of countries are superior to the US, again you mugged yourself off. Just because wage high doesn’t mean society good.
The average Americans can’t even afford a passport 😂 let alone live abroad also they struggle with the language barrier again with the average American being far less literate in English let alone other European languages there’s not many places which would accept them. Obviously there a lot more Europeans who don’t have other same barriers.
Yeah, European and American firms have been exploiting Chinese labor for decades. I visited a clothing factory in Binzhou, Shandong province, and they weren’t idiots. They knew that the underwear they were making for about $2.50 was being sold in Switzerland for 35 francs a pair.
Now that the Chinese factories are starting to capture some of the value other than the ten cents they were allowed to make by the EU and US firms, now it’s a problem.
They don’t just constantly whine, they actively run from competition and look for anticompetitive ways to beat their competition. Which is why “capitalism loves competition” is hilarious.
It is worth remembering that for a very long time now, if you wanted to sell anything in China without incurring punishing tariffs, you had to produce the product as part of a 51% Chinese joint venture, including for products that were 100% invented and customarily produced outside of China.
We're not talking about the plucky underdog "building itself up" here, we are looking back on decades of coerced technology transfer in only one direction. Could corporations have acted differently? Arguably, leaving the Chinese market to your competitors even in the short term will only hasten your own demise, so a boycott of the 51% rule would have required a level of collusion among companies that traditionally we dislike intensely.
I really find it funny how redditors still whine about "coerced technology transfer" as if they took it from you. Buddy, the corporations decided that giving chinese companies these technologies was better than paying you a proper salary. They knowingly decided that you're worthless and you should be paid less, and you're here now complaining about technology transfers as if you created something.
I don't get why you have such loyalty to corporations, it's just peasant brain. I personally give zero shits about that, i believe in common prosperity for everyone, but it seems that people like you want prosperity only for a few rich people that own everything.
It looks like you didn't get to my second paragraph before responding, especially the last sentence? Your assumption about my motivation indicates it. And you know what happens when you assume.
>
Could corporations have acted differently? Arguably, leaving the Chinese market to your competitors even in the short term will only hasten your own demise, so a boycott of the 51% rule would have required a level of collusion among companies that traditionally we dislike intensely.
>you had to produce the product as part of a 51% Chinese joint venture, including for products that were 100% invented and customarily produced outside of China.
How the hell is that coercion? Don’t like the condition? Don’t enter. It’s that easy. You know what’s actually coercion? Showing up with armies and gunboats forcing countries to open up. You remember who actually did that shit?
> Could corporations have acted differently? Arguably, leaving the Chinese market to your competitors even in the short term will only hasten your own demise, so a boycott of the 51% rule would have required a level of collusion among companies that traditionally we dislike intensely.
Sure, if that’s what it takes to compete. Good living quality and good working conditions are usually earned through higher efficiency and technical advantages
LMAO. you're incredibly dumb. Chinese factory workers normally work 56+ hours/week and have much less holidays than European workers and also have less workers' protections. It's much easier to get fired in China than Europe.
So you want Europe to increase working hours and cut labor protection laws and make firing workers easier. So you want hyper capitalist system. LMAO this idiot.
I don’t think it’s necessary to adopt Chinas exact model, but they will need to move broadly in the direction of “be more efficient with labor and energy”.
Not really true. The investment in education and higher education is really really low on many EU countries such as mine.
Schools are understaffed and failing to catch up, European public R&D spending has risen in name only. Exclude emergency EU funds, and core national investment is flat or down in real terms—public research stays stuck at pre-2008 levels.
Privately-run schools (minban) account for roughly 35% of all student enrollments across basic education in China while it's about 10% in US.
Why are Europeans so uneducated and believe made up stuff about China like you do? It's so weird. I'm originally from China and Chinese don't really belief made up fake stuff about Europe because Chinese are more interested in facts.
Thanks for the sources, I stand corrected, I thought otherwise. Anyway I am talking about Europe and public education not working as well as 25 years ago because of underfunding.
Mercedes-Benz to be one of the most over engineered vehicles in the world, so it got international standing. Now it isn't even competitive in tech, quality or pricing.
Education, science and innovation is exactly what nations that are failing competitively should do.
You don't turn the boat around by trying a short term fix. This is an entire mentality shift back to normality instead of profits over all.
You will find that Asians are far more concerned about the idea of "Asians deciding their own things, not being lectured by some white Western government" than you imagine; Any nonsense about 'democracy/dictatorship' cannot change one thing: Asians have a deep memory of what Europe once did. Do you think Japanese people really consider those Americans who occupy, coerce, and suppress them by force as their friends? Their relationship is at best a forced choice.
I have noticed one thing: it seems that you really see 'democracy/dictatorship' as the only solution to all the problems in the world. Whether good or bad, the global South does not believe in your idea.
It's a good idea to depend on China to manufacture commodity type componentry. Do you really care who made the alternator in your BMW? BMW should focus on the features that distinguishes BMWs. The alternator is not one of them and should be sourced from China. Likewise the glass bottle for your favorite Cognac or Scotch. Do you really know or care that it was made in China? Of course not. You are buying the brandy. You don't care about the bottle's manufacture. Or the GLP-1 precursor to Ozempic. Do you care that it came from China? Of course not. Almost all pharma precursor comes from China. The important thing is that Novo Nordisk is making huge profits with Ozempic , and China is just making peanuts selling the precursor.
Europe should have state ran industries instead of making everything coming from China more expensive in hopes that something will magically change. European nations should stop giving tax breaks and subsidies in hopes someone will do something, european nations should have state sponsored industries, the state should invest directly in building complete supply chains, train people, and stop allowing capital owners to monopolize everything.
Instead we have neoliberals that are constantly doing austerity and fencing everything in order to maximize profits. We're not even doing protectionism properly, except for the car industry and even then we're eating dog shit.
Literally one of the things the west whines about the most regarding China is how, many of the industries are subsidized by the state. Also, in China at the end of the day, the billionaires do as the state tells them to. Meanwhile, in the west, politicians do what the billionaire oligarchs tell them to do.
So you want an authoritarian state controlled private sector that does answer to anyone but the state oligarchs?
Let's put this way, here on an American online forum you can still discuss and protest about those "billionaires who owned the government." Do you want to try to do the same on any Chinese forums about the members of red families that own or controll most of China's private sector? Even mentioning their names would put you in jail.
>So you want an authoritarian state controlled private sector that does answer to anyone but the state oligarchs?
Don't be silly. I want a democratic state that controls various private sectors to various degrees, that answers to the electorate (a concept very alien to the US, as I understand). And while I'm at it, I also want a private sector that is itself a lot more democratic.
USoids think that it's authoritarianism if billionaires don't have an unrestricted right to rape children and the economy.
When China does certain things well, yes. There's all sorts of good things that the Chinese government does that can be replicated to various degrees, without actually going full authoritarian.
It's like, if I said I wanted to have freedom of speech at the levels that the US has (which is still one of the best things about the US), and you asked me if I that means I also wanted to have the state sanctioned mental illness that is the 2nd amendment? Obviously not.
Things you said are false and lies and that's why you got downvoted to oblivion. It is China that actually gives out the largest amount of corporate subsidies in the world. And it is China that actually has much LESS labor protection and workers' welfare compared to EU. Normal Chinese workers work incredibly long hours with less holidays compared to EU workers. Again, you need to stop lying about stuff like that.
Let's not pretend China was the plucky capitalist that could in all this.
They have done lots of things well, but didn't just figure everything out on their own. They used forced technology transfer agreements, espionage and insider theft to catch up, and once caught up, they then make it very hard for the western company to continue to sell in China, both in terms of official regulations and unwritten targeting of the non-Chinese company.
Also, you are not just competing against a Chinese company now, you are competing against the chinese state, who can and will subsidise a loss-making venture until they are the last man standing.
That is what they have a problem with.
Buddy don't even get me started on how little i give a fuck about forced technology transfers, espionage and other shit like this. I believe in common prosperity for everyone, not just some people.
Furthermore do you think you're special for knowing this? Every CEO, every factory owner knew this was the case and still chose to move manufacturing to China because they cared about profits. They traded research because they didn't want to give you a fair wage. These CEOs also knew that the companies would manufacture cheap goods for domestic consumption, they weren't planning on competing domestically with Chinese companies because China was a poor country and they couldn't profit as much. So i don't know why you feel a weird loyalty towards corporations that only seek profits.
I wasn't debating any of what you said. I was challenging the notion that this was "real" competition to quote the comment, eg. innovation, better business, when it wasn't.
Interesting you say you want common prosperity though. If you do, you need to incentivise wealth creation. If you can steal anyone's intellectual property and you can steal theirs (no matter which country is doing it) without consequences, does the incentive to create better goods and services go up or down in your opinion?
So long as innovative people can still make a solid salary, they're still gonna innovate even without the promise of infinite money. Well paying state funded research jobs can go a long way.
There are many valid criticisms of the UK and its history to be made, I can admit and agree, but it's a very weak whataboutism tactic to use this to try to deflect criticism of China. I could do the same to you, but I'm better than that. Try harder.
I am sure in some cases things were agreed before entry as the price of doing business, but in many instances, what is expected is only known once the company has invested and made inroads into the Chinese markets, then they get hit with requirements, eg. must hand over source code as part of review/audit, to win contracts you must partner with a local firm, to get this subsidy you must actually do this etc.
You aren’t allowed to make inroads without a Chinese partnership. The rule is posts on the door. Nobody got trapped, but feel free to actually examples as opposed to relying on your imagination.
The insinuation that the chinese government is upfront and 'posts the rules on the door' is laughable.
Anyway, back to the list
Google - Chinese govt. cyberattacks Google and many others in Operation Aurora
Danone - local producer Wahaha secretly built factories to produce the exact same products that Danone made.
Multiple solar panel suppliers - initially exported solar panels to China when China didn't kno how to make them. China reverse-engineered them and flooded the market with a huge number of panels funded by state subsidies.
Alstom - high speed rail joint venture. The Chinese learnt everything they could, then stopped awarding contracts to Alstom.
ARM - ARM China ran as a rogue entity for years.
Uber - chinese app Didi favoured by local government regulations over foreign competitor.
Acting as if these industries in EU and U.S are not heavily subsidized by government and don’t espionage against each other all the time as well. The sheer hypocrisy cracks me up all the time.
Sounds like every big VC company such as Uber or WeWork. Almost all of them are free to run at a loss year after year for the sake of growth, and any sort of a business plan to transition to a sustainable business boils down to "we'll either figure it out later or get bought out"
> Sounds like every big VC company such as Uber or WeWork. Almost all of them are free to run at a loss year after year for the sake of growth, and any sort of a business plan to transition to a sustainable business boils down to "we'll either figure it out later or get bought out"
There is no problem with this strategy. The point of capitalism and VC funding is that they are the ones who lose if they get this bet wrong. If they don't have a path to profitability, they won't be bought out because the buyers are not stupid. So if they're making the wrong bet about growth vs income, it's only them that loses.
Status quo has been comfy for a really really really long time. That’s what. Capitalism hasn’t been innovative for quite some time. The fact so many can feel what a company does before they do it because the masters degree in business play book has been played out so hard where enshitification is the standard play to make more money. Not improve the product and be competitive, which was the whole point of capitalism to work for everyone
China is not free market capitalist though. They heavily manipulate their currency to keep their goods cheap, they provide vast subsidies to their companies, they refuse to let western companies operate freely in their country, they actively steal industrial IP and they have extensive tariffs on goods imported form the west.
The sooner Europe takes its own measures to counter this nonsense the better it will be for them. The only way to counter currency manipulation is to increase tariffs on Chinese goods and I'm sure that will happen soon. They also need to start limiting the freedom of Chinese companies to operate freely in Europe, so that both sides are on a level playing field.
all of what you said is implemented to some extent by all of the global players. the counterparts you are defending are doing damaging stuff in areas you’re overlooking. get off your high horse
anyhow ok sry about whataboutism, even though the headline is too vulnerable for criticism. i wanted to point out to the most ‘righteous’ here they don’t have a leg to stand on.
ok, so you’re unsatisfied abt the practices they’re engaged in. next steps? more ecotaxes?
If you look into anyones history you'll find atrocities, if we use the past to justify future we will never come anywere. But that's exactly what China is doing, trying to frame itself as a developing nation still and no regard for the environment.
The western world are no saints, but that's no excuse for China to act even more shitty. At least the west have democracy and free speech, China is basically ruled by one person, but still can't be decent.
We also do currency manipulation, we also provide subsidies to our companies, we also steal IP, and we have tariffs on goods imported from China. So it's really weird and pathetic to focus on China as if these are problems.
Europe will never take measures to fix things, we will just make everything coming from China more expensive in hopes that by miracle something will change. The problem is we don't have government run industries, we don't have government policies to focus on industries, we're not funding the education and training for industries so we lack expertise, we don't have capital control the same way China does. So all we're going to do is push for laws that carve out China specifically without mentioning China and everything will be more expensive.
False equivalence, China's scale, centralization and direct coordination between state-owned banks, provincial governments and private enterprises is on an entirely different magnitude.
Not even close comparable with the western nations intervention in central bank interest rate or occasional subsidies.
>China is not free market capitalist though. They heavily manipulate their currency to keep their goods cheap, they provide vast subsidies to their companies, they refuse to let western companies operate freely in their country, they actively steal industrial IP and they have extensive tariffs on goods imported form the west.
All of these are domestic issues within their own country. Countries should be able to be free to make their own laws beyond human rights abuses.
And if it's such a powerful strategy, why doesn't the west do the same?
Just replying to your one question: why don’t other countries do this?
The answer is 1) some do, like Germany has policies that favor exports, but not as much as China and 2) these policies lower standards of living for people in China. So basically what you’re proposing is for the rest of the world to lower their living standards in order to compete with China on exports.
Really, the expense of shipping and difficulty of having that complex a supply chain often negates most of the cost savings from manufacturing in China in the first place.
Why do you think Hyundai makes cars in America despite south Korea having lower wages? Because the additional amount you'd spend shipping it here is more than the amount you'd spend on American labor.
One thing China did extremely well (though countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan Singapore and the United States to some degree did this as well) was maintain their manufacturing industry by reducing inefficiencies. While their labor costs rose they incentivized automation heavily, which meant Chinese companies were still the best option for many manufacturered goods even if labor costs are double that of Vietnam, Malaysia or India.
The American manufacturing industry has been doing alright for years despite constant fear mongering. It's not because of tariffs, it's because of automation. Anybody who thinks American manufacturing is suffering as a whole is almost always under the impression that the number of manufacturing jobs is representative of how much we're manufacturing as a country.
There's no reason that Germany can't build more highly automated factories like the United States and China.
Did you read the article? In it, someone argues that this competition is not on fair market terms. Would it then not be more productive for you to refute this, if you wish to show that this is a case of the famous ‘capitalist wants to have his cake and eat it too’?
The issue is a historical one. Competition on 'fair market' terms is plainly not something that European or North American business elites were interested in once we moved to a more a global economy. Instead of competing and innovating at home, depending on Chinese manufacturing became a norm to lower costs and pump share prices. Now that these firms have to deal with the consequences of their own actions, they are crying foul for circumstances they ultimately helped create.
Those eminent leaders of tomorrow really didn't have any foresight beyond a quarterly earnings and stock performance report.
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote, I just don’t see how this makes current concerns about an undervalued yuan or differing environmental protections from European industry wrong or hypocritical?
It's definitely not wrong in the sense that it's incorrect. It's more so that any business hawk of late yestercentury would have cautioned against mass globalization of manufacturing supply chains. Our current business elite didn't heed that advice and seeing them suddenly reverse course when they were the architects of the problem is super nervy and two-faced. That's what I think people are taking issue with here.
It's a 200 word article, of course i read it. There's really nothing to refute, he understands why they can't compete and they still blame China for building their supply chain and not just being a provider of raw materials. He recognizes that there are tariffs on imported steel from China which makes the finished products uncompetitive with Chinese finished products, yet instead of demanding the EU invests in steel factories he's complaining that China is "colonizing the supply chain"
Nothing here is China's fault, yet this is how it's framed because China dared to build it's supply chain and become independent so now they're providing competition.
I’d say that if you want to frame this purely as a capitalist getting hit by the free market he praises, you should probably explain how he is wrong about differing standards of environmental protection and undervaluing of the yuan.
What did we do to really protect European industry all these years? We let dinosaurs keep chugging along and tailored laws to help them because they employed a lot of people. Sometimes maliciously, trying to keep competition out.
When China was going all in in new technology we tied our supply chains to an unreliable energy provider and made our finished products unnecessarily complex, expensive and unrepairable with silly mandates.
China comes out, gives the consumer things they've been asking for at prices they could actually afford to pay and now all hell breaks loose. In the mind of those who got comfy staying still, it's the fault of the Chinese who didn't "know their place and keep making low value junk while we profit from higher margins". We were fine having the Chinese making the "low value" stuff and acting like being the pinnacle of engineering was a god-given right that would never go away.
No tariffs or legislation can compete with competence. But like every time in human history when this happens, instead of accepting the situation and fixing the core issues we will scream, protest, try to stop it, fail, fall to populism, damage ourselves and eventually accept it long after it has come to pass.
>What did we do to really protect European industry all these years? We let dinosaurs keep chugging along and tailored laws to help them because they employed a lot of people. Sometimes maliciously, trying to keep competition out
Sometimes I honestly wonder why we even bother having governments when this shit happens so often lol.
It’s like anarcho-capitalism, but with the added benefit of having to pay taxes towards politicians salaries…
Colonialism is when you the country you exploited for increased profits no longer needs a western manager to run their manufacturing. Fitting that China is the leading cause for the European century of humiliation.
Historical colonialists are surprised to learn that colonialism sucks. While their corporations want to have the cake while eat it, too.
Time to invest in into your own people, build your own supply chain, and don’t outsource everything for marginal profit. Maybe after that you can compete with quality.
People argue labor cost, but a lot of Chinese factories are “dark factories” now with minimal human labor. Europe absolutely could build Chinese-style dark factories, but no. They don’t, because they haven’t invested anything into training their people how to set up them and run them efficiently.
Dark factories aren’t entirely just machines, in fact a lot of the suppliers and car makers in China employ tens of millions of people.
We haven’t hit 100% automation in those factories and jobs.
Where China has the advantage is cheap electricity, specialized manufacturing knowledge/niche, little bureaucracy for large investors (especially for domestic companies), and also hyper advanced logistics chain that outmatches the entire world.
This is where the savings are, in Europe they need to fix
The energy crisis, China is nearing an energy advantage of nearly 5 to one when it comes to how cost efficient it is.
Bureaucracy: Europe is filled with red tape, especially between states. Europe needs to standardized its procedures and policies between countries.
Logistics: Europe actually does really well here, especially in Germany and Northern Europe. But they’re still not ahead of China. Europe needs to continue to improve its logistics chain.
Did Europe complain about itself "colonizing" the supply chain when it was selling cars to China hand over fist 10 years ago? Or Is it only bad if you start losing?
How the turn tables. Europe and the US get no sympathy from me when other people steal their jobs and resources.
Or when they suffer heatstrokes. That's just the find out part of the deal. The rest of us have been finding out though you were the ones that fucked around for centuries.
19th century comes to Europe in reverse it seems. China took notes of what they have faced in the Century of Humiliation, and repays it back with soft power.
If Europe wants to save itself from this mess, they have to reduce their purchasing power. Either reducing wages or devaluing the currency. However the other part is to reduce input costs. Especially transportation and energy. So in order to do that, they need to seek peace with Russia, re-engage energy trade with BRICS and rebuild atomic power in the continent (looking at you, Germany).
