Author Topic: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done  (Read 7770 times)

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Offline BudTopic starter

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Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« on: August 17, 2020, 10:28:34 pm »
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Foxconn chairman Young Liu, according to Bloomberg,... boldly proclaimed that while China will continue to be a key location for Foxconn's factories, the country's "days as the world's factory are done."

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/12/foxconn-says-chinas-days-as-worlds-factory-done/
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Offline eti

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2020, 10:50:56 pm »
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Foxconn chairman Young Liu, according to Bloomberg,... boldly proclaimed that while China will continue to be a key location for Foxconn's factories, the country's "days as the world's factory are done."

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/12/foxconn-says-chinas-days-as-worlds-factory-done/

Sit back down, everyone; this is MacRumors, the source of much speculation and nonsense "news" - they rarely spit out anything worthy of reading.  :-DD
 

Offline BudTopic starter

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2020, 10:56:20 pm »
I knew there always be a smart ass who did not bother following the Bloomberg link in the article.
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Offline eti

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2020, 11:05:53 pm »
I knew there always be a smart ass who did not bother following the Bloomberg link in the article.

The amount of junk "news" they deem worthy of posting to their site, is hilariously misguided. Their editorial seem largely incapable of BASIC grammar and spelling, so maybe you can see why I'd laugh with mild derision?
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2020, 04:28:09 pm »
I knew there always be a smart ass who did not bother following the Bloomberg link in the article.

The amount of junk "news" they deem worthy of posting to their site, is hilariously misguided. Their editorial seem largely incapable of BASIC grammar and spelling, so maybe you can see why I'd laugh with mild derision?
It’s a news site for a very specific topic. That doesn’t make it junk simply because it’s not relevant to you.

And given that news is now utterly incapable of turning a profit, there’s no way they can afford to pay for extra editors to proofread everything. So errors are bound to slip through.
 

Online coppice

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2020, 04:38:02 pm »
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Foxconn chairman Young Liu, according to Bloomberg,... boldly proclaimed that while China will continue to be a key location for Foxconn's factories, the country's "days as the world's factory are done."

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/12/foxconn-says-chinas-days-as-worlds-factory-done/
This is hardly news. Low value assembly work has been moving out of China for years. Huge amounts of Korean and Japanese manufacture has moved to Vietnam, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia. Now Chinese companies are moving their assembly work to places like Vietnam, too.
 
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Offline BudTopic starter

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2020, 07:31:14 pm »
Yes but it adds weight to it when such behemoth as Foxconn admits it in clear text.
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Online coppice

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2020, 08:01:40 pm »
Yes but it adds weight to it when such behemoth as Foxconn admits it in clear text.
Foxconn has been one of the major companies moving simple assembly out of China. They've been more adventurous than some, setting up major operations in India. A location which hasn't worked out well for a lot of electronics companies.
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #8 on: August 19, 2020, 08:37:21 pm »
I thought Foxconn was that company that replaced a million workers with robots because their workers committed suicide due to their lousy work conditions ?
 

Offline ebastler

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #9 on: August 19, 2020, 08:42:40 pm »
Their editorial seem largely incapable of BASIC grammar and spelling,

... and that's probably a good thing, since all those GOTOs would make the articles hard to read.  ::)
 
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Offline BudTopic starter

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #10 on: August 19, 2020, 10:02:55 pm »
I thought Foxconn was that company that replaced a million workers with robots because their workers committed suicide due to their lousy work conditions ?

Do not think the "because" was the reason. No history of cuicides at my local groccery chain but they are building a fully automated distribution center.
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Offline tooki

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #11 on: August 22, 2020, 12:10:29 pm »
I thought Foxconn was that company that replaced a million workers with robots because their workers committed suicide due to their lousy work conditions ?
Not really.

Bear in mind that when the media was reporting on the Foxconn suicides (and the nets they put up, etc., trying to drag Apple through the mud) that Foxconn's suicide rate was actually much, much lower than the suicide rate for China as a whole. So if anything, statistically they should have been having far more suicides. (And I don't mean some small amount like double: Foxconn's suicide rate was 14 per million, vs 220 per million for the country!!)
 
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Online EEVblog

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #12 on: August 22, 2020, 12:29:09 pm »
Quote
Foxconn chairman Young Liu, according to Bloomberg,... boldly proclaimed that while China will continue to be a key location for Foxconn's factories, the country's "days as the world's factory are done."

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/12/foxconn-says-chinas-days-as-worlds-factory-done/
This is hardly news. Low value assembly work has been moving out of China for years.

