China is the manufacturing superpower

One thing people are not aware of and am curious of how big it really is: China manufacturing laundry. Essentially, goods are manufactured in China, then laundered to a third-party country and then exported to the US&#x2F;EU. This come in two flavors, legal laundry where the local manufacturer satisfies the conditions; and illegal one where bribes are paid to pass goods.<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;antidumping.vn&#x2F;eu-chinabike-duty-hits-indonesia-malaysia-sri-lanka-tunisia-n12045.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;antidumping.vn&#x2F;eu-chinabike-duty-hits-indonesia-mala...</a><p>I come from a country that does this. Massive deficit with China vs. an equivalent surplus with the EU. Weak manufacturing base that essentially import Chinese, does some packaging and then export it back.

Huh. For all the claims that US manufacturing is down, it does seem that if we adjusted per-capita it&#x27;s on par with China based on the figures presented here, which I really didn&#x27;t expect to see<p>I&#x27;m no expert and of course I have no clue if it even makes sense to measure per-capita manufacturing share, and also assume a lot of other factors matter here - what kinds of things we&#x27;re manufacturing, how much those products serve domestic versus export markets, etc - but it&#x27;s still surprising

this is amazing and filled with facts that i wish everyone arguing the point that china cant overtake U.S. in economy or world superpowers would read. The facts are there, there is not much hiding around the corner, all of the true indication is in front of us. Yes. the article states U.S. still holds the title for world superpower by military size and capabilities. That&#x27;s not to say that china cant catch up in no time with U.S. military. That&#x27;s if they decide to do so. i would ask does the Chinese republic need to invest heavy in this sector in order to grow? Clearly not from the facts. in fact that&#x27;s the very same thing we should have been doing all along.The U.S. has spent enormous amount of capital to fund wars and foreign relational activities.<p>China has a great way going about this. making friends with less developed countries that U.S. overlooked. China is looking for something specific. Just as U.S. is looking for something specific as well. To be totally honest I am not entirely sure what the U.S. is looking for when engaging with other countries, other than the same narrative for the fear of not having safety blah blah. This time that was spent on these adventures the U.S. cannot get back, while also injuring foreign relations.<p>there is a clear sign that the U.S. government is confused and has a gun with no-where to aim. All the policies and efforts are accelerating the U.S. into deterioration. The U.S. has some strong sector for the sake of this reply i will mainly say that attacking the top tech firms and industries with regulation will only push them out to more favorable grounds give new room for industries to form in more favorable grounds other than U.S.. the solution must solve the problem that brought the solution to existence.

I bought two things recently: some temperature sensors for a smart home and some cable clips to hide some wiring under a cabinet.<p>Both were mass produced in China and both shipped with 3M branded adhesive mounting pads. An apt and literal representation of global manufacturing — US made chemicals, Chinese electronics, one clinging to the other.

I think there&#x27;s no denying that this is super impressive. Realpolitik aside, well done China.<p>I wonder how manufacturing output compares between China and US+EU, say. It doesn&#x27;t make that much sense to look at EU constituents in separation. Even then I suppose China is ahead, but maybe it&#x27;s not a total wipeout.<p>That led me to wonder about manufacturing output vs GDP. Is China producing more, after adjusting for its total GDP. So for example, China&#x27;s GDP is about 4-5x bigger than Germany&#x27;s, whereas the fraction of manufacturing output is about 5-7x different. It still puts Germany &quot;behind&quot; but it&#x27;s not outright domination.<p>In fact, such fraction, of manufacturing to GDP, is a basic economics measure: it&#x27;s the fraction of GDP coming from manufacturing! And it&#x27;s no surprise to anyone that this fraction is high in China.<p>So then I guess the questions would be:<p>- is manufacturing expected to outperform the other constituents of global economies going forwards (i.e. is China smart putting its eggs in this basket)<p>- is the rest of the world at risk because China can squeeze them (perhaps)<p>- what is the outlook for manufacturing outside of China (maybe not great but it seems like people are waking up to this).<p>I wonder how much of that simply cuts back to marginal costs of energy and ESG. Presumably in China you can manufacture cheaply partly because you don&#x27;t need to pay for employee rights or clean energy. Not all of this, clearly, but where would US+EU be if it wasn&#x27;t constrained by broadly speaking ESG (I&#x27;m not saying it&#x27;s a bad thing, but it is a thing).

And unfortunately for the West, manufacturing capacity translates to military capability in any prolonged conflict (which is why industrial policy and tariffs in dual use &#x2F; strategic industries seem like the way to go)

It&#x27;s not about what China did well, but about Europe&#x2F;US ignorance. How many times you&#x27;ve heard during last decade that software eats the world? That we should do highly profitable software things only anyway? That everyone and his dog should be a software engineer in future? Well, turned out that it was really about free money and it didn&#x27;t last. Serious question – how many of you who say that they can&#x27;t find the job any more, have considered manufacturing? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;zanehengsperger&#x2F;status&#x2F;1862134411657117773?mx=2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;zanehengsperger&#x2F;status&#x2F;1862134411657117773?mx=...</a>

<p><pre><code> Six nations manufacture at least 3% of the world total. China is followed by the US, Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea. Note how the world has changed. Only three of these are long-established industrial economies; the other three are newly industrialised economies. Four of the G7 don’t make the cut. </code></pre> s&#x2F; 3% &#x2F; 63% &#x2F;

I remember how until quite recently, the West viewed the East, particularly China, as a backward region. People would even dismissively use the term &#x27;Chinese junk&#x27;. In a remarkably short time, that perception has completely flipped. Now it&#x27;s the West that seems to be falling behind...

