When will UK (+other countries) not be able to buy Chinese Electronics?

[edy]

As much as some would like to blame the Chinese for all of this, I would like to remind ourselves that our own companies (in search for higher profits) and we ourselves (as consumers who want for more and more stuff) are also just as responsible, if not more, for the current state of affairs.

A big reason for our increased standard of living is on the back of the Chinese labour market, who toil away under sub-standard non-unionized conditions, spewing pollution everywhere, for pennies on the dollar. We decided to look the other way to get our cheap sneakers, clothing, toys and electronics. Meanwhile our economies were able to shift away from manufacturing to more service oriented industries while keeping our inflation and wages relatively low, while corporate profits have skyrocketed.

This is not only a Chinese phenomenon. Even within North America we have seen manufacturing move to areas of lower wages and less regulation/unionization and costs of living, thus able to ensure a steady supply of workers at optimal pricing to maximize corporate profit, and also please our consumerist mentality. You have also seen the repair industry dry up, and with increasing complexity of goods and cost-savings they are not lasting as long as often not even worth fixing.

China has a population of about 1.379 BILLION as of 2016. Europe has 741 million, and North America has about 579 million. So China's population is comparable to the TOTAL population of all of Europe and North America combined. China is developing, it has a growing middle class, the people have aspirations there too and want to enjoy modern life as much as the next guy.

There should be a plan in place to curtail Chinese IP theft and unfair working conditions, pollution regulations and so on... at least to try and level the playing field. I think working together with China would be better than unrealistically drawing a line in the sand and trying to bring back industries that we don't want anyways, and that the average worker here would feel too stressed out doing. If the Chinese workers have the advantage currently over robots, it is only because these unskilled menial assembly tasks are easier to handle by humans... but not forever.

Either way the future should prove very interesting... and don't forget India which is almost the same population of China yet not there yet, but could also be rising.

[MK14]

I've always and/or often felt that the massive Chinese "bubble", which has carried on for a long while now.
Whereby, we can buy these amazingly low priced goods from China, would burst, sooner or later.

But times are gradually changing, as mentioned a few posts up, Brexit, Trumps massive trade duties, sometimes tensions with Russia and sometimes China, over the tiny islands China have decided to unilaterally claim as their own.

This "bubble" could burst, sooner or later. Maybe Trumps trade war will go too far. Maybe China will have riots and trouble on their home shores.
I guess the world will cope, but it might take a few years of shortages of stuff and perhaps, sky high prices for some stuff. Before things get back to normal.

The Chinese, amazingly low prices, don't seem credible for the long term. Surely something must budge and/or go wrong (i.e. the "bubble" bursts).

[floobydust]

Communism seems superior to Democracy in a few ways.

The State mandates growth and investment in industries and massive movements occur, unquestioned.
Made in China 2025 plan took over two years and 150 experts from the China Academy of Engineering, to put together.

Let's see what other nations have as a strategy or plan.

Democracy in the West- we elect idiot politicians who do nothing but screw up a country and make a mess, then we swing and vote the other way and repeat et. al. as an oscillator.
The result is no big plan for a nation's technology or industry growth and world competitiveness.

In a few years, people get fed up and vote the other way, i.e. USA oscillates between Democrat and Republican, Canada flips political parties every four years, Australia has some political gong show as well.

Outside of wartime, I can't see a (democratic) nation pooling resources and working together with a mandate to grow local industry and business.

This massive coordinated effort by the chinese will not be beaten.

[edy]

Communism seems superior to Democracy in a few ways.

Yes, until you have to live under it.

What exactly is our goal as an individual? As a society? Do we want to work 18 hour days, work like a dog and compete to the point of suicide and family shame? Is there nothing else to life than conforming to some ideology which ultimately is a failure (as most communist countries have experienced) and is just as rife with corruption and greed as any other?

Not that the western system of government is perfect, but at least we have the freedom to criticize it, write about it, protest it, start various organizations that may be counter to the current government policies, and not be afraid of imprisonment, torture and having your family killed (at least not by the government).