It's all about input costs now. China perfected this art while Europe have let themselves be super expensive to the world.
This is what happens when you bet on big businesses. Such corporations form monopolies and protect themselves from competitors through regulations. They don't want to innovate because they already have the market share. Welcome to a world where you cannot do anything as an entrepreneur: build a house, open a company, or simply start a restaurant. Everything is overregulated as fuck through permits, licenses, and educational requirements.
But that's in the past; right now, we have people who, even if given full freedom, wouldn't engage in economic activities. Why? Because they were raised by parents who worked in big factories. The current generation is lazy; they don't know how to compete, invent, or be entrepreneurs.
The government can only bet on the next generation, and only if they open markets, remove bureaucracy, and ban TikTok.
In any case, the nearest future will be a cold shower for EU. But making right decisions right now, will give next generations a chance.
This is what happens when you bet on big businesses. Such corporations form monopolies and protect themselves from competitors through regulations. They don't want to innovate because they already have the market share. Welcome to a world where you cannot do anything as an entrepreneur: build a house, open a company, or simply start a restaurant. Everything is overregulated as fuck through permits, licenses, and educational requirements.
But that's in the past; right now, we have people who, even if given full freedom, wouldn't engage in economic activities. Why? Because they were raised by parents who worked in big factories. The current generation is lazy; they don't know how to compete, invent, or be entrepreneurs.
The government can only bet on the next generation, and only if they open markets, remove bureaucracy, and ban TikTok.
In any case, EU will have dark years in the nearest feature. But making right decisions right now, may open a path for next generations.
Europe talking about China being a “colonizer” is rich af… lol, the cope is so bad when the west can’t compete. It’s pretty pathetic to get beaten at their own game, with their rules. Of course they’ll just try to change the rules but it’s over…
The fact that it’s over though isn’t China, after the west lost the role of exploitation of their colonies, it just focused on exploitation of their own citizens for the benefit of the ultra wealthy. Instead of helping their citizens, they did at one point, instead they made life harder for their average citizen with rising costs and exorbitant profiteering by their elites. All the profits went to the ultra rich, while the average citizen barely kept up with inflation. In fact, their incomes started shrinking to the real inflation, making life harder and harder.
Now the west is looking for a scapegoat for their citizens to blame, rather than actually looking inward to them own failures and broken social contracts and eating the rich.
China is still massively suppressing the yuan. EU still looking sad and raising their finger ever higher.
If EU industry was merely uncompetetive, we'd just get poorer, but that's not what's happening. We are flooded by artificially cheap consumer goods while China buys up massive amounts of debt and does as much FDI as it can get away with.
Trump is mostly right on this. Accidentally, but still.
I don’t think that’s fair. China is more competitive for legitimate and illegitimate reasons. China stole a lot of IP from EU and USA through joint ownership requirements, abuse of patent systems, and flat out intellectual theft. China also manipulate its currency and subsidies its companies far beyond infant-industry type considerations.
But China also had much more complex manufacturing ecosystems and a stronger culture of hard work and competitiveness than EU.
If EU only focuses on then illegitimate advantages, it will lose in the long run.
A trade imbalance needs the one in surplus to accumulate currency, debt or foreign investment ... it can be no other way. Why are the doing so for an uncompetitive economy? To make it more so, hollow it out.
China manufacturing components cheaply, is GOOD for the EU. Let's say China can make zippers and belt buckles cheap. Guess who benefits from that? The Italian luxury goods makers who can now focus on producing more handbags and designer clothes and make more profits. The profit margins are all in the final product and product branding. Cheap componentry is a blessing to European manufacturing.
A lot of Western hate here in the comments. The Chinese businesses are no better than the Western ones.
Suddenly we forgot about child labour in Shein factories, poor working conditions in BYD's factories, and the whole 9/9/6 working culture in Chinese society (pushed by Chinese corporations).
Tbh I grew up in California and interned at a Chinese factory. It was chill. We got to have a nap after lunch and everything including vacations were paid for. They paid for our hotels also during a company outing. Cafeteria lunch was free too. They were complaining about the lunch how it was “low quality” lol but they’ve never tried us school cafeteria lunches lolol. Literally rice, vegetables, meat etc. same thing I would eat at like a Panda Express.
Are you saying you interned at a Chinese factory in California? Or that you traveled to China for an internship at a factory? Those are two very different things.
If lax labour/environmental laws are all that’s needed for success one has to ask: why are poorer countries with less regulation not gaining on China?
Clearly they’re doing something other than just a DGAF attitude to workers and the planet
Lots of countries subsidise their parts of their economy, I think the way in which China hands out subsidies matters a lot. They’re not just handing out free money to the established players
and western companies also do it when setting up in bangladesh as well as slavery conditions they have also been caught red handed across african mines with their mining companies, it is just a equal playing game, as a bangladeshi you pick who does you better
Well its because you are clinging to an economic model that doesnt appear to work in the face of economic onslaught from China. When something isn't working you have to ask what are the costs of the change and find something that delivers lower costs to benefits ratio.
China has serious problems domestically and they need a welfare state to deal with it. Rather than build that welfare state they are attempting to leach of the the stability provided by the US Europe Japan and South Korea.
We singularly nor collective can support a Singapore style economy in China we dont have the capacity to allow that much free riding on our systems. Ergo you'll need to find a way to slam the cost of what China is doing back onto them.
Not gonna be easy because you're stuck between bad outcomes and you have to decide which mitigates the costs over the medium to long term whilst you eat the short term cost during structural adjustment. Not fun but let's face it China wont change until they have no other choice but to change.
Create a plan to cut off Chinese imports and shift manufacturing back. It’s that simple. We shouldn’t trade with countries we can’t compete on labor costs with
Maybe work to reduce labour costs in your own countries by bringing down exorbitant costs of living? Limit rents, help house prices become affordable, bolster public spending on healthcare and education. Y'know, the stuff China has been doing since day one of the revolution.
icankillpenguins | 23 hours ago
Right, maybe EU shouldn't have let the German car makers get exception after exception to keep building legacy vehicles until China a actually figured out how to make the next gen cars.
Roxylius | 19 hours ago
Germany and Japan built factories all across the world, not just China. How come it’s only being “figured out” or “stolen” in China?
heikici | 16 hours ago
Japanese and EU car makers also had all the time in the world to steal Chinese tech and engineer for EVs, instead they ignored it altogether.
Made in Germany used to be synonym of cheap and bad quality in the 19th century.
Made in Japan also used to be cheap crap invading American's markets.
This is just history repeating itself, you steal IP, make cheap knock-off, get good at it, start innovating.
KahnAndDon | 17 hours ago
For the record Japan was notorious for this. They have fewer inventions than one might think.
LonelyPermit2306 | 17 hours ago
For the record, GERMANY was notorious for this. Go back to British news pre-WW1 and you'll find they said the exact same things about Germany that they say about China now. "This Autocratic, collectivist-cultural threat to democracy is stealing our inventions and out producing us! We must stop them!"
This was a little over a century ago, it's not as long as you might think.
KahnAndDon | 16 hours ago
I lived in Japan for 6 years, so I knew more about their history. Wasn't aware of Germany being the same.
Japan sent scouts around the world to determine who was the best at what and would copy and improve on their discoveries.
Ok-Budget3225 | 14 hours ago
Copy and improve is what all human beings have done since the beginning of time.
FuraidoChickem | 11 hours ago
When white ppl do it it’s competition. When Asian ppl do it it’s theft
sesamerox | 46 minutes ago
considering ‘we’re better at literally everything’ could it be any other way? /s
MathematicianTop9519 | 7 hours ago
Turns out that growing industrial nations always steal knowledge from established industrial nations in order to get on even footing and/or overtake them. The US did it to Britain as well. They weren't even subtle about it. Hamilton straight up said that America needed to break British export bans on manufacturing tech in order to be a world power. His treasury department supported the illicit acquisition of British blueprints, machinery designs, whatever manufacturing secrets they could get their hands on. They recruited British and Irish textile workers and artisans, helped them smuggle this stuff out from their factories and emigrate to America.
The U.S. Patent Office under these policies granted monopoly rights to individuals who introduced vital machinery smuggled from Britain. It was way more blatant than anything we get from any country post-WTO.
Open_Pollution_8038 | 11 hours ago
Ahh and how did that work out for everyone?
LonelyPermit2306 | 11 hours ago
"pre-WW1" says it all, doesn't it lol
Open_Pollution_8038 | 11 hours ago
Haha yessir
It’s almost like history rhymes and people refuse to hear it
Unhappy-Exchange-771 | 18 hours ago
Because they can only build something after stealing existing tech, their EV’s really only came about after Tesla moved into China. Sadly you want to do business in China you need to share everything with the govt.
Roxylius | 17 hours ago
Well, china is about to build EV factories in Hungary. Why dont you recopy them?
Ok-Budget3225 | 14 hours ago
Nonsense. Warren Buffet invested in BYD back in 2008 or so. Tesla went to China because the Chinese EV market was exploding.
Defiant_Tap_7901 | 17 hours ago
Bullshit. China's EV dominance stems from advanced battery manufacturing (mainly the ability to make okay batteries at a very cheap price) that has been a focus of the country for around two decades. Tesla's gigafactory in Shanghai was built in 2019, by then an average workhorse BYD, despite having shorter range and fewer smart features than a Tesla Model 3, was much cheaper to buy and maintain.
diovanedvx | 18 hours ago
Copying is a way to fast track learning. Everyone does it actually, they just ain’t so brazen about it because of stronger IP laws. But the Chinese are definitely ahead now and western countries are struggling to keep up.
We all first learn to play other people’s music and cover their songs before we start composing our own stuff. But make no mistake, the Chinese are genuinely innovating now.
Thom0 | 17 hours ago
I honestly agree with you, and anything otherwise is protectionism or mercantilism in disguise.
Ideas should be copied, and replicated globally because this is how we improve these ideas, and push forward our collective wellbeing as a species. The fact that China can produce cheaper EV models is proof of this in practice.