One thing to note is PRC is the only country in the world whose manufacturing sector has every industrial category classified by the United Nations.

The premise that China does around a third of the world&#x27;s manufacturing isn&#x27;t really <i>that</i> surprising, they have more than a sixth of the world&#x27;s population and there are a lot of areas (e.g. India and Africa) that have large populations and a disproportionately <i>small</i> share of manufacturing.<p>The real problem isn&#x27;t that it&#x27;s a third, it&#x27;s that it will be something like 2% of commercial aircraft and 98% of PCs, and then the second one is <i>bad</i>. Single point of failure. That&#x27;s the part that needs to be addressed.

It&#x27;s not too bad if you consider that China is 17.6% of the world population; suddenly around 30% of manufacturing share doesn&#x27;t seem that high. However, India at 3% is pretty eye-opening, but this is gradually shifting not just because of the China+1 strategy but due to the larger growing market (read: increase in standard of living &#x2F; spending capacity &#x2F; GDP per capita) in India and also government measures such as high import duties on high-volume goods such as smartphone (eg: Samsung&#x27;s mobiles factory in Noida is the largest mobiles factory in the world [0] (India&#x27;s market for mobiles (non-smartphones) is still relatively large)).<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.samsung.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;samsung-inaugurates-worlds-largest-mobile-factory-in-india" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.samsung.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;samsung-inaugurates-worlds-large...</a>

Forgive my ignorance, but how does a country with a strong military turn that into GDP? I don&#x27;t understand how military &gt; manufacturing in terms of GDP. In my mind, manufacturing &gt; military, but my knowledge of economics isn&#x27;t great.

The imbalance in trade sectors is striking. China is dominating manufacturing, but this is requiring huge imports of agricultural goods and also services. The result being that there is a trade surplus, but it is far smaller than manufacturing dominance implies and also potentially quite volatile. Global changes like the war in Ukraine stressing agriculture supply lines and the decline of Hong Kong as a provider of services could have large impacts on Chinese trade.

I hope the Chinese people will be free one day, and I hope their lifespan goes up.<p>#58 is nothing to be proud of. Work to death. Not very fun.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldometers.info&#x2F;demographics&#x2F;life-expectancy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldometers.info&#x2F;demographics&#x2F;life-expectancy&#x2F;</a>

The US can&#x27;t even make cell phones any more.<p>What would it take to get that capability back?

And only a matter of time before the manufacturing superpower is both that and a military superpower. If you can make stuff you can make military stuff

I remember when USSR tried to make everything on its soil. It didn&#x27;t end well.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NzKuHxp7WqA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NzKuHxp7WqA</a><p>tl;dr: Today China vs US is 19% vs 16% world GDP. By 2035, it will be 24% vs 14%. China will be large economy, US can&#x27;t beat China. Unless there is a nuclear war, which is probably less than ideal.

See also &quot;Manufacturing is a war now&quot;:<p>&gt; <i>Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as</i> free market economies with redistribution, <i>because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.</i><p>&gt; <i>Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been</i> years before <i>the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.</i><p>&gt; <i>Democratic countries seem to still mostly be in “peace mode” with respect to their economic models. They don’t yet see manufacturing as something that needs to be preserved and expanded in peacetime in order to be ready for the increasing likelihood of a major war. Fortunately, both Republicans and Democrats in America have inched away from this deadly complacency in recent years. But both the tariffs embraced by the GOP and the industrial policies pioneered by the Dems are only partial solutions, lacking key pieces of a military-industrial strategy.</i><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.noahpinion.blog&#x2F;p&#x2F;manufacturing-is-a-war-now" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.noahpinion.blog&#x2F;p&#x2F;manufacturing-is-a-war-now</a><p>FDR started preparing for war years before WW2 &#x2F; Pearl Harbor (warning: heavy anti-union slant in the book as it was funded by AEI):<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;13152691-freedom-s-forge" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;13152691-freedom-s-forge</a>

The title needs 2024. The article is almost a year old.

my favorite bit of trivia connected with the whole &quot;trade war&quot; is the sudden apearance in China, of companies devoted to the making labels, the most poular (currently) are those saying &quot;made in vietnam&quot; and apocryaphal or not?, there is a city in china named USA, which satisfied the beurocratic requirements of some other round of protectionism

&gt; The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined.<p>Dubious claim. Military power is not measured in “spending”. Manufacturing is in fact a basis for modern military power, as it was the basis for US military power in WW2. The fact that China can produce 10k+ precisely controlled drone swarms in massive quantities and produces more hypersonic missiles and ships casts doubt on this claim.<p>Says the Atlantic: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2024&#x2F;12&#x2F;weapons-production-munitions-shortfall-ukraine-democracy&#x2F;680867&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2024&#x2F;12&#x2F;weapons...</a>

The GGR measure suggests they have a self sustaining economy to some extent. This manufacturing capacity, even if it’s “only” a third of global capacity, is a danger to free societies. It’ll ultimately be used to force the CCP’s authoritarian control on Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and probably others.<p>Unfortunately I don’t know what short term options there are to contain the CCP’s power and control over this capability. The conclusion of this informative article says this:<p>&gt; China is now the world’s sole manufacturing giant. As its recent success in electric vehicles demonstrates, its wide and deep industrial base can help it gain a competitive edge in virtually all sectors. The exceptions are the most advanced sectors, where the G7 countries still dominate.<p>&gt; Politicians who indulge in loose talk about decoupling from China need a clear-eyed look at the facts. As we have shown (Baldwin et al. 2023), all the major manufacturers in the world source at least 2% of all their industrial inputs from China. Decoupling would be difficult, to say the least.