Take for example the APOLLO MOON MISSIONS... That initiative was founded during the cold war. Eisenhower first conceived of it, then Kennedy announced the goal in 1961, and it progressed through both Johnson and Nixon administrations (regardless of whether Republican or Democratic parties). It was an effort of immense importance and among other things, was to thumb our nose at the Russians but also by proxy meant to show FREE DEMOCRATIC CAPITALIST superiority over COMMUNIST idealogies in getting the job done.

My point is, you don't have to have a communist dictatorship flogging the people into doing stuff to get a mission done. I can show you plenty of examples where free countries MOBILIZE their civilians in a massive effort to build and work together over a number of years and government administrations in a large project. But the HEART has to be with it... or some national ambition, or an external threat that makes the population spend the money and sacrifice their time to get the job done.

If anything, when Communism forces the people to do stuff they don't want, it only results in wasting effort in many stupid projects which probably shouldn't be done... decided on by non-elected officials who dictate to the masses. One example is the GREAT CHINESE FAMINE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine) partly blamed on Mao Zedong's radical changes in agriculture imposed by government regulations during the "Great Leap Forward" (1958-1962) in which about 35 million people died. Read that page and see how the communist government decided that because steel/iron production was needed, peasant farmers were pulled away from private farming and only government commune farming with far too few people were left remaining to produce food the country needed.

China may be balancing things out for now, but don't let them fool you. A few billionaires have vanished in recent times, meant to scare people and many think it is to also take focus away from massive government corruption as well. Censorship, inability to criticize the government, even if you are abroad (threaten your family who remain behind), freedom of the press, one-child policy, etc... we take our freedom for granted and I hope we will value it enough to fight for it.

[rstofer]

I don't know about other countries but, in the US, chaos works best.  Get all you smart people in college and toss out the rule book.  We generate entrepreneurs by the hundreds.  They can work on whatever they like, they can form companies, they can get rich off their own efforts.  It's a pretty good system.  Of course, the concept of equality, as it applies to wealth, is right out the window.  Those who can succeed are free to succeed in a really big way.

Centrally managed systems will always fail due to corruption or incompetence.  While we're talking about China, did everybody see where they changed the law to allow Xi Jinping to become President for life?  I don't think that is anywhere near democratic.  There are some folks who think Trump will try the same thing (jokingly).

I don't pretend to understand the parliamentary system, and I especially don't understand the system in the UK.  Maybe by the time BREXIT settles down I'll have a better handle on it.  We just don't do the 'vote of no confidence' bit to replace our top executive.

[doobedoobedo]

Communism seems superior to Democracy in a few ways.

Certainly in body count https://scottmanning.com/content/communist-body-count/

[Richard Crowley]

Communism seems superior to Democracy in a few ways. 

Too bad it takes totalitarianism to get people to play.

[cdev]

Extreme economic (which are the same as political) systems are all similar, they put power and contrived justifying ideology before people.

The era of large needs for human labor is rapidly changing into an era where work is done by machines. That shift will be a huge equalizer, because 0 equals 0. Businesses big and small are expected to fail in large numbers. Nobody has any idea what will happen.

That shift is a huge challenge, one which the human race has to deal with or (just as likely as not) perish.

Think of it as the human race's difficult teen years as we grow into adulthood. In the animal kingdom many youngsters never make it to adulthood. Intelligent species are probably like that too. We should all be praying we don't destroy the thin zone of life coating our beautiful planet in our stupidity.

[james_s]

Communism looks good on paper, and it can work in a small, homogenous group of similarly minded people but in the real world it doesn't scale well. The typical family with kids is essentially communism, money comes into the household and goes into a shared account, everyone contributes to the chores, etc and property is shared amongst family members. Once you get up past a few dozen people who start to have differing goals, interests and lifestyles it doesn't really work. It doesn't take long before significant numbers of people figure out they can coast along without pulling their own weight and it will take a long time to catch up to them. Other people figure out how to game the system and get to be more equal than others. That said, there is no perfect system, all of the isms lead to more or less the same result if one tries to implement them in pure form without checks & balances.

[tggzzz]

I wonder what proportion of treez' threads end up in pointless political discussions?

I wonder if the moderators are beginning to keep a wary eye on his threads?