Yes, and companies have also been moving manufacturing back to their own countries for years now. It even has it's own name, "onshoring". We've been talking about it for several years at least on The Amp Hour.
 
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Offline pidcon

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #13 on: August 22, 2020, 01:31:03 pm »
With all these foreign companies in China moving their manufacturing back to their home country, does that mean their products will be cheaper for their countrymen but more expensive for everyone else?

I think it was only a decade ago, some economist was saying, in 1900s if you want to build wealth you have to be in NYC, then in 2000s you have to be in Shanghai/Beijing. If these companies are leaving, where is the next frontier for economic growth?
 

Online coppice

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #14 on: August 22, 2020, 01:33:37 pm »
I thought Foxconn was that company that replaced a million workers with robots because their workers committed suicide due to their lousy work conditions ?
Not really.

Bear in mind that when the media was reporting on the Foxconn suicides (and the nets they put up, etc., trying to drag Apple through the mud) that Foxconn's suicide rate was actually much, much lower than the suicide rate for China as a whole. So if anything, statistically they should have been having far more suicides. (And I don't mean some small amount like double: Foxconn's suicide rate was 14 per million, vs 220 per million for the country!!)
The suicide rate at Foxconn was low by global standards, not just China's. This was just typical fake news. Latch on to a couple of cases, and blow them out of proportion. Gotta keep that click rate up.
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #15 on: August 22, 2020, 01:36:38 pm »
Quote
Foxconn chairman Young Liu, according to Bloomberg,... boldly proclaimed that while China will continue to be a key location for Foxconn's factories, the country's "days as the world's factory are done."

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/12/foxconn-says-chinas-days-as-worlds-factory-done/
This is hardly news. Low value assembly work has been moving out of China for years.

Yes, and companies have also been moving manufacturing back to their own countries for years now. It even has it's own name, "onshoring". We've been talking about it for several years at least on The Amp Hour.
Do you know of some solid major cases of work returning to the home country? There is lots of potential for it. Few jobs will return, but the work could return to ever more automated factories in the home country. However, most of what I hear is just talk. The bulk of actual movement out of China is to cheaper places in Asia.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #16 on: August 22, 2020, 03:10:08 pm »
If these companies are leaving, where is the next frontier for economic growth?

Vietnam, but that only applies to people already bloody rich, rich enough to "buy" local government and setup factories to do whatever the f* they'd like to do, and even you have 8 digit figures, you are too late to the party.

Entrance barrier did and will get higher and higher. It was easier for one to build a fortune back when NYC was rising, then the bar got higher in Beijing, then even higher in Shenzhen.

Not only rich frontiers shift, paradigms do the same. Copying existing cases will get harder and harder, and what I see the new paradigm will be is distributed manufacturing and innovation.

Only the most heavy industries will be done in specific countries, like electronics parts in China, bulk chemicals in Canada, metals in Australia, fine chemicals in Japan, then everything based upon will be built right where they were designed.

Agree.

There is no reason why American, Chinese, European, or even African CNC machines and robots cannot all be competitive against each other...   so there is no reason to concentrate most manufacturing except for heavy stuff.

 

Online Marco

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #17 on: August 22, 2020, 03:12:52 pm »
China and other Asian tigers concentrated IQ and academic development in regions for a large part with the bussiness attracted with low wage low educated labour. They started low on the value chain and pulled their way up.

With automation making low wage low educated labour less interesting, it will become a lot harder to follow. Vietnam and other relatively undeveloped countries might be interesting to set up some highly automated factories kept running by expats, but that doesn't really get Vietnam much development.
 

Offline Black Phoenix

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #18 on: August 23, 2020, 09:50:54 am »
At the heart of the world factory, Shenzhen, real estate price has gone up to above $20k per usable square meter. I wonder why factories fled.

Earlier this year when factories are locked down, instead of selling real estates to save their factories, rich men here sold their factories to save their real estates.

Real estate prices have dropped everywhere else in China, but have risen here by 10% just this year. That's how crazy things are here.

Thus I didn't take loans to buy a house here. Instead, I took the money equivalent to nothing more than a bathroom here to buy a huge 350 sqm house at my hometown, and I will fled Shenzhen after I earned all the money my heart desires and retire as an engineering content creator or something at my hometown and fuck this place.

Can confirm, was In a work interview for a company in Zhongshan, and while talking with the owner he told me exactly that, most of the industrial zone of Zhongshan is factories who were previously in Shenzhen. Zhongshan being a Tier 3 city compared with Shenzhen, currently a Tier 1 city, the price per square meter is way lower, salary expectation also lower, so most companies gone there.

