I think that offshoring labor has some fascinating parallels with disruptive technologies. I wonder if China is the disruptive "technology", coming in to scoop up all the low-end, low margin markets, with American companies like IBM gratefully ceding their money-losing low-end product lines and concentrating on the higher-end, higher-margin lines for a higher rate of return.
If this is so, then it doesn't bode well in the long run for the US companies that get pushed into these niche markets by the upstart Chinese. But from the standpoint of the employees it's not necessarily the end of the world - if there are new, innovative US companies they can migrate to. These new US companies may themselves be working on disruptive technologies in the more classical sense.
Can the disruptive technology model be extended to countries or economies as a whole? I dunno. I suppose in the general sense that China is a country full of cheap labor and we're full of expensive, highly trained, productive, & creative labor. Does this mean we've been marginalizing ourselves as an economy as we pursued higher-margin market segments across the board? I dunno.
Anyway, Japan started out in China's position after WWII and ended up a relatively high-wage country after just a few decades. I don't hear too much anguish over Japan stealing American jobs these days.
One point some analyst made recently: China has little experience in managing a free economy. What's going to happen when they encounter the inevitable recession, currency crisis, or whatever? Chances are their government & central bank are not going to handle it well. Chances are they'll screw it up & create a depression for themselves. I wonder what kind of repercussions that would have (good or bad) for us when the inevitable happens. Hmmm...
Thank you for the informative post about "disruptive technology."
About your "free economy" comment. I believe that is is true that we do not recognize China as a free market economy.
Also Lenovo, like most (all?) major enterprises in Chins, is owned by one government entity or other which are controlled by the Party. That is, the major owners are Chi-com government lackeys of the Chinese Communist Party.
You ask, "What's going to happen when they encounter the inevitable recession, currency crisis, or whatever?"
Ans: another Great Leap onto the backs of tens of millions of their own citizens killing them as has been the wont of Chi-coms for more than fifty years.
Deng's Chi-com version of a new economic plan (NEP) changed nothing about the nature of communism. It only invited useful idiots like IBM managers to transfer their technology to the "people." to start up enterprises beginning years ago. IMO.