“...why is any Western country building things in China ?”
The main attraction to manufacturing products in China is the availability of low cost labor. In fact, according to statistics, manufacturing in China can help reduce costs by 30% to 80%, depending on labor intensity of production.
In addition to its low labor costs, China has become known as “the world’s factory” because of its lack of regulatory compliance, low taxes and duties, and competitive currency practices.
China makes up 28.7% of the total global output for manufacturing. This accounted for nearly $4 trillion of the country’s overall economic output as early as 2019. Although the United States used to be the world’s top manufacturing hub, it has been over 10 years since China started claimed the top position. China has a comfortable 10 percent lead on the United States.
And it’s a lot more than just Tesla. China, including Hong Kong, still dominates the sourcing landscape, supplying 40.7 percent of U.S. imports last year.
And China starting last year became the largest battery manufacturing country in the world providing 77% of the world’s batteries. Autos included in that. And I’ll give you a source on that as that is hard even for me to believe and I read it.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chinas-dominance-in-battery-manufacturing/
wy69
A friend of mine picked up a small item in Monaco of all places and bought it to California. It was originally manufactured in China. I think it went 2/3 of the way around the world.