[ferdieCX]

All political systems fail when they stop to be a meritocracy and became an "amigocracy" (sorry for the spanish slang)
If the only way you can grow up is by having the "right" friends, but you don't have them, you will not care if the system blows away.
It may happen that you don't pursue actively to make it fail, but you will not contribute that it prevails. If too many people is in this situation, the system will unavoidable slowly decline.
By the way, to have state owned basic public services like water, electricity, telephony and basic health care can work quite well, at least in a small country.

[CJay]

Communism seems superior to Democracy in a few ways.

Yes, until you have to live under it.

What exactly is our goal as an individual? As a society? Do we want to work 18 hour days, work like a dog and compete to the point of suicide and family shame? Is there nothing else to life than conforming to some ideology which ultimately is a failure (as most communist countries have experienced) and is just as rife with corruption and greed as any other?

Communism is a great and noble idea, right up to the point where you involve humans in it, then it all falls apart when exposed to greed, human nature etc.

Weirdly, those who decry things like social healtchare and welfare are the very people who would make communism fail by their own greed and selfishness.

[tautech]

To fire the OP's question back at him with some little twist; when will the world not be able to buy Japanese vehicles ?
30 years ago the Japanese were the western challenging race and now they have a large marketplace car presence and we're not incensed with that, why should we be concerned with Chinese electronics ? 

Want to understand why they are like they are, then watch just the last couple of episodes of this great series:
http://www.pbs.org/story-china/home/

[BrianHG]

Want to understand why they are like they are, then watch just the last couple of episodes of this great series:
http://www.pbs.org/story-china/home/

Video not available in my area...
Funny, were really close to the US and we even have PBS channels available on our cable TV and we can receive PBS over the air with a good antenna on the roof.
Must resort to MVGroup...  Again...

[tautech]

Want to understand why they are like they are, then watch just the last couple of episodes of this great series:
http://www.pbs.org/story-china/home/

Video not available in my area...
Funny, were really close to the US and we even have PBS channels available on our cable TV and with we can receive PBS over the air with a good antenna on the roof.
Must resort to MVGroup...  Again...

Try the other links in this Google search:
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=the+story+of+china&rlz=1C1CHBF_enNZ760NZ760&oq=the+story+of+China&aqs=chrome.0.35i39j0l5.7900j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[BrianHG]

Want to understand why they are like they are, then watch just the last couple of episodes of this great series:
http://www.pbs.org/story-china/home/

Video not available in my area...
Funny, were really close to the US and we even have PBS channels available on our cable TV and with we can receive PBS over the air with a good antenna on the roof.
Must resort to MVGroup...  Again...

Try the other links in this Google search:
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=the+story+of+china&rlz=1C1CHBF_enNZ760NZ760&oq=the+story+of+China&aqs=chrome.0.35i39j0l5.7900j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

OMG, what garbage quality.  A 1/4 sized picture in the bottom right corner at 240p, 4khz audio.  MVGroup has it, the real BBC version at 720p.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ymzy7/episodes/guide

[ferdieCX]

30 years ago the Japanese were the western challenging race and now they have a large marketplace car presence and we're not incensed with that, why should we be concerned with Chinese electronics ? 

IMHO, because:
Japan made cars and electronics are high quality, AND a that time the electronics was repairable.
They were built by workers that worked and awful lot of hours a week, but had decent wages.
Japan has an Emperor, but it is a democracy

So, it seemed that Japan was playing more or less fair

[james_s]

Yes, Japanese goods were popular because they made very good stuff, not because they were cheap. In the 1970s Japan became well known for producing the highest quality stuff you could get. Previously they had a reputation similar to China today, producing cheap crap. It's possible that China will eventually be the next Japan, if they start producing good quality stuff and providing sensible wages.

[mtdoc]

It's possible that China will eventually be the next Japan, if they start producing good quality stuff and providing sensible wages.

It will be hard. Chinese people follow money. Nowadays, making money with money makes money faster than making money with industrialization.
A lot of young people in China are no longer interested in being engineers or programmers. They instead, are interested in financial stuff.
The root of the problem is that redistribution is not fair in China, and the problem doesn't pertain only to China. It's a global issue.
People who create value are not rewarded with wealth, instead, people who play with money get them.