What Tesla, and what the US wants, is a total, global monopoly on a product so they can then dictate the market to extract maximum capital. They want techno-feudalism, and ironically it is the communist state that is undermining those efforts.
The EU and the US simply should have adapted. It is a straightforward competition but the problem with the West is it is innately tied into the liberal theory on politics which is an absolutism of the individual which informs everything from law, to economics. Rules on state aid are simply that - rules. They were decisions adopted on the basis of them being conducive to some abstract promotion of the individual. What we should have done is reevaluate that assumption and find a way to compete. The West is stuck in a crisis of imagination. We've built a very specific type of worldview and we cannot escape it.
pinot-pinot | 18 hours ago
obviously because the chinese are especially devious and crafty at stealing /s
Emergency-Style7392 | 18 hours ago
Even if german car makers became dominant in EVs (so same market share they had in ICE) it would suck, EVs are much simpler, harder to differentiate.
they would need to cut jobs even if they won
IORelay | 13 hours ago
Simpler is good though? We don't need complex things that do the same thing.
SupremeUnderwear | 14 hours ago
Thank you. EU harvests what it has grown. Wellfare state became freeride state, regulating and taxing everything just to keep low value jobs highly paid. The EU will also never learn that people are not slaves to a government. Ah well, at least EU workers can feast on untaxed super wages and enormous cost bills they get for managing all their stupidity.
IWantMyYandere | 10 hours ago
You say that as if it is a bad thing.
Alottacounts321 | 21 hours ago
Got any examples for what youre talking about?
icankillpenguins | 21 hours ago
Sure, check out what Merkel did. I.e. in 2013 She interfered with EU emission regulations to help Mercedes and BMW when China was having survival of the fittest systems fast iterating electric cars. She was doing everything possible to protect VW and other German manufacturers in the name of protecting jobs and EUs green transition and emission rules were pushed and weakened all the time. In 2023 Germans secured last minute loophole to their ICE cars so they won't get banned entirely in 2035.
This is essentially corporate welfare, they were protected from the need of competing in the name of jobs preservation only to find out eventually that they have become legacy and tens of thousands of jobs will be lost because no one wants their cars anymore. She screwed over EU with her doubling down on fossils with Russia instead of sustain the pain and build out the renewables and nuclear like China did the same period.
Europeans should get used to the idea that companies need to be left to die out if they are not able to compete instead of kicking the can down the road and when everything eventually falls apart blame immigrants and poor people.
EconEchoes5678 | 19 hours ago
The problem with what you're describing is not corporate welfare, which isn't actually anything like the problem most people describe it to be.
What you're describing is a form of protectionism. And it's just as destructive as what you're saying - inefficient companies and systems are allowed to continue being inefficient without actually suffering market consequences for their failures. It's an attempt to keep money local, but it ends up hurting the local area in the end because it's a major market distortion.
This is basically the same logic Trump & Co uses for tariffs - local forcing good, blah blah. Canada has run a lot of protectionist policies (locally, not saying nationally) for a long and and it has substantially hurt them over time.
sljc892 | 20 hours ago
The issue that the world and Europe in particular will face against Chinese manufacturing is they have been playing this long game for a while. Europe is too high and mighty to do deals with questionable African leaders/countries. So China controls vast amounts of supply chains now. As someone in the exploration industry I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Good mining projects get put on hold because briefcases full of cash are getting flown in and palms greased. All of a sudden the project either stops or it remains in western hands and several Chinese shell companies enter the share registry and the plan suddenly changes to processing in China.
They can make cheap cars because they have secured the resources at source with the belt and road initiative.
icankillpenguins | 19 hours ago
Sure but eventually it is not even about the price anymore, simply electric cars have became more desirable despite Germans resisting the transition.
sljc892 | 19 hours ago
Implementing large scale adoption of electric cars on the population at the cost it takes for German car companies to make them would be hugely costly. Like I said China mitigates the cost with state subsidies and full supply chain control. They have resources cheap because they debt trap the countries with the raw materials.
flappysack- | 15 hours ago
I'd say their green party shouldn't have shit down their nuclear power to become reliant on Russian energy.
iaNCURdehunedoara | a day ago
European corporations when they export manufacturing to China to claim profits: haha yes yes
European corporations when China builds itself up and becomes competition and not just slave labor: what the fuck? this is colonialism!!
It is interesting that capitalists claim that competitions drives innovation and keeps prices lower, but when capitalists meet real competition they constantly whine. I wonder what's that about.
Busterlimes | 23 hours ago
Europe is about to find out what happened to Americas middle class
MajesticBread9147 | 23 hours ago
Most European countries have lower median salaries than the United States. Sure they have a strong welfare state and universal healthcare, so you don't need as much money necessarily, but Americans still make a good amount more.
never_happy_geek | 22 hours ago
The strong welfare state and universal healthcare is basically funded by very high employee contributions. lose those jobs you are about to find out how much our welfare depends on middle class contributions.
diovanedvx | 18 hours ago
Yup.
libsaway | 23 hours ago
Equally, the EU didn't have it's manufacturing hollowed out the same way. Partly cos the lower salaries meant the savings were less, and partly because the cheaper countries with easy export links to the EU joined the EU.
MajesticBread9147 | 22 hours ago
America didn't really have our manufacturing, industry "hollowed out" that's a myth. Some industries lost competitiveness, some industries grew.
The difference between America's manufacturing peak and Q2 of 2026 is less than 10%.
Labor costs don't matter much as long as you avoid labor intensive industries.
That link above shows that American manufacturing output per quarter this year is at about the same level as it was in 2005 adjusted for inflation. This is in spite of the fact that the manufacturing industry needs to employ about 2 million fewer people than we did back then.
South Korea and Taiwan both have large manufacturing industries despite having higher wages than the vast majority of countries on earth. Why? Because they focus on high margin industries that need a dozen college graduates rather than hundreds of dropouts per factory. Again, there's no reason Europe can't do the same.
DoorFrame | 22 hours ago
People who talk about this issue generally care more about manufacturing jobs than manufacturing output.
MajesticBread9147 | 22 hours ago
If you're looking at it from that angle (particularly in the short term, ignoring automation and efficiency gains) you'll never make manufacturing boom again, any more than if you try to do everything you can to bring all the jobs that people had prospecting or tending to crops by hand.
MoonBatsRule | 19 hours ago
You're being misled by averages, and averages tend to mask geographic impacts. In other words, if Boeing increases output by 1 plane, that masks $248m of plant closures in the Midwest.
If you could look at communities in the 1990s that had manufacturing and see them today, you would see a lot of factories in the 1990s which are now gone.
Also, automation is a red herring; if jobs were lost to automation instead of China, we would still see factories operating - but with less workers - and lots of things that still said "made in USA". We don't.
Mayor__Defacto | 17 hours ago
Automation leads inevitably to consolidation. When you make a machine that can replace 3 people’s jobs, what usually ends up happening is that one factory gets marginally bigger and 2 others close.
MajesticBread9147 | 16 hours ago
>if Boeing increases output by 1 plane, that masks $248m of plant closures in the Midwest.
So this means that, the best way to boost manufacturing is to focus on differentiated, high margin products where we have a competitive edge? Makes sense.
>if jobs were lost to automation instead of China, we would still see factories operating - but with less workers - and lots of things that still said "made in USA". We don't.
It's certainly a combination of the two. Heavily automated American factories are competing with heavily automated Chinese factories. And I judging things by whether or not you personally see "lots of things that still said "made in USA"." doesn't make sense.
Firstly, we consume a lot more shit than we did in decades past. But beyond that it exclusively focuses on durable goods sold to consumers which isn't the entire economy.
You're forgetting about that fact the we are the largest manufacturer of patent medicines. One region in Indiana is responsible for half of the world's orthopedic implants, we make about half of the world's MRIs, Micron and Intel both have multiple semiconductor fabs in America and have for decades, the vast majority of cars sold on the road are made in America, just to name a few things.
Actually I like that you mentioned airplanes because that's a big one, but so are airplane engines which come from different manufacturers. For example, GE Aerospace holds 14% of the jet engine market, while also being part of a 50/50 joint venture (CFM) with a company that has an additional 39% market share.
Despite China obviously seeing a domestic aerospace industry as a national security priority, their Chinese built COMAC jets that compete with Boeing have CFM engines built partially or fully in the United States.
We still manufacture a lot, but what we do make is often precisely the stuff you never see a label on it.
Intrepid_Egg_7722 | 15 hours ago
Agree with you except on one point, but it's just a nit.
>their Chinese built COMAC jets that compete with Boeing
Those jets don't compete with Boeing yet outside of China. They're not certified, they have low production rates, and (like you said already) they're reliant on foreign suppliers for critical systems, which would be a bottleneck if they needed to expand production to reach mass necessary to compete outside of the domestic market (assuming they could ever get them certified).
Legitimate_Ad_4201 | 22 hours ago
Comparison needs to be going back until the 1910s to make sense, 1950s at the very least
MajesticBread9147 | 22 hours ago
We have that chart too, although this measure combined it with electricity production and mining output.
I don't think we've sold enough electricity or gold to explain a 5 fold growth since 1950
libsaway | 22 hours ago
Yes, I meant in a proportion of the economy sense, not in an absolute sense. As a proportion of their economies, the EU (and Japan, and South Korea) have kept (and even grew) much more manufacturing.
YourFuture2000 | 22 hours ago
One of the reasons the wages are lower in Germany is because employers pay the most of the cost of health ensurence to employees. The Healthcare in Germany is not free.
Also, in Germany the welfair system put a lot of pressure to make unemployed people to accept any low pay wage with the threat of losing the benefit, even when the job pays too little to make people free from welfair system, which is annoying burocratic to remain in.
MajesticBread9147 | 22 hours ago
Literally all of this is applicable to the United States as well.
YourFuture2000 | 22 hours ago
Why employed and unemployed people in the US have health care debts then? And why people in the US work in more than one job to become able to pay rent?
MajesticBread9147 | 22 hours ago
The first is because health care is more expensive and less predictable in America. Having health insurance doesn't mean that your healthcare bills are necessarily affordable.
The second is that there's a huge gap between incomes, not even including our oligarchs. There are enough DINKs making six figures in big cities to bring the average up despite there being more people homeless or in extreme poverty.
If you ever visit an American city you will see this visually. It's extremely common to see somebody with a Rolex and an Arct'eryx jacket, a woman with a Louis Vuitton bag, and a homeless person just on the same train car.
YourFuture2000 | 21 hours ago
That means Healthcare in the US doesn't cover the all Healthcare bills like in Germany. But yet employers pay the same as in Europe for employees healthy care? And still the wages are higher?
So if there are more people in the extreme poverty and poverty, that means the wages in the US is nit higher in Europe, except for some people in the city making the statistics on avarege higher. Did I understand correctly?
And if there is more people in homelessness, how can that be if you say that the wellfair is the same in Germamy?
In Europe it is also common to see somebody with expensive brand clothes in the same bus or train where a homeless is sleeping drunk.
WhiteHeatBlackLight | 21 hours ago
Holy fuck learn to spell welfare bro
YourFuture2000 | 21 hours ago
Excuse me, I am trying to learn something else. One thing at its own time.
OilAdministrative197 | 22 hours ago
Yeah but again our welfare state is so superior to the point where if you look at major life metrics likes years alive, healthy years, obesity, education the uk would rank first when compared to the us. It’s really what do you get for the wage and US us is a mile behind the western world but they get the illusion of number big to make themselves feel good.
accidental73 | 20 hours ago
That's false. Japan for example, beats UK easily regarding years alive, healthy years, obesity etc etc but Japanese gov spends WAY LESS money on welfare per capital compared to UK. So your logic is just false. Same for Singapore. Singaporean gov spends less money on welfare per capital compared to UK when yet, beats UK easily in terms of years alive, healthy years, obesity etc etc.
OilAdministrative197 | 20 hours ago
That’s because Japan and Singapore are also a lot better than the us 😂 just google images ‘if the uk were a us state’ literally the first one shows how the uk mogs the us and yeah a lot of other countries also do
There a reason why basically 0 Europeans migrate to the US while us mostly receive those from the third world
accidental73 | 20 hours ago
You made a false claim that more welfare spending equals longer healthy years and less obesity and I used facts to prove you were lying. And instead of providing any logical rebuttal, you just strawman because you have no fact. Good to know 😂😂
Also, data proves that more Europeans migrate to US than vice versa.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/journal/spotlight/european-immigrants-united-states
OilAdministrative197 | 20 hours ago
No I said we have superior welfare spending and superior life length, I did jot say they correlated although they quite clearly are. But factually you’re wrong. Everyone knows the us is far fatter than everywhere in Europe. Even in the article you cite, 10% of us migration is from the eu and rapidly falling with the majority coming from the third world to the us. You literally fact mogged yourself furthering the point that literacy and numeracy rates are also far higher in the eu 😂
accidental73 | 20 hours ago
>our welfare state is so superior to the point where if you look at major life metrics likes years alive, healthy years, obesity, education the uk would rank first
This is what you literally wrote. Seems like you don't understand what you wrote. It literally connects stronger welfare to healthy years and obesity and I used facts to prove that's a lie.
I see that you still have zero fact to rebutt my examples with Japan and Singapore. Until you can provide one single fact, nothing you say matters. And the article I shared shows that more Europeans immigrate to US than vice versa and you have zero fact to counter that.
OilAdministrative197 | 19 hours ago
Clearly not a lie though is it…
But that was the point lots of countries are superior to the US, again you mugged yourself off. Just because wage high doesn’t mean society good.
The average Americans can’t even afford a passport 😂 let alone live abroad also they struggle with the language barrier again with the average American being far less literate in English let alone other European languages there’s not many places which would accept them. Obviously there a lot more Europeans who don’t have other same barriers.
dart-builder-2483 | 20 hours ago
They might make more, but they own less.
ResponsibleClock9289 | 11 hours ago
It got richer?
Busterlimes | 11 hours ago
What, all 13 households?
ResponsibleClock9289 | 10 hours ago
Impoverished, lower middle class, and middle class shrank
Upper middle class and wealthy grew. Do the math?
OGVltra | 22 hours ago
Getting richer, you mean?
fibonacciii | 23 hours ago
Exactly, Europe has been gutted and the realization is going to hit them hard.
Mayor__Defacto | 22 hours ago
Yeah, European and American firms have been exploiting Chinese labor for decades. I visited a clothing factory in Binzhou, Shandong province, and they weren’t idiots. They knew that the underwear they were making for about $2.50 was being sold in Switzerland for 35 francs a pair.
Now that the Chinese factories are starting to capture some of the value other than the ten cents they were allowed to make by the EU and US firms, now it’s a problem.
Gvillegator | 22 hours ago
They don’t just constantly whine, they actively run from competition and look for anticompetitive ways to beat their competition. Which is why “capitalism loves competition” is hilarious.
CrayonUpMyNose | 20 hours ago
It is worth remembering that for a very long time now, if you wanted to sell anything in China without incurring punishing tariffs, you had to produce the product as part of a 51% Chinese joint venture, including for products that were 100% invented and customarily produced outside of China.
We're not talking about the plucky underdog "building itself up" here, we are looking back on decades of coerced technology transfer in only one direction. Could corporations have acted differently? Arguably, leaving the Chinese market to your competitors even in the short term will only hasten your own demise, so a boycott of the 51% rule would have required a level of collusion among companies that traditionally we dislike intensely.
iaNCURdehunedoara | 19 hours ago
I really find it funny how redditors still whine about "coerced technology transfer" as if they took it from you. Buddy, the corporations decided that giving chinese companies these technologies was better than paying you a proper salary. They knowingly decided that you're worthless and you should be paid less, and you're here now complaining about technology transfers as if you created something.
I don't get why you have such loyalty to corporations, it's just peasant brain. I personally give zero shits about that, i believe in common prosperity for everyone, but it seems that people like you want prosperity only for a few rich people that own everything.
CrayonUpMyNose | 16 hours ago
It looks like you didn't get to my second paragraph before responding, especially the last sentence? Your assumption about my motivation indicates it. And you know what happens when you assume.
> Could corporations have acted differently? Arguably, leaving the Chinese market to your competitors even in the short term will only hasten your own demise, so a boycott of the 51% rule would have required a level of collusion among companies that traditionally we dislike intensely.
TrueBigorna | 18 hours ago
>you had to produce the product as part of a 51% Chinese joint venture, including for products that were 100% invented and customarily produced outside of China.
Good for them
Surrounded-by_Idiots | 19 hours ago
How the hell is that coercion? Don’t like the condition? Don’t enter. It’s that easy. You know what’s actually coercion? Showing up with armies and gunboats forcing countries to open up. You remember who actually did that shit?
CrayonUpMyNose | 15 hours ago
Did you read to the end of my second paragraph?
> Could corporations have acted differently? Arguably, leaving the Chinese market to your competitors even in the short term will only hasten your own demise, so a boycott of the 51% rule would have required a level of collusion among companies that traditionally we dislike intensely.
Surrounded-by_Idiots | 15 hours ago
Yeah, and?
dream208 | 23 hours ago
So what do you suggest Europe should do now? Keep status quo and continue to depend on China for manufacture?
Xylus1985 | 22 hours ago
Invest in innovation and education so they can take back the lead in technology. You know, like how market economy is supposed to work.
dream208 | 22 hours ago
Yes, yyes, those are long term investments which I think Europe has already been doing, but what shoudl Europe do right now?
Xylus1985 | 22 hours ago
The same, but at a higher rate than China does because they are playing catch up.
dream208 | 22 hours ago
Does that catch up process including China's labor protection, social safety net and working condition?
Because last time I check Eruope have significant higher number of scientific journal published and college educated population per capita than China.
Xylus1985 | 22 hours ago
Sure, if that’s what it takes to compete. Good living quality and good working conditions are usually earned through higher efficiency and technical advantages
dream208 | 22 hours ago
Let me make sure I heard it right, so you want Europe to adopt China's living standard and working condition?
ChaosDancer | 21 hours ago
If they want to compete, then yes. Otherwise Europe can continue to jerking off each other while China moves forward.
accidental73 | 20 hours ago
LMAO. you're incredibly dumb. Chinese factory workers normally work 56+ hours/week and have much less holidays than European workers and also have less workers' protections. It's much easier to get fired in China than Europe.
So you want Europe to increase working hours and cut labor protection laws and make firing workers easier. So you want hyper capitalist system. LMAO this idiot.
Smooth_Phone2 | 22 hours ago
I don’t think it’s necessary to adopt Chinas exact model, but they will need to move broadly in the direction of “be more efficient with labor and energy”.
evrestcoleghost | 21 hours ago
best time to plant a tree but 10 years ago,the second best is today
orkgashmo | 21 hours ago
Not really true. The investment in education and higher education is really really low on many EU countries such as mine.
Schools are understaffed and failing to catch up, European public R&D spending has risen in name only. Exclude emergency EU funds, and core national investment is flat or down in real terms—public research stays stuck at pre-2008 levels.
accidental73 | 20 hours ago
Chinese education is more privatized than even US. Not a lot of people know this.
orkgashmo | 19 hours ago
That's bullshit and you know it. And I don't care about US or China, I'm talking about Europe.
accidental73 | 18 hours ago
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201907/28/WS5d3d0279a310d830564015c3.html
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cgc.pdf
Privately-run schools (minban) account for roughly 35% of all student enrollments across basic education in China while it's about 10% in US.
Why are Europeans so uneducated and believe made up stuff about China like you do? It's so weird. I'm originally from China and Chinese don't really belief made up fake stuff about Europe because Chinese are more interested in facts.
orkgashmo | 17 hours ago
Thanks for the sources, I stand corrected, I thought otherwise. Anyway I am talking about Europe and public education not working as well as 25 years ago because of underfunding.
