People's Republic of Products

The Los Angeles Times ^ | 10/19/02 (for editions of 10/20/02) | Evelyn Iritani and Marla Dickerson

[GeneD]

...Poor and isolated 30 years ago, China is emerging as the world's factory floor. The country's embrace of capitalism, coupled with an abundance of cheap labor, massive foreign investment and the collapse of international trade barriers, has sparked an explosion of manufacturing. The reverberations are being felt around the globe.

Shopping for a pair of shoes? Chances are that nimble Chinese hands sewed them, along with nearly 80% of the footwear purchased in the United States. That French provincial bedroom set on the showroom floor? It's probably part of the $4.6 billion in furniture that China shipped to the United States last year.

Computers? Factories in Dongguan, 50 miles north of Hong Kong, produced 37% of the world's disk drives and 10% of its computer monitors last year -- not to mention tens of millions of scanners, printers and DVD players.

Though many of China's exports are familiar Western brands, made in factories owned or run by foreigners, home-grown Chinese enterprises are making refrigerators, microwave ovens and high-definition televisions for customers worldwide.

"They're going to be a force to be reckoned with," entrepreneur George Thomas said of the Chinese. Thomas heads an Illinois company that makes computer networking equipment. He recently moved his manufacturing operation to the Chinese city of Suzhou to take advantage of low wages, tax breaks and inexpensive supplies.

"They're going to drive standards," he said. "They're going to drive everything."

China is not the first developing country to become a center for low-cost production. But the speed and scale of its emergence set it apart. Until recently a minor player in the world economy, China now is the sixth-largest trading nation. Experts predict that it will rank second by the end of the decade, ahead of Germany and Japan and behind only the United States....

[RippleFire]

BUMP

[Principled]

As soon as Teamsters-Asia gets in, their labor market will be destroyed too. It'll be a long time coming though.

[LouD]

The country's embrace of capitalism

You cannot have the economic freedom of capitalism without the political freedom of democracy. What China has is a command economy which tolerates some economic activities, so long as they are coincident with the interests of the state.

[HighRoadToChina]

The article goes on to say...

"The key is not to try to hold China back, because that in the long run is an exercise in futility and it's a political mistake. It breeds an enormous amount of resentment," said William Reinsch, a former top Commerce Department official who is president of the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington. "What makes more sense is to run faster because we can. We're an entrepreneurial society."

Yes, and look what happened with Nazi Germany...