China–innovating not just imitating
Rare Earths: How did China become so dominant?
Outmanufactured: How China leapfrogged the West
Golden ages, and how they end
OTOH, what if we’re building too much AI infrastructure?
Content containerization ruined the web
A color photo from 120 years ago…enhanced, but not colorized. BabelColour has found and enhanced dozens of old autochromes, here’s a post on how he does it
Thanks for that list, Mr. F. the “Outmanufactured” article is very interesting. One of the points it highlights is how decisions taken almost half a century ago have ripped out the US/Western ability to manufacture and allowed China to rise to the challenge. The fundamental weakness of a financialized economy and a “democratic” political system is that there can be no long-term planning — nor recognizing of the longer-term costs of near-term benefits. When the author touts decaying Britain as a possible way forward for the US, I don’t think he will find many willing takers.
The article is good and well worth reading, but the author misses a very major point — China’s success has been dependent in large part on what China does NOT have. China does not have armies of bureaucrats throwing regulatory sand in the gears of production; China does not have battalions of lawyers getting rich by suing productive organizations; China does not have herds of NGOs dedicated to stopping progress. The choice for the West is clear — viciously cut that unaffordable overhead, or collapse.
The “Outmanufactured” author doesn’t seem to think that the WTO membership was very important, since China had had MFN status since 1980…but this status was subject to annual renewal, which surely led to some caution on the part of those viewing China as a major sourcing partner or counting on it as a major market. See Grok analysis:
https://x.com/i/grok/share/bT3FDy3qNCmmh5ObIpiO7Vtjw
the oil shock, combined with the rise of japan’s miti industrial policy, and the outsourcing that was accelerated by financialization of the economy, in the 80, the mergers and acquisition boom as well as the rise of extreme regulatory burdens, add to that the NAFTa and assorted trade agreements,
Anyone who touts Britain as any sort of model for anything is a fool.
The key problem for the West is that its rulers hate their own populations and seek to replace them.
They miss no opportunity to enact harmful policies and have zero interest in leading their nation-states to success.
Examples of these harmful policies are legion and eveyone likely to read this surely knows many, so I won’t elaborate.
The rail connection between China and Iran, opened just recently, seems significant:
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/One-Belt-One-Road/iran.html
As always with articles announcing the death of American manufacturing, it never comes to grips with the fact that we are still, at least, #2 in manufacturing as well as the long list of things China would most like to make but can’t.
Prominent among the latter are jet engines and ball bearings. As always, not now doesn’t mean not ever. The C919 is often cited as an example the coming Chinese dominance. except that virtually every system except the air frame itself is imported from the West. Engines, avionics, control systems, all imported, mainly from the U.S.
Those lauding Chinese “innovation” completely ignore that virtually everything that China exports is as a contract manufacturer for whatever company designed it. Those things manufactured as “Chinese” are pretty uniformly simply copies of Western products. Even the CRISPER experiment touted in the beginning was not only so unbelievably unethical that those responsible were jailed but turned out to be a bust.
Not that I’d expect any better from the Spectator.
…it never comes to grips with the fact that we are still, at least, #2 in manufacturing as well as the long list of things China would most like to make but can’t.
I recall a long time ago arguing with people about free trade. I would point out the issues the US had with (for example) consumer electronics and I would get stories about a giant factory producing TV sets in Indianopolis.
Cathode ray tube TV sets. I’m pretty sure that factory is no longer in business and so far as I know there are no screens presently made in the United States.
Forgive me if I’m not impressed because the US is now #2 in manufacturing, especially since American production is measured in a thoroughly overvalued fiat currency.
The key point is that China wants to make a long list of things and the people running the US generally don’t.
Somewhere in the US right now there is an MBA hatching a plan to relocate ball bearing factories to China to help them make better airplanes. Failing that, some company is looking to move production to India, because it’s cheaper, or seeking to fire a swarm of Americans to replace them with a horde of H1B visa holders. Or, a dozen different other ways the country is being sold down the river.
I’d bet the US won’t remain #2 for long.
…it never comes to grips with the fact that we are still, at least, #2 in manufacturing as well as the long list of things China would most like to make but can’t.
I recall a long time ago arguing with people about free trade. I would point out the issues the US had with (for example) consumer electronics and I would get stories about a giant factory producing TV sets in Indianopolis.
Cathode ray tube TV sets. I’m pretty sure that factory is no longer in business and so far as I know there are no screens presently made in the United States.
Forgive me if I’m not impressed because the US is now #2 in manufacturing, especially since American production is measured in a thoroughly overvalued fiat currency.
The key point is that China wants to make a long list of things and the people running the US generally don’t.
Somewhere in the US right now there is an MBA hatching a plan to relocate ball bearing factories to China to help them make better airplanes. Failing that, some company is looking to move production to India, because it’s cheaper, or seeking to fire a swarm of Americans to replace them with a horde of H1B visa holders. Or, a dozen different other ways the country is being sold down the river.
I’d bet the US won’t remain #2 for long.
Xennady,
I don’t think I disagree with most of your points. I should also clarify that I didn’t say that no quality bearings are made in China, but that none of the ones that I would buy would be from a Chinese company. Many Western bearing companies operate in China or have in the past producing mostly smaller and low to medium grade products while the higher value, more critical components are made still in Japan, Sweden, etc, including the U.S.
My point is that these rotating element bearings have been produced for much more than 100 years. The difference between a bearing that performs under load, at high speed for thousands of hours and one that fails after a few is measured in millionths of an inch. Production techniques are known although I don’t expect that SKF will tell me everything that they know. Successful production comes down to being able to perform a long successions of operations while maintaining exceedingly tight tolerances at every step. There are very few physical objects in the world as geometrically perfect as a bearing ball. The Chinese, without outside supervision seem unable to master that process.
I repeat, not yet is not, not ever. I don’t expect this to remain beyond China’s reach forever but the fact that it has eluded them for this long is an important consideration. Japan after WWII is a counter example.
China is consistently overrated.
1. They don’t understand economics. At all.
2. The corruption is everywhere.
3. Their government statistics are even more dishonest than ours.
4. Quality, as reflected by the garbage military equipment sold to Russia, is problematic.
5. The culture of cheating in their universities is even worse than ours. Far worse.
MCS: “Many Western bearing companies operate in China …”
Well, we know how that will end, in a world in which Volkswagen builds more cars in China than in Germany.
China has played its hand very well. Attract Euro high-speed rail companies with the potential size of the Chinese market, and then tell them they have to “Build It In China” to access the market. In come the Euros with their equipment, their technology, and start training their future competitors. Another generation, and those Euro rail companies may still exist on the stock exchange, but their production and R&D will be in China and they will be exporting trains back to Europe.
Look at the facts on how quickly (in industrial time-scales) China rose to dominate global steel-making, ship-building, automobile manufacturing, etc. And yet people in the West, especially our credentialed Political Class, can’t see what is happening.
Sure, China may yet screw up their economy & their society. But if that happens, it will be because China made some mistakes, not because we in the West suddenly changed course and ended up (after several tough decades) out-competing them.
China may have plans to dominate in several important markets. Their problem may be that the workers are burning down the factories because they are not being paid the wages they have earned. Their banks may be shuttering the doors, and blocking depositors seeking to withdraw their funds, and all the oldsters who have invested in the China realty market may find their purchases uninhabitable and decaying before their eyes. They cannot depend on their current products in some fields for local consumption and they have ham-handed subsidies which the manufacturing corporations take advantage of and flood the market with unusable product meeting the awkwardly written subsidy criteria.
It appears all makers who are not under strict inspection produce substandard products that are shoddy and likely useless.
If the EU accepts the good looking BEVs China is cranking out, without consideration of the workmanship and product content, they will drive the local firms out of business and be left with non-performing Chinese makers pumping out instant junk. The same holds for other parts of the world. China may drive all other makers out of the market if allowed unfettered importation.
Ccurrently their economy is in turmoil due to the drop in exports to USA. Producers are closing plants and dismissing their workforce, with or without paying them back pay. The workers are setting fire to the plants in retribution.
China is in a lot of trouble right now. Chairman Xi may soon become an ex-chair. Their auto manufacturing is/will be going through a shakeout as multiple brands will cease to exist. The current leader, BYD, has shut many dealers, and has left purchasers who have made deposits without recourse as the dealerships are closed.
May they live in interesting times … holds true for China right now. IMO.