NavyDean | 21 hours ago
That is what Europe should do right now.
Mercedes-Benz to be one of the most over engineered vehicles in the world, so it got international standing. Now it isn't even competitive in tech, quality or pricing.
Education, science and innovation is exactly what nations that are failing competitively should do.
You don't turn the boat around by trying a short term fix. This is an entire mentality shift back to normality instead of profits over all.
fromkatain | 22 hours ago
Opium war 2
LonelyPermit2306 | 16 hours ago
They would lose if America doesn't join in. I think even Korea and Japan would be willing to fight the EU on this and join hands with China lol
fromkatain | 16 hours ago
Trump is almost 80 he wants a last great war for his legacy
IWantMyYandere | 10 hours ago
Why would they join China? China props up the N. Korea regime and China has a grudge against Japan.
China even conducted a naval training of a blockade against S. Korea and Japan using fishing boats.
LonelyPermit2306 | 10 hours ago
They hate China because China is the most aggressive power. If the EU began the opium wars 2, then they'd be the most aggressive power instead.
N-Yayoi | 8 hours ago
You will find that Asians are far more concerned about the idea of "Asians deciding their own things, not being lectured by some white Western government" than you imagine; Any nonsense about 'democracy/dictatorship' cannot change one thing: Asians have a deep memory of what Europe once did. Do you think Japanese people really consider those Americans who occupy, coerce, and suppress them by force as their friends? Their relationship is at best a forced choice.
I have noticed one thing: it seems that you really see 'democracy/dictatorship' as the only solution to all the problems in the world. Whether good or bad, the global South does not believe in your idea.
Ok-Budget3225 | 14 hours ago
It's a good idea to depend on China to manufacture commodity type componentry. Do you really care who made the alternator in your BMW? BMW should focus on the features that distinguishes BMWs. The alternator is not one of them and should be sourced from China. Likewise the glass bottle for your favorite Cognac or Scotch. Do you really know or care that it was made in China? Of course not. You are buying the brandy. You don't care about the bottle's manufacture. Or the GLP-1 precursor to Ozempic. Do you care that it came from China? Of course not. Almost all pharma precursor comes from China. The important thing is that Novo Nordisk is making huge profits with Ozempic , and China is just making peanuts selling the precursor.
iaNCURdehunedoara | 22 hours ago
Europe should have state ran industries instead of making everything coming from China more expensive in hopes that something will magically change. European nations should stop giving tax breaks and subsidies in hopes someone will do something, european nations should have state sponsored industries, the state should invest directly in building complete supply chains, train people, and stop allowing capital owners to monopolize everything.
Instead we have neoliberals that are constantly doing austerity and fencing everything in order to maximize profits. We're not even doing protectionism properly, except for the car industry and even then we're eating dog shit.
dream208 | 22 hours ago
Are you under the impression that China’s industrial growth is fueled by the state ran industries instead of cutthroat capitalism?
Telcontar77 | 11 hours ago
Literally one of the things the west whines about the most regarding China is how, many of the industries are subsidized by the state. Also, in China at the end of the day, the billionaires do as the state tells them to. Meanwhile, in the west, politicians do what the billionaire oligarchs tell them to do.
dream208 | 8 hours ago
So you want an authoritarian state controlled private sector that does answer to anyone but the state oligarchs?
Let's put this way, here on an American online forum you can still discuss and protest about those "billionaires who owned the government." Do you want to try to do the same on any Chinese forums about the members of red families that own or controll most of China's private sector? Even mentioning their names would put you in jail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruan_Xiaohuan
Telcontar77 | 5 hours ago
>So you want an authoritarian state controlled private sector that does answer to anyone but the state oligarchs?
Don't be silly. I want a democratic state that controls various private sectors to various degrees, that answers to the electorate (a concept very alien to the US, as I understand). And while I'm at it, I also want a private sector that is itself a lot more democratic.
USoids think that it's authoritarianism if billionaires don't have an unrestricted right to rape children and the economy.
dream208 | 4 hours ago
And you use China as an example of your vision?
Btw, not American.
Telcontar77 | 4 hours ago
When China does certain things well, yes. There's all sorts of good things that the Chinese government does that can be replicated to various degrees, without actually going full authoritarian.
It's like, if I said I wanted to have freedom of speech at the levels that the US has (which is still one of the best things about the US), and you asked me if I that means I also wanted to have the state sanctioned mental illness that is the 2nd amendment? Obviously not.
TrueBigorna | 18 hours ago
Yes, this state planning at work
accidental73 | 20 hours ago
Things you said are false and lies and that's why you got downvoted to oblivion. It is China that actually gives out the largest amount of corporate subsidies in the world. And it is China that actually has much LESS labor protection and workers' welfare compared to EU. Normal Chinese workers work incredibly long hours with less holidays compared to EU workers. Again, you need to stop lying about stuff like that.
TheNewl0gic | 22 hours ago
They cant allow that
Ill-Lifeguard-324 | 3 hours ago
I get your point and it is true to a certain extent. But let's also not call state subsidies and operating at a loss "real competition".
Redwan0 | 2 hours ago
Are Capitalists complaining or just Europhiles are sad that China is taking their jobs
iaNCURdehunedoara | 2 hours ago
Capitalists are complaining because China is eating into their profits.
M1dnightBlue | 22 hours ago
Let's not pretend China was the plucky capitalist that could in all this. They have done lots of things well, but didn't just figure everything out on their own. They used forced technology transfer agreements, espionage and insider theft to catch up, and once caught up, they then make it very hard for the western company to continue to sell in China, both in terms of official regulations and unwritten targeting of the non-Chinese company. Also, you are not just competing against a Chinese company now, you are competing against the chinese state, who can and will subsidise a loss-making venture until they are the last man standing. That is what they have a problem with.
iaNCURdehunedoara | 21 hours ago
Buddy don't even get me started on how little i give a fuck about forced technology transfers, espionage and other shit like this. I believe in common prosperity for everyone, not just some people.
Furthermore do you think you're special for knowing this? Every CEO, every factory owner knew this was the case and still chose to move manufacturing to China because they cared about profits. They traded research because they didn't want to give you a fair wage. These CEOs also knew that the companies would manufacture cheap goods for domestic consumption, they weren't planning on competing domestically with Chinese companies because China was a poor country and they couldn't profit as much. So i don't know why you feel a weird loyalty towards corporations that only seek profits.
evrestcoleghost | 21 hours ago
besides USA themselves got caught numerous times this age doing industrial espioange
M1dnightBlue | 20 hours ago
I agree, I never said they didn't, no country should be able to steal IP and face no consequences
M1dnightBlue | 20 hours ago
I wasn't debating any of what you said. I was challenging the notion that this was "real" competition to quote the comment, eg. innovation, better business, when it wasn't. Interesting you say you want common prosperity though. If you do, you need to incentivise wealth creation. If you can steal anyone's intellectual property and you can steal theirs (no matter which country is doing it) without consequences, does the incentive to create better goods and services go up or down in your opinion?
Telcontar77 | 11 hours ago
So long as innovative people can still make a solid salary, they're still gonna innovate even without the promise of infinite money. Well paying state funded research jobs can go a long way.
Sommern | 16 hours ago
Don’t let them know about how the British stole Chinese tea manufacturing technology and started production in India with slave labor.
🤫🤫🤫
M1dnightBlue | 15 hours ago
There are many valid criticisms of the UK and its history to be made, I can admit and agree, but it's a very weak whataboutism tactic to use this to try to deflect criticism of China. I could do the same to you, but I'm better than that. Try harder.
laosurv3y | 20 hours ago
How were they 'forced' to transfer technology other than as a contractual arrangement in an attempt to capture more profit?
M1dnightBlue | 20 hours ago
I am sure in some cases things were agreed before entry as the price of doing business, but in many instances, what is expected is only known once the company has invested and made inroads into the Chinese markets, then they get hit with requirements, eg. must hand over source code as part of review/audit, to win contracts you must partner with a local firm, to get this subsidy you must actually do this etc.
Surrounded-by_Idiots | 19 hours ago
You aren’t allowed to make inroads without a Chinese partnership. The rule is posts on the door. Nobody got trapped, but feel free to actually examples as opposed to relying on your imagination.
M1dnightBlue | 18 hours ago
The insinuation that the chinese government is upfront and 'posts the rules on the door' is laughable.
Anyway, back to the list
Google - Chinese govt. cyberattacks Google and many others in Operation Aurora
Danone - local producer Wahaha secretly built factories to produce the exact same products that Danone made. Multiple solar panel suppliers - initially exported solar panels to China when China didn't kno how to make them. China reverse-engineered them and flooded the market with a huge number of panels funded by state subsidies. Alstom - high speed rail joint venture. The Chinese learnt everything they could, then stopped awarding contracts to Alstom. ARM - ARM China ran as a rogue entity for years. Uber - chinese app Didi favoured by local government regulations over foreign competitor.
Surrounded-by_Idiots | 18 hours ago
How is your example related to anybody getting trapped by making inroad?
Stellewind | 20 hours ago
Acting as if these industries in EU and U.S are not heavily subsidized by government and don’t espionage against each other all the time as well. The sheer hypocrisy cracks me up all the time.
M1dnightBlue | 20 hours ago
I agree, I never said they didn't, no country should be able to steal IP and face no consequences
Tall-Control8992 | 21 hours ago
Sounds like every big VC company such as Uber or WeWork. Almost all of them are free to run at a loss year after year for the sake of growth, and any sort of a business plan to transition to a sustainable business boils down to "we'll either figure it out later or get bought out"
EconEchoes5678 | 19 hours ago
> Sounds like every big VC company such as Uber or WeWork. Almost all of them are free to run at a loss year after year for the sake of growth, and any sort of a business plan to transition to a sustainable business boils down to "we'll either figure it out later or get bought out"
There is no problem with this strategy. The point of capitalism and VC funding is that they are the ones who lose if they get this bet wrong. If they don't have a path to profitability, they won't be bought out because the buyers are not stupid. So if they're making the wrong bet about growth vs income, it's only them that loses.
