Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: TigerLikesRooster
Ultimately, I would argue that the Chinese domestic consumer is not going to consume more. In fact, they would need to consume a lot more given the GDP per capita of the average Chinese person in order to replace the lost demand from the West.

If the Chinese did a Henry Ford - the modern equivalent of "5 bucks a day" - they'd be fine. But luckily for us, the Chinese don't 'get' capitalism...

11 posted on 01/01/2009 11:27:57 AM PST by GOPJ (GM's market value is a third of Bed, Bath and Beyond. Why is GM "too big to fail"? Steyn)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies ]


To: GOPJ
If the Chinese did a Henry Ford - the modern equivalent of "5 bucks a day" - they'd be fine. But luckily for us, the Chinese don't 'get' capitalism...

Fordism - paying people more money than they're worth - is caca on wheels. The communists did it on a nation-wide scale and ended up with famines killing tens of millions. Ford manage to survive in spite of Fordism because he essentially invented assembly line mass production, but paying his people too much money meant he did not have enough to invest in R&D, resulting in market share losses to other manufacturers, which borrowed his innovation and almost ran him into the ground. Once other countries figured out assembly line mass production - industrial plant Fordism via closed shop unionization was moribund in America - the only question was how long it could be kept on life support.

Besides, on the micro level, the Chinese can't just pay their people $5 an hour. They are glorified screwdriver turners and button pressers with serious competition in neighboring countries. Vietnam has 80m people and 1/3 China's minimum wage. Indonesia has 200m people and was recently overtaken by Chinese on the wage front. Guess what? Foreign manufacturers are starting to move abroad. Heck - Chinese manufacturers are starting to move abroad. Thai workers, who have higher wages than the Chinese, are starting to turn out products at a lower cost than from Chinese sources. An Oriental acquaintance commented on this during a visit to a store that carries Oriental foods (where there's apparently a significant amount of international competition in Asia itself). Who needs the quality problems associated with Chinese products when you can simply buy products from some other country?

12 posted on 01/01/2009 9:07:22 PM PST by Zhang Fei
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson