The neoliberal forces that cheered China's destruction of their home nations' manufacturing capabilities so that they could profit, are now the same ones demanding that China stop doing what made them rich. Of course, they're not demanding it because it makes sense, but because it gets them votes. After all, they're not going to be affected economically either way, so why do they care? Once they get into government, they can simply claim it costs too much, and poof, another election promise thrown by the wayside just like their integrity.
The only way manufacturing comes back to the West is if it's done entirely by robots, and since that doesn't create jobs, it's unlikely to be welcomed and hence supported.
Eastern Asian nations are likely to start taking on some of China's manufacturing capability but China has literally spent decades focusing solely on building up the infrastructure to be the world's production house. Even with massive Western investment, nations such as Vietnam simply aren't going to be able to scale up to those levels; not now, not ever.
India might be able to fill the Chinese gap in terms of size and numbers, and it's probably in the world's best interest for it to do so - but India also has a problem with Muslims, just like China. It's not at internment camp levels yet, but do you really want to have to choose between having your motherboard manufactured by a nation that treats an ethnic minority like prisoners, or by one that treats them slightly less badly?
At this point, all we can really hope is that the nationalists and neoliberals are replaced by saner people who aren't intent on having power for power's sake... before they start the war to end all wars.
You been to India lately? Or China, or Vietnam?
You seem to have little insight into what is going on in this part of the world.
India is very busy ramping up production of all sorts of things. Sure, it's going to take another 5-10 years before they're anywhere close to where China is today, but all the Taiwanese and Singaporean ODMs are moving large chunks of their production to India. Not necessarily because they want to, but because if you want to sell in India, you better be manufacturing in India. The Indian government are running a program called Make in India and are imposing bigger and bigger import duties on finished goods, especially on electronics, much like what Brazil has been doing for the past decade or so. However, as India is still very much a growing market, companies are willing to manufacture in India. Is it better quality than things made in China? I guess not, at least not yet and a lot of things are potentially of poorer quality too. That said, a lot of PCB manufacturing is going on in India as as you hopefully know, they're far superior to China, Taiwan and most of this part of the world when it comes to software development. There's also far less of a language barrier, as at least most educated people in India communicates in some level of English, which is nigh on impossible in China and sadly still somewhat dificult in Taiwan, unless you're lucky and find the right partners.
Vietnam seems to be focusing more on doing assembly type things right now, rather than making electronics, as well as a lot of other businesses. However, as it's another (albeit a lot softer) totalitarian state, it's hard for foreign companies to start things there, at least much harder than in many other South or South East Asian countries.
Cambodia is another sleeper nation in all this, as they seemingly want a slice of the cake as well, but they're a good five years behind Vietnam.
Taiwan is also moving back a lot of manufacturing from China to Taiwan, as it's no longer financially better to manufacture in China, as a lot of the salaries in China are now higher than in Taiwan. Problem is space in Taiwan, as the island is quite small and only so many factories can be built here. Most of the factory workers are from the Philippines or Indonesia though, as the locals aren't too excited about those kind of jobs. There are some 238k Indonesians and 142k Filipinos living and working in Taiwan, plus 200k Vietnamese and 64k Thai, although the latter tend to work in construction rather than factories.
Right now, the western parts of China are massively flooded, there's supposedly a food shortage, there's a water shortage in the western parts of China as the water treatment plants can't keep up and this is on top of the trade war with the US and a brewing border dispute with India. Things aren't looking great for China at the moment and the question is what will happen over the next few months. If shit really hits the fan, the West is going to be without a lot of junk from China, which might also be a blessing, as most of the crap made in China aren't things we need. We've also become way too much of a throw-away society, simply because things are so cheap, so even if they don't last, it's not a big deal, as we can get a new one for cheap. In fact, if you ask a Taiwanese person for buying advice, most often they'll tell you to get the cheapest one...
What needs to be done, is to spread out the manufacturing of things, we can't rely on a single nation to supply the world with electronics, crappy plastic stuff, 75% of IKEA junk and so on, it's simply not sensible. Just look what happened when the Wuhan virus struck, there were shortages of a lot of things almost immediately, as most companies these days rely on a just-in-time type production system. Even more striking was the fact that European and US companies ran out of shipping containers, as they got stranded in China due to the fact that no goods was leaving China. So even if Western companies could've continued to manufacture goods, they couldn't ship it.
The world has truly gone mad and the reliance on China is only part of it.
If you consider how many 'outposts' the old empires of Europe and the US have a across the globe, and consider the displacement of indiginous people by said acts, it's naive to see China as the sole aggressor. Yes, it's a very intolerant government with an atrocious human rights record. But it's not alone. Saudi, the UK and the US's biggest arms customer is one of the worst in the world. But damn, those pounds and dollars....
I just find the binary, West is good, China bad mantra , a tad tedious and ill-informed.
Japan used Chinese women as rape prisoners in WW2. Go Google it. China was trampled on for centuries.
Edit: FTR, I'd never choose to live in China. Beautiful country spoiled by its government.
Not defending the West, the white man has done so many utterly rotten things over the past few hundred years. The problem is that now China is trying their way of colonizing the world, which isn't going to make things better, as it's likely to ignite new wars, mainly in Africa.
Just a small thing that's been going on that most people are likely to be unaware of,
Somaliland, a non UN recognised, self-declared state (that split from Somalia) decided to recognise Taiwan as an independent nation. As soon as that happened, China pressured Somalia to issue issue a statement about "one Somalia" while at the same time, Somalia and China jointly issues a statement that Somalia supports the "one China" policy and Somalia has been trashing Taiwan for what's been going on.
Obviously, no-one outside of the affected nations is likely to pay much attention to this squabble, but this is how China does international "politics".
China has criticised a bid by Taiwan to establish diplomatic relations with Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia that announced its independence nearly 30 years ago.
allafrica.com
China also have a lovely ambassador in Sweden, who has threatened not only the Swedish media, but also several politicians with repercussions unless they change new articles to put China in a different light, as well as trying to prevent the politicians to attend certain events that were critical against China.
China has also threatened Czech politicians and promised that there will be repercussions for them visiting Taiwan last week.
The PRC government is not something you want to mess with, as they'll do everything they can to give you grief.
That said, I'm not a big fan of any of the so called "superpowers" as those nations are too big for the good of the rest of the world. On top of that, we have several world leaders that are seemingly on a power trip for some reason or the other, which is putting a lot of people in danger.
I thought that the world was heading towards a better place when the iron curtain fell and most "communist" nations ended, but it seems like little has changed and we're now heading in the wrong direction again. We truly are our own worst enemy.
As a side note, the Japanese also abused Korean and Taiwanese women in the same way as the Chinese.
. Over and out.
