In the West we have created machines to do the backbreaking labor that used to involve peasants or slaves (in many countries).
It is very expensive to maintain a machine that can do what a surplus of people can do, especially out in the boondocks.
So Asia will do what Asians have always done - throw thousands of peasants at a problem.
I remember a video of construction workers building a bamboo scaffold up the side of a building in Hong Kong - must have been from decades ago. Once secured it look surprisingly safe - at least by their standards ...
When I worked in China in the mid 70s, I was astonished at how they would use labor over machines. They had some large construction machinery that was always put to low value uses so they could keep people employed. They cast a large concrete pedestal for a smokestack too high (it was about ten feet in diameter and eight feet high solid concrete).. Instead of using tractor-mounted jackhammers to tear it down and start over, they assigned a big team of men to use hammers and homemade chisels (made out of rebar) to manually chisel the pedestal down a couple of feet. I saw this over and over.