Posted on 11/15/2025 3:34:19 AM PST by daniel1212
Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled — and even terrified.
As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the country’s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.
“We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Verge last month. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”
“You get this sense of a change, where China’s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad,” British energy supplier Octopus CEO Greg Jackson told the newspaper.”
According to recent figures by the International Federation of Robotics, China has deployed orders of magnitude more industrial robots than Germany, the US, and the UK.
“China has quite a notable demographic problem but its manufacturing is, generally, quite labor-intensive,” Bismarck Analysis analyst Rian Whitton told The Telegraph... not because they expect they’ll be able to get higher margins — that is usually the idea in the West — but to compensate for this population decline and to get a competitive advantage.”
The country’s space program has also made massive strides, stoking fears of China beating the US back to the Moon.
While the United States has put protectionist measures in place to shield domestic producers and fend off steep competition, Chinese-made EVs have made a big impression in Europe.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
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Everyone still talks about electric vehicles like they’re still a thing. See the video below with actual data on EV sales. They peaked two years ago and have been going down ever since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbR31K0m7Fo
EV’s, eh? I think China needs them more than we do.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the reason they manufacture in China is not because of cost but because the manufacturing technology and ecosystem simply does not exist anywhere else.
Maybe somebody should inform Tim Cook that their lack of investment in America is why America doesn’t have the manufacturing infrastructure like it used to.
EV’s sold in China probably make sense given that China is setting up new coal plants and producing more electricity (assuming they’re also upgrading their grid accordingly). But I don’t see China exporting EV’s long once Europeans realize that EV’s don’t work well in countries that suppress power production.
There are no Democrats there pretending men are women.
“Apple CEO Tim Cook said the reason they manufacture in China is not because of cost but because the manufacturing technology and ecosystem simply does not exist anywhere else.”
Hopefully Trump’s people understand that. It’s the stuff you DON’T see that was outsourced to China, like the refining of the alloys needed to make Ball Bearings in landing gear that can handle 5000 carrier landings, rather than 50 landings, before pitting.
We USED TO do that refining, but a combination of regulations, Karens, Niby’s, UNIONS, and other crap made the siren song from China irresistible...and so all those problems went away with China. As to the refining being a defense-critical technology, that was lost due to being fourth-tier subcontractor work...so no concern that China would do something that we no longer could was simply ‘lost’.
You can’t fight this stuff at the top level, you have rebuild from the bottom-up and just figuring out what skills and technologies we lost will likely take a decade...and solving those problems will be even tougher since we still have regulations, Nimby’s, Karens, and, especially UNIONS to deal with.
“China beating the US back to the Moon.”
Who the hell cares? The US put men on the moon six decades ago with slide rules.
More importantly according to a chart recently of the amount of data centers being built in the US (1000’s, much is AI) are passing the electric costs unfairly on consumers and the Chicoms are accessing some technology from these installations from us. FREE.
Haven’t heard a word from our worthless uniparty on this topic.
Exactly. Apple loves investing in other countries. Amd then complains to the US government about IP, when China miraculously starts making apple knockoffs.
This article sounds like Bull Excrement. China looks like fake news, fake cities, fake prosperity, fake, fake, fake, fake ...
That's probably due to the fact that while Chinese universities are graduating thousands of scientists and engineers, our universities are graduating thousands of lawyers and gender studies majors.
... the country’s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind...
My first trip to China was in 1989; my last was in 2023. If you haven't seen it with your own eyes, it is almost impossible to realize how much progress has been made there.
Mr. Cook would reply that investment in a nation with an educationally-deficient, unionized, and entitled labor pool with a vast overhead of regulatory demands is a waste of money.
“The country’s space program has also made massive strides, stoking fears of China beating the US back to the Moon.”
Chinese astronauts return from space station after delay blamed on space debris damage
Glad they found a solution. There was a great deal of concern about supplies on board the space station. I think they solved that problem by sending replacement crew on another space craft.
China has a ballooning population of older people who consume goods and services but who are generally past the age of contributing to their national economy.
China has an inadequate population of young people who are actively working and contributing to economic output. Their labor may be insufficient to provide the old people what the old people require.
Yes, with robotics and automation, China can produce a lot of goods.
But, robots don’t pay taxes. China’s authoritarian government requires actual money in order to pay for the State Services. With so few humans working and paying taxes, China has a problem.
Many countries face this sort of challenge, including the US. China is the tip of the spear and it will be interesting to see how they weather this storm.
> The US put men on the moon six decades ago with slide rules.
Not only slide rules. Computing was used extensively. The Apollo 11 LEM even had a computer glitch on the way to landing.
Computerized project planning and tracking was already a thing in the 60’s. E.G. the Polaris missile program made extensive use of PERT and critical path analysis.
If you have one society run on EVs and the other on ICE, ICE will win every time. Simple math and physics.
EVs are more expensive, less effient, have less range, harder/longer to refuel, and yes ultimately dirtier and more hazardous.
They suck at hauling hauling, towing and running heavy equipment. They have a shorter shelf-life and are harder to repair with worse resale. They kill the grid with heavy demand on energy infrastructure. They overheat when pushed and handle worse becuase of weight. They’re out of any auto race in 10 minutes.
They nearly bankrupted Western automakers because the collective hive-brain of free markets already spit them out.
China also doesn’t have to listen to ‘environmentalists’.
Note that all my Apple gear has a “designed in the USA” placard...
In the early 2000’s I would be amused at finding old electronics assembly plants in Silicon Valley liquidated and converted to strip malls full of yoga studios and boutiques.
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