With capitalization, a lot of Chinese people joined this stupid craze, and fewer and fewer are interested in actually getting things done.

Japanese did exactly the same thing, and they've paid their price. I think China will fall into the same hole sooner or later.
The trade war and the fact that China needs western technology more than the west needs Chinese manufacturing signifies the inevitable "Plaza Agreement" between China and the west.
Then there will be a recession. Nobody knows what will happen then.

These are excellent points.  From what you say, it sounds like the Chinese are trying to catch up to the west in regards to the financialization of their economy.
 
This trend in the US has meant ever growing wealth disparity with almost all monetary gains of the last 40 years going to the top 5-10%.  History shows that this type of trend always ends badly.

One factor that traditional economic analysis does not incorporate is the role that shrinking physical resources play in impacting economic growth. Traditional GDP calculations do not take this into account and instead focus on monetary measures such as government spending, income, investment, etc.  In a central bank, fiat currency world - these numbers are divorced from any physical limitations.  Money/debt can be conjured up at will to prop up GDP numbers and funnel more wealth to the elite class.   

History has shown though that eventually physical world reality (resource scarcity) comes into play which means wars for territory (physical occupation or empire created vassal states) or in the past - expansion into "the new world" of the Americas.  The second is no longer an option.  The first is currently playing out in Geopolitics and can only worsen. 

[Bassman59]

I don't spend a lot of times on predictions.  If they were any indicator of reality, Hillary would be President.  Everybody said she was going to win in a landslide.  Biggest blowout in history.  Until the votes got counted...

After the votes were counted, she did win, but our ridiculous Electoral College system gave it away.

[Bassman59]

The Foxconn LCD plant in Wisconsin has over $4B (tax breaks, infrastructure, free land) incentive package including the locals paying for the plant's $140M electric utility upgrades. "It will take until at least 2043 for the state to recoup that lost tax revenue, according to Wisconsin's estimates."

Estimates I've read about how many jobs will "be created" by this Hon Hai plant range from 3000 with the "potential" to generate 13,000. At the cost of four billion dollars in giveaways. Why not just pick 3,000 Wisconsin residents at random and give each of them $1.333 million?

[Bassman59]

It takes time to rebuild industries, but in time I hope the UK, gets there, as needed.

How long did it take the US to tool up for WW II?  I don't know the answer but it must have been pretty darn quick.  True, we were building airplanes and battleships, no super high technology, but still, it didn't take long to set up the factories.

I worked at an aircraft plant in the early '70s and a lot of the machines were owned by the Federal Government.  The company didn't have the funds to buy all the necessary machines during the war so the government provided them.  Twenty five years later we were still using them.

Officially WW II started Sept 1, 1939 and ended Sept 2, 1945 - six years and a day.  The US wasn't involved with the war in the Pacific until Dec 7, 1941 and the war in Europe Dec 11, 1941 when Hitler declared war with the US.

So, what did we create during that 6 year period?  It was pretty amazing!

Don't sell the US short when we decide to do something.

ALL of that was financed by the US Government in response to an existential threat, and in most cases, the production facilities already existed, they were just converted to build military vehicles or whatever instead of civilian cars.

[Bassman59]

I do agree, however, that we should quit spending our country's money on useless wars and defense of other countries.  We have more important things to do with the money right here at home.  A trillion dollars or so would have fixed a lot of bridges and repaved a lot of roads.

That trillion dollars could give everyone in this country an undergraduate degree in their field of choice.

[mtdoc]

It takes time to rebuild industries, but in time I hope the UK, gets there, as needed.

How long did it take the US to tool up for WW II?  I don't know the answer but it must have been pretty darn quick.  True, we were building airplanes and battleships, no super high technology, but still, it didn't take long to set up the factories.

I worked at an aircraft plant in the early '70s and a lot of the machines were owned by the Federal Government.  The company didn't have the funds to buy all the necessary machines during the war so the government provided them.  Twenty five years later we were still using them.

Officially WW II started Sept 1, 1939 and ended Sept 2, 1945 - six years and a day.  The US wasn't involved with the war in the Pacific until Dec 7, 1941 and the war in Europe Dec 11, 1941 when Hitler declared war with the US.

