• Parent [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Isn't a lot of their manufacturing advantage still cheap labor? Won't the manufacturing leave if wages reach that high? Or are they hoping the economy will transition to more service oriented jobs by then? Not really knowledgable on the manufacturing there, just wondering.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      China does keep its currency deliberately cheap by buying US government bonds.

    • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      By now most of the manufacturing advantage is expertise and network effect. If you're in China you can get specialized parts in under a day by literally showing up to the factory and asking for a one off, which saves a lot of money, and you save on shipping and can iterate faster, and you can find skilled workers for literally anything in a week or two. So even if you're paying 2x as much for labour you still end up saving massive amounts of money.

      • Parent [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh wow that's interesting. I kind of figured at this point something like that was going on. How'd you learn this stuff? Any good articles or books to read?

        • pooh [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          If you can stomach listening to Tim Cook, he talks about that quite a bit in this interview. About 9 minutes in is the most relevant portion.