Comments by "Louis Giokas" (@louisgiokas2206) on "Why Are Big Companies Fleeing China?" video.

  1. The lack of historical context is breathtaking. By the early 20th century, it was the US that was the workshop of the world. Then after WWII it was Japan. Neither of those countries has really receded in manufacturing but have moved low end manufacturing to China. The idea is then to move up the value chain (although the US was already there) which is what Japan did. In fact, the US is reindustrializing and remains a consumption driver of the world. Many Japanese (and German) companies have moved manufacturing to the US. There is also a diversification of trade away from China. China was not only a place to do cheap manufacturing but was also perceived to be a big market. It never moved far enough up the value chain, though. China has 600M people living at or below the world poverty line. The US rate is about 10%, but that is by local measures. Many of people in poverty in the US would be lower middle class in much of the world. I used to volunteer at a food bank. The cars of the clients were actually rather nice. Many of the clients were overweight, and some were obese. The foodbank was also a deluxe facility. I would place it easily on a par with Aldi. Almost all the food was donated, and the facility was built with private funds. Compare this with rural China or India and you would be amazed or appalled, maybe both. In the case of China, there is also the demographic disaster taking place right now. This also limits its allure as a market. The economy is unbalanced (way too much invested in the property sector) and the government is unstable, especially when it comes to the economy. There are also analyses that claim that China's economy is not as big as they say, and the opaqueness of government statistics makes it likely that things are not as they seem.
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