So, what did we create during that 6 year period?  It was pretty amazing!

Don't sell the US short when we decide to do something.

ALL of that was financed by the US Government in response to an existential threat, and in most cases, the production facilities already existed, they were just converted to build military vehicles or whatever instead of civilian cars.

And that was able to take place only because of geography. The US not only, at that time, had large untapped and easily accessible oil reserves, we had not been bombed so our industrial base was fully functional.  At the end of the war this is what allowed us to leap frog the rest of the industrial world and become the economic (and military) superpower.  Unfortunately we've squandered that bounty away in a few decades.  Because of that, historically speaking, our empire will be a flash in he pan.

[Rick Law]

...
...
If you look through the history books, over the last 1,000 or even 20,000 years. You see that all sorts of populations/countries/regions/industries/religions/etc etc, come and go.
I would imagine, that many of them, which were big in the past, haven't even made it to the history books.
Because they were too small or the evidence/information about their existence, has long since disappeared.

So, it is not clear, if this China situation is just a blip, and the "Roman Empire", will once again triumph again, with Donaldini Trumpatteta, the smart, sane and amazingly honest, US, "Roman Empire", leader/tweeter.

Or, as some suspect, it is the beginning of the "Fall, of the Roman Empire". History repeating itself.
If there is a big power shift, will it just be the US, or will the rest of the West, such as Europe, decline as well ?

The UK, is hopefully small enough, to somewhat quickly adapt to changing world-wide situations. So, hopefully it can cope with whatever way round, the world ends up.
It takes time to rebuild industries, but in time I hope the UK, gets there, as needed.

I very much doubt China's lead will just be a blip in history.  Many historians have suggested that China lead the world in living standards perhaps 900 years out of the last 1000.  The "American Historical Association" calls China "The Oldest Living Civilization"^[1], so China is no shooting star.

Roman Empire army at its largest had 28 legions - 3,000 to 5,000 a legion, so max about 150,000 men total.  Qin Dynasty (214BC) Southward expansion alone had 500,000 troops in one theater.

Skipping and skipping all the way to the Ming Dynasty when China explored international trade in the 1400's with Zheng He's seven "treasure hunt" trips....
Quoted from Business Insider: "Few people in the West realise how economically and technologically advanced China was by the 1400s. The Treasure Fleet was vast — some vessels were up to 120 metres long. (Christopher Columbus's Santa Maria was only 19 metres.) A Chinese ship might have several decks inside it, up to nine masts, twelve sails, and contain luxurious staterooms and balconies, with a crew of up to 1,500, according to one description. On one journey, 317 of these ships set sail at once."^[2]

An English author is convinced that China possibly discovered American in 1421.  In the book, he suggested that Zheng He's fleet that reached Africa was over twice the size of the combined fleets of all European nations' navies at the time.^[3]

Fast forward or back, you found events like China's discovery of magnetic compass, gun powder...  They were using crossbows more than 1,000 years before crossbows show up in Europe.

No, China is no shooting star.  China is a very strong competitor for any nation today.  UK, USA, Russia, whoever, better treat this competitor with some respect to its economic power.  Under estimating it will surely not be a good thing to do...

Fortunate for the USA perhaps - Judging from statements he made and the way he conducted himself, I think Trump understand the Chinese and the Chinese culture well.  His first trip to China shown a lot of mutual respect between him and the Chinese.  So I am optimistic that he will do a good job here with USA/China relationship.  We'll see.  Time will tell if reality is what I discerned.


[1] See AHA's article on "China, The Oldest Living Civilization" here:
https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-42-our-chinese-ally-(1944)/the-oldest-living-civilization

[2] "500 years ago, China destroyed its world-dominating navy because its political elite was afraid of free trade", Business Insider magazine
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-zhenge-he-treasure-fleet-elite-free-trade-2017-2

[3] "1421: The Year China Discovered America"  Author Gavin Menzies - Amazon profile: GAVIN MENZIES was born in 1937 and lived in China for two years before World War II. He joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from 1959 to 1970. In the course of researching 1421, he visited 120 countries, over 900 museums and libraries, and every major sea port of the late Middle Ages. He is married with two daughters and lives in North London.