Makes it just like those Korean auto plants are about 100 miles offshore California or North Carolina, and China is really not as far, in terms of shipping costs, as Kansas City KS is from Louisville KY.
NOTE: The United States has only two great rivers to provide shipping to the interior ~ but that's all China has either. Europe has several. Africa has one. South America has two.
The navigable distance of the local waterways combined with modern international container shipping systems make many countries next door neighbors. Combine that with fiber optic communications capability, and the great manufacturing centers of China are a local phone call from the great manufacturing centers of America and Europe.
One disturbing trend is the US, and China, are losing port city frontage on the major rivers or the world ocean. We are backed up by the otherwise little used Gulf of California so we can expand into Mexico (See I35/I69 routing into Mexico). China can't do that readily without moving into areas now owned by Russia.
All good comments, but still, if the mechanization was replacing as many workers as some here think, it would soon become more feasible to move some of this highly mechanized work to the areas where most of it would be sold.