EconEchoes5678 | 19 hours ago
> They used forced technology transfer agreements, espionage and insider theft to catch up, and once caught up,
Catch-up effects exist even without any of those crimes. Don't attribute it to malice when there's no need or reason to do so.
li_shi | 20 hours ago
Giving you a lot of money or something of similar value it’s not forced technology transfer.
It’s called I buy this from you.
SlicedBreadBeast | 22 hours ago
Status quo has been comfy for a really really really long time. That’s what. Capitalism hasn’t been innovative for quite some time. The fact so many can feel what a company does before they do it because the masters degree in business play book has been played out so hard where enshitification is the standard play to make more money. Not improve the product and be competitive, which was the whole point of capitalism to work for everyone
doubagilga | 6 hours ago
What is this nonsense? State subsidized and operating at a massive loss is “competition”? In what nonsense land.
Countries will enforce rules in their markets when other players don’t play fair.
BrillsonHawk | 23 hours ago
China is not free market capitalist though. They heavily manipulate their currency to keep their goods cheap, they provide vast subsidies to their companies, they refuse to let western companies operate freely in their country, they actively steal industrial IP and they have extensive tariffs on goods imported form the west.
The sooner Europe takes its own measures to counter this nonsense the better it will be for them. The only way to counter currency manipulation is to increase tariffs on Chinese goods and I'm sure that will happen soon. They also need to start limiting the freedom of Chinese companies to operate freely in Europe, so that both sides are on a level playing field.
6548996 | 23 hours ago
This argument is ridiculous. Practically every country manipulate their currency, it’s the literal job of a central bank.
sesamerox | 23 hours ago
all of what you said is implemented to some extent by all of the global players. the counterparts you are defending are doing damaging stuff in areas you’re overlooking. get off your high horse
Ssadfu | 22 hours ago
All global player does it to some extent, but China does it on a completely different level, it's not comparable or a defense.
sesamerox | 22 hours ago
what’s the point going in circles? my reply is to the same comment
Ssadfu | 22 hours ago
Apparently you think western interventions are equivalent to what China is doing, which is just plain wrong.
sesamerox | 9 hours ago
no i said there are different types of interventions
Ssadfu | an hour ago
And what intervention do Europe do that are comparable to China?
Whataboutism isn't a good argument.
sesamerox | 48 minutes ago
look into history a bit for a start.
anyhow ok sry about whataboutism, even though the headline is too vulnerable for criticism. i wanted to point out to the most ‘righteous’ here they don’t have a leg to stand on.
ok, so you’re unsatisfied abt the practices they’re engaged in. next steps? more ecotaxes?
Ssadfu | 12 minutes ago
If you look into anyones history you'll find atrocities, if we use the past to justify future we will never come anywere. But that's exactly what China is doing, trying to frame itself as a developing nation still and no regard for the environment.
The western world are no saints, but that's no excuse for China to act even more shitty. At least the west have democracy and free speech, China is basically ruled by one person, but still can't be decent.
iaNCURdehunedoara | 23 hours ago
We also do currency manipulation, we also provide subsidies to our companies, we also steal IP, and we have tariffs on goods imported from China. So it's really weird and pathetic to focus on China as if these are problems.
Europe will never take measures to fix things, we will just make everything coming from China more expensive in hopes that by miracle something will change. The problem is we don't have government run industries, we don't have government policies to focus on industries, we're not funding the education and training for industries so we lack expertise, we don't have capital control the same way China does. So all we're going to do is push for laws that carve out China specifically without mentioning China and everything will be more expensive.
DoorFrame | 22 hours ago
What IP do we steal?
Ssadfu | 23 hours ago
False equivalence, China's scale, centralization and direct coordination between state-owned banks, provincial governments and private enterprises is on an entirely different magnitude.
Not even close comparable with the western nations intervention in central bank interest rate or occasional subsidies.
MajesticBread9147 | 23 hours ago
>China is not free market capitalist though. They heavily manipulate their currency to keep their goods cheap, they provide vast subsidies to their companies, they refuse to let western companies operate freely in their country, they actively steal industrial IP and they have extensive tariffs on goods imported form the west.
All of these are domestic issues within their own country. Countries should be able to be free to make their own laws beyond human rights abuses.
And if it's such a powerful strategy, why doesn't the west do the same?
nerdy_donkey | 23 hours ago
Just replying to your one question: why don’t other countries do this?
The answer is 1) some do, like Germany has policies that favor exports, but not as much as China and 2) these policies lower standards of living for people in China. So basically what you’re proposing is for the rest of the world to lower their living standards in order to compete with China on exports.
MajesticBread9147 | 22 hours ago
Really, the expense of shipping and difficulty of having that complex a supply chain often negates most of the cost savings from manufacturing in China in the first place.
Why do you think Hyundai makes cars in America despite south Korea having lower wages? Because the additional amount you'd spend shipping it here is more than the amount you'd spend on American labor.
One thing China did extremely well (though countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan Singapore and the United States to some degree did this as well) was maintain their manufacturing industry by reducing inefficiencies. While their labor costs rose they incentivized automation heavily, which meant Chinese companies were still the best option for many manufacturered goods even if labor costs are double that of Vietnam, Malaysia or India.
The American manufacturing industry has been doing alright for years despite constant fear mongering. It's not because of tariffs, it's because of automation. Anybody who thinks American manufacturing is suffering as a whole is almost always under the impression that the number of manufacturing jobs is representative of how much we're manufacturing as a country.
There's no reason that Germany can't build more highly automated factories like the United States and China.
Ssadfu | 22 hours ago
Cause western nations follow WTO, thats why. To have fair competition.
Is stealing IPs ans flood other markets with artificially low prices with the intent to crush competition domestic issues?
dmoneybangbang | 17 hours ago
Real state sponsored theft and state sponsored economy can’t compete
Nestor4000 | 23 hours ago
>but when capitalists meet real competition
Did you read the article? In it, someone argues that this competition is not on fair market terms. Would it then not be more productive for you to refute this, if you wish to show that this is a case of the famous ‘capitalist wants to have his cake and eat it too’?
Ov3rReadKn1ght0wl | 23 hours ago
The issue is a historical one. Competition on 'fair market' terms is plainly not something that European or North American business elites were interested in once we moved to a more a global economy. Instead of competing and innovating at home, depending on Chinese manufacturing became a norm to lower costs and pump share prices. Now that these firms have to deal with the consequences of their own actions, they are crying foul for circumstances they ultimately helped create.
Those eminent leaders of tomorrow really didn't have any foresight beyond a quarterly earnings and stock performance report.
Nestor4000 | 21 hours ago
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote, I just don’t see how this makes current concerns about an undervalued yuan or differing environmental protections from European industry wrong or hypocritical?
Ov3rReadKn1ght0wl | 20 hours ago
It's definitely not wrong in the sense that it's incorrect. It's more so that any business hawk of late yestercentury would have cautioned against mass globalization of manufacturing supply chains. Our current business elite didn't heed that advice and seeing them suddenly reverse course when they were the architects of the problem is super nervy and two-faced. That's what I think people are taking issue with here.
iaNCURdehunedoara | 22 hours ago
It's a 200 word article, of course i read it. There's really nothing to refute, he understands why they can't compete and they still blame China for building their supply chain and not just being a provider of raw materials. He recognizes that there are tariffs on imported steel from China which makes the finished products uncompetitive with Chinese finished products, yet instead of demanding the EU invests in steel factories he's complaining that China is "colonizing the supply chain"
Nothing here is China's fault, yet this is how it's framed because China dared to build it's supply chain and become independent so now they're providing competition.
Nestor4000 | 21 hours ago
>There's really nothing to refute
I’d say that if you want to frame this purely as a capitalist getting hit by the free market he praises, you should probably explain how he is wrong about differing standards of environmental protection and undervaluing of the yuan.
WeirdKittens | 23 hours ago
"coffins", "cannibalisation", "virus" yeah... that's sensationalist BS.
What did we do to really protect European industry all these years? We let dinosaurs keep chugging along and tailored laws to help them because they employed a lot of people. Sometimes maliciously, trying to keep competition out.
When China was going all in in new technology we tied our supply chains to an unreliable energy provider and made our finished products unnecessarily complex, expensive and unrepairable with silly mandates.
China comes out, gives the consumer things they've been asking for at prices they could actually afford to pay and now all hell breaks loose. In the mind of those who got comfy staying still, it's the fault of the Chinese who didn't "know their place and keep making low value junk while we profit from higher margins". We were fine having the Chinese making the "low value" stuff and acting like being the pinnacle of engineering was a god-given right that would never go away.
No tariffs or legislation can compete with competence. But like every time in human history when this happens, instead of accepting the situation and fixing the core issues we will scream, protest, try to stop it, fail, fall to populism, damage ourselves and eventually accept it long after it has come to pass.
Nestor4000 | 23 hours ago
>What did we do to really protect European industry all these years? We let dinosaurs keep chugging along and tailored laws to help them because they employed a lot of people. Sometimes maliciously, trying to keep competition out
Sometimes I honestly wonder why we even bother having governments when this shit happens so often lol.
It’s like anarcho-capitalism, but with the added benefit of having to pay taxes towards politicians salaries…
Danielthenewbie | a day ago
Colonialism is when you the country you exploited for increased profits no longer needs a western manager to run their manufacturing. Fitting that China is the leading cause for the European century of humiliation.
freehamburgers | 21 hours ago
Europeans exported those jobs. Europe is the leading cause of the European century of humiliation imo
minuswhale | a day ago
Historical colonialists are surprised to learn that colonialism sucks. While their corporations want to have the cake while eat it, too.
Time to invest in into your own people, build your own supply chain, and don’t outsource everything for marginal profit. Maybe after that you can compete with quality.
People argue labor cost, but a lot of Chinese factories are “dark factories” now with minimal human labor. Europe absolutely could build Chinese-style dark factories, but no. They don’t, because they haven’t invested anything into training their people how to set up them and run them efficiently.
JustTaxLandbro | 21 hours ago
Dark factories aren’t entirely just machines, in fact a lot of the suppliers and car makers in China employ tens of millions of people.
We haven’t hit 100% automation in those factories and jobs.
Where China has the advantage is cheap electricity, specialized manufacturing knowledge/niche, little bureaucracy for large investors (especially for domestic companies), and also hyper advanced logistics chain that outmatches the entire world.
This is where the savings are, in Europe they need to fix
The energy crisis, China is nearing an energy advantage of nearly 5 to one when it comes to how cost efficient it is.
Bureaucracy: Europe is filled with red tape, especially between states. Europe needs to standardized its procedures and policies between countries.
Logistics: Europe actually does really well here, especially in Germany and Northern Europe. But they’re still not ahead of China. Europe needs to continue to improve its logistics chain.
Imaginary_Zone_4319 | 22 hours ago
Does anyone else get the vibe that comments like the above are either CCP 10-cent army or Wumao’s?
Nestor4000 | 23 hours ago
>“Historical colonialists”
Out of interest, are you yourself a historical criminal?
leoberto1 | a day ago
Software Is about to deflate in value.
The manufacturer [made in china] wants foreign land and submissive neighbours. An economic route to this would look like what we are seeing
TheNewl0gic | 22 hours ago
This
BallsInmyWalls | 19 hours ago
Dog shit title, former colonial powers is calling Chinese competition in a free market colonialism 😂
I'm not even pro China, but this type of behaviour is disgusting.
Sommern | 16 hours ago
I found almost all Western criticism of China is projection for their own sins during the 500 years of colonialism imposed on the world.
We fear the Chinese are going to treat us as badly as we treated the Chinese during their century of humiliation.
lolwut778 | 16 hours ago
Did Europe complain about itself "colonizing" the supply chain when it was selling cars to China hand over fist 10 years ago? Or Is it only bad if you start losing?
anomnib | 14 hours ago
Or when it literally colonized the world
ABahRunt | a day ago
How the turn tables. Europe and the US get no sympathy from me when other people steal their jobs and resources.
Or when they suffer heatstrokes. That's just the find out part of the deal. The rest of us have been finding out though you were the ones that fucked around for centuries.
1-Dollar-Doge-Coins | 16 hours ago
Who are you speaking on behalf of?
ABahRunt | 15 hours ago
I only speak for myself
getzisch | 18 hours ago
19th century comes to Europe in reverse it seems. China took notes of what they have faced in the Century of Humiliation, and repays it back with soft power.
If Europe wants to save itself from this mess, they have to reduce their purchasing power. Either reducing wages or devaluing the currency. However the other part is to reduce input costs. Especially transportation and energy. So in order to do that, they need to seek peace with Russia, re-engage energy trade with BRICS and rebuild atomic power in the continent (looking at you, Germany).
It's all about input costs now. China perfected this art while Europe have let themselves be super expensive to the world.
hfvj | 15 hours ago
This is what happens when you bet on big businesses. Such corporations form monopolies and protect themselves from competitors through regulations. They don't want to innovate because they already have the market share. Welcome to a world where you cannot do anything as an entrepreneur: build a house, open a company, or simply start a restaurant. Everything is overregulated as fuck through permits, licenses, and educational requirements.
But that's in the past; right now, we have people who, even if given full freedom, wouldn't engage in economic activities. Why? Because they were raised by parents who worked in big factories. The current generation is lazy; they don't know how to compete, invent, or be entrepreneurs. The government can only bet on the next generation, and only if they open markets, remove bureaucracy, and ban TikTok.
In any case, the nearest future will be a cold shower for EU. But making right decisions right now, will give next generations a chance.
hfvj | 15 hours ago
This is what happens when you bet on big businesses. Such corporations form monopolies and protect themselves from competitors through regulations. They don't want to innovate because they already have the market share. Welcome to a world where you cannot do anything as an entrepreneur: build a house, open a company, or simply start a restaurant. Everything is overregulated as fuck through permits, licenses, and educational requirements. But that's in the past; right now, we have people who, even if given full freedom, wouldn't engage in economic activities. Why? Because they were raised by parents who worked in big factories. The current generation is lazy; they don't know how to compete, invent, or be entrepreneurs. The government can only bet on the next generation, and only if they open markets, remove bureaucracy, and ban TikTok. In any case, EU will have dark years in the nearest feature. But making right decisions right now, may open a path for next generations.
Xiaopeng8877788 | 6 hours ago
Europe talking about China being a “colonizer” is rich af… lol, the cope is so bad when the west can’t compete. It’s pretty pathetic to get beaten at their own game, with their rules. Of course they’ll just try to change the rules but it’s over…
The fact that it’s over though isn’t China, after the west lost the role of exploitation of their colonies, it just focused on exploitation of their own citizens for the benefit of the ultra wealthy. Instead of helping their citizens, they did at one point, instead they made life harder for their average citizen with rising costs and exorbitant profiteering by their elites. All the profits went to the ultra rich, while the average citizen barely kept up with inflation. In fact, their incomes started shrinking to the real inflation, making life harder and harder.
Now the west is looking for a scapegoat for their citizens to blame, rather than actually looking inward to them own failures and broken social contracts and eating the rich.
PinkysBrein | 20 hours ago
China is still massively suppressing the yuan. EU still looking sad and raising their finger ever higher.
If EU industry was merely uncompetetive, we'd just get poorer, but that's not what's happening. We are flooded by artificially cheap consumer goods while China buys up massive amounts of debt and does as much FDI as it can get away with.
Trump is mostly right on this. Accidentally, but still.
anomnib | 14 hours ago
I don’t think that’s fair. China is more competitive for legitimate and illegitimate reasons. China stole a lot of IP from EU and USA through joint ownership requirements, abuse of patent systems, and flat out intellectual theft. China also manipulate its currency and subsidies its companies far beyond infant-industry type considerations.
But China also had much more complex manufacturing ecosystems and a stronger culture of hard work and competitiveness than EU.
If EU only focuses on then illegitimate advantages, it will lose in the long run.
PinkysBrein | 10 hours ago
A trade imbalance needs the one in surplus to accumulate currency, debt or foreign investment ... it can be no other way. Why are the doing so for an uncompetitive economy? To make it more so, hollow it out.
Quiet_Comparison_872 | 17 hours ago
I keep warning people and no one listen. If you allow China to undercut your manufacturing industries then you will regret it. Cheap comes at a cost.
Ok-Budget3225 | 14 hours ago
China manufacturing components cheaply, is GOOD for the EU. Let's say China can make zippers and belt buckles cheap. Guess who benefits from that? The Italian luxury goods makers who can now focus on producing more handbags and designer clothes and make more profits. The profit margins are all in the final product and product branding. Cheap componentry is a blessing to European manufacturing.
serodi03 | a day ago
A lot of Western hate here in the comments. The Chinese businesses are no better than the Western ones.
Suddenly we forgot about child labour in Shein factories, poor working conditions in BYD's factories, and the whole 9/9/6 working culture in Chinese society (pushed by Chinese corporations).
Lalalama | a day ago
Tbh I grew up in California and interned at a Chinese factory. It was chill. We got to have a nap after lunch and everything including vacations were paid for. They paid for our hotels also during a company outing. Cafeteria lunch was free too. They were complaining about the lunch how it was “low quality” lol but they’ve never tried us school cafeteria lunches lolol. Literally rice, vegetables, meat etc. same thing I would eat at like a Panda Express.
1-Dollar-Doge-Coins | 16 hours ago
Are you saying you interned at a Chinese factory in California? Or that you traveled to China for an internship at a factory? Those are two very different things.
Lalalama | 13 hours ago
I interned at a factory in Shenzhen
connor42 | 21 hours ago
If lax labour/environmental laws are all that’s needed for success one has to ask: why are poorer countries with less regulation not gaining on China?
Clearly they’re doing something other than just a DGAF attitude to workers and the planet
Lots of countries subsidise their parts of their economy, I think the way in which China hands out subsidies matters a lot. They’re not just handing out free money to the established players
Traditional_Neat_506 | 22 hours ago
and western companies also do it when setting up in bangladesh as well as slavery conditions they have also been caught red handed across african mines with their mining companies, it is just a equal playing game, as a bangladeshi you pick who does you better
freehamburgers | 20 hours ago
Coca Cola literally hired death squads to take out union organisers ffs
haveilostmymindor | 17 hours ago
Well its because you are clinging to an economic model that doesnt appear to work in the face of economic onslaught from China. When something isn't working you have to ask what are the costs of the change and find something that delivers lower costs to benefits ratio.
China has serious problems domestically and they need a welfare state to deal with it. Rather than build that welfare state they are attempting to leach of the the stability provided by the US Europe Japan and South Korea.
We singularly nor collective can support a Singapore style economy in China we dont have the capacity to allow that much free riding on our systems. Ergo you'll need to find a way to slam the cost of what China is doing back onto them.
Not gonna be easy because you're stuck between bad outcomes and you have to decide which mitigates the costs over the medium to long term whilst you eat the short term cost during structural adjustment. Not fun but let's face it China wont change until they have no other choice but to change.
MichaelHawk008 | 23 hours ago
Create a plan to cut off Chinese imports and shift manufacturing back. It’s that simple. We shouldn’t trade with countries we can’t compete on labor costs with
freehamburgers | 20 hours ago
Maybe work to reduce labour costs in your own countries by bringing down exorbitant costs of living? Limit rents, help house prices become affordable, bolster public spending on healthcare and education. Y'know, the stuff China has been doing since day one of the revolution.
MichaelHawk008 | 20 hours ago
Sure, but we still need to cut off trade with China