Saw companies as Casio (manufacturing/assembly of the Calculators only) and Canon (diverse products from their portfolio) as an example (and the ones I remember well and have names common for the westerns to remember). For the manufacturing industries currently in Shenzhen and talking about the case of MSI, one that I know well, they have problems in getting people to work in the factory floor because, since it is a Tier 1 city the expectation of people in terms of salary is currently higher than before, so they are currently a little understaffed.

Housing prices in Zhongshan is also way lower than here in Shenzhen, for the price of my current house in Shenzhen I can buy a way bigger one over there. Other kind of things also are cheaper, being food, supermarket necessities, etc. If everything goes OK, probably I will relocate too.

For Shenzhen I see the shift into the services industry instead of the manufacturing currently. Probably also try to mimic some of Hong Kong's model too (but I could be totally wrong in what I'm saying).
« Last Edit: August 23, 2020, 09:57:37 am by Black Phoenix »
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #19 on: August 23, 2020, 11:24:24 am »

Where would China's "Silicon Valley" be - i.e. where are silicon chips and other advanced components made?
 

Offline Black Phoenix

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #20 on: August 23, 2020, 12:07:48 pm »

Where would China's "Silicon Valley" be - i.e. where are silicon chips and other advanced components made?

The "Silicon Valley" for China is not a place like in the US, were California is considered the Silicon Valley but currently is mostly tech companies offices, no manufacturing right?

This is what the CCP calls their "Silicon Valley"



in Where is China’s Silicon Valley?

But most of the production (not totally sure about this) is on the Pearl River Delta, with most companies with offices in Shenzhen (or founded in Shenzhen) and most manufacturing around it.
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #21 on: August 23, 2020, 12:57:40 pm »
But most of the production (not totally sure about this) is on the Pearl River Delta, with most companies with offices in Shenzhen (or founded in Shenzhen) and most manufacturing around it.
The Pearl River Delta is definitely the biggest production centre, but there is a lot of production in ZheJiang, and when you sum up the production spread around a large number of smaller centres it must add up to quite a percentage of the total. I've never had a broad enough view to confirm this, but I suspect the production which needs to be fast and responsive is mostly in the Pearl Delta. There are a huge number of supply and service companies are on your doorstep, to help you change and adapt your production within days. ZheJiang has a lot more of the "roll out the same thing every day in volume for a couple of years" kind of production.
 

Online coppice

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #22 on: August 23, 2020, 01:03:03 pm »
Housing prices in Zhongshan is also way lower than here in Shenzhen, for the price of my current house in Shenzhen I can buy a way bigger one over there. Other kind of things also are cheaper, being food, supermarket necessities, etc. If everything goes OK, probably I will relocate too.
ZhongShan is a much nicer place to live than ShenZhen, too. :)

For Shenzhen I see the shift into the services industry instead of the manufacturing currently. Probably also try to mimic some of Hong Kong's model too (but I could be totally wrong in what I'm saying).
I don't think Shenzhen is trying to be more like Hong Kong. It is forced to be more like Hong Kong, due to its spiraling costs. Car ownership in ShenZhen has been driven a lot by ShenZhen itself being so expensive to live in, that its cheaper to buy a car and commute in. The engineers I worked with 20 years ago in ShenZhen, who stretched themselves to buy an apartment, must be feeling very comfortable these days. :)
 

Offline janoc

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #23 on: August 23, 2020, 01:03:22 pm »
Yes but it adds weight to it when such behemoth as Foxconn admits it in clear text.
Foxconn has been one of the major companies moving simple assembly out of China. They've been more adventurous than some, setting up major operations in India. A location which hasn't worked out well for a lot of electronics companies.

Foxconn has factories even in Europe since a long time ago - e.g. in Pardubice & Kutna Hora (Czech rep. - computers, since 2000) and in Nitra (Slovakia - OLED and LCD TVs since 2010 when they took over the TV business from Sony in Slovakia) and a development/engineering center in Prague (Foxconn DRC).
 
They are far from the stereotypical image of a "Chinese assembly sweatshop" factory today.

« Last Edit: August 23, 2020, 01:05:33 pm by janoc »
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Foxconn: China's days as worlds factory are done
« Reply #24 on: August 23, 2020, 01:18:56 pm »
They are far from the stereotypical image of a "Chinese assembly sweatshop" factory today.
Foxconn started as a technology company making advanced interconnects, like the sockets for high pin out ICs such as Intel processors. Foxconn (Hon Hai) as a vast assembly shop is something the grew into.
 


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