After visiting a string of factories, Jim Farley (Ford's chief executive) was left astonished by the technical innovations being packed into Chinese cars – from self-driving software to facial recognition:
"Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West," Farley warned in July.
"We are in a global competition with China, and it's not just EVs. And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford."
The car industry boss is not the only Western executive to have returned shaken following a visit to the Far East.
Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue – which is investing massively in green energy – says his trips to China convinced him to abandon his company's attempts to manufacture electric vehicle powertrains in-house.
"I can take you to factories [in China] now, where you'll basically be alongside a big conveyor and the machines come out of the floor and begin to assemble parts," he says.
[...] It's also a far cry from the cheap "Made in China" goods that many Westerners have associated with the "workshop of the world" in the past, underscoring how much cash has been poured into upgrading China's industrial processes.
Far from being focused on low-quality products, China is now viewed as a leader in rapidly-growing, high-value technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, drones and advanced robotics.
[...] The overall number of robots added in China last year was 295,000, compared to 27,000 in Germany, 34,000 in the US and just 2,500 in the UK.
Also at ZeroHedge.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday October 16, @08:23PM (23 children)
A lot of their industrial strength comes from the simple pattern of training people for industrial work.
The competition for their relatively few academic slots in universities is incredibly fierce, but they don't just throw people who don't make it in the trash. They push students into logistics programs, CNC machinist schools, construction training.
It's a little unfair in that the best paying jobs are reserved for those few who end up in high end universities, but compared to overeducating a third of people and undereducatong the rest to "look for jobs" that have unrealistic expectations of existing industrial experience, they get a much more productive economy.
The robots and automation and mass transit and industrial planning help too, but the big difference here is that you can't build a real society out of only software engineers, lawyers, and retail employees.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 16, @08:49PM (18 children)
Anyone know where Farley (et al) were shown around in China? First guess is they were only taken to the most advanced factories...and not shown a cross section of what manufacturing in China really looks like.
I've been in some highly automated factories in USA and UK, and they are also very impressive, very few people generating a lot of products. It would seem that once the head count gets down to some low level, the effect of automating the last jobs (the jobs that are tricky-for-robots) may not be worth the cost.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 16, @09:58PM (4 children)
Just like how things manufactured in Japan were a joke...
(Score: 5, Informative) by krishnoid on Friday October 17, @12:30AM (3 children)
Japan took guidance from W. Edwards Deming, and US manufacturers went a different way [deming.org] it seems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by oregonjohn on Friday October 17, @06:12PM (2 children)
"The importance of treating employees as people and deeply involving them in improvement efforts was stressed throughout. This is, of course, at the core of Deming’s management philosophy." https://deming.org/if-japan-can-why-cant-we-1980-nbc-special-report/ [deming.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Friday October 17, @10:09PM (1 child)
The US is a *capitalist* country. What are you, some kind of people-ist -- are you espousing a form of radical peopleism? I can't stand people like you [youtu.be].
Rise up and cast off your chains of focusing on your fellow humans! Consumer units (and advertising eyeballs) of the world, unite!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18, @11:14PM
China has a smoother path to a "Star Trek" scifi future.
The US has a smoother path to many of those Sci-Fi dystopias. In the US even those who might benefit from such wealth transfers might be protesting against it as "Communism". 🤣
BTW more of China's leaders are engineers. The US has more lawyers and demented people for leaders...
The Western execs should be inspired by the good stuff in China and copy some ideas. What should terrify them are their demented leaders.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aafcac on Thursday October 16, @10:22PM (11 children)
Here's the thing, that doesn't really matter that much, the fact that the facilities exist is a massive problem for American corporations that have largely given up on innovation and switched to rent collecting. The CCP is capable of throwing more or less 100% of their non-food production capacity to building more of those facilities if need be and most other countries just don't have that ability to.
It's been a while since I was over there, so I don't know what it's currently like, but chances are that as long as there's jobs for people to work at and they continue to put food on the table, the CCP can push as hard as they like and probably not get much pushback.
Like I said, it's been a bit since I've been there, but it seems like these execs are convinced that these are real facilities, and if so, that means there are people in China that know how to build and operate them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 17, @12:07AM (3 children)
>The CCP is capable of throwing more or less 100% of their non-food production capacity to building more of those facilities if need be and most other countries just don't have that ability to.
I participated on Bluesky for a little while. During that time I connected with a few 20-somethings who were bypassing the Great Firewall to get some contact on the outside - they seemed pretty genuine / human to me. They also painted a picture of a great deal of despair and depression on their side of the Great Firewall - not really an orderly society of 1.4 Billion workers eager to toe the line and energetically execute every command from above so much as a bunch of ordinary humans who tend to look out for their own needs and desires first and simply do what they have to to get by.
Granted, out of that 1.4 Billion, there are probably a hundred million or more at least somewhat eager workers, but on this side of the Great Firewall the ones I tend to meet in person are the ones who are a) wealthy enough to get themselves to the US where I'm meeting them, and b) tend to be interested in doing great things for themself first - wherever on the globe they happen to be able to accomplish that most effectively - no great loyalty to the mother country, and pretty much average loyalty to family back home.
>the CCP can push as hard as they like and probably not get much pushback.
Our global megacorp has development offices in mainland China. We get a surprisingly high turnover rate there for engineers. They show up, demonstrate competence and eagerness to work, are paid a good salary (for the location), and apparently most burn out within a year or less - the usual story is that they went back home to their family, and they are replaced with another just like them, but of course training starts at 0 again. We've got one guy who has lasted about 6 years now, his English is rather poor - worse than most we work with, but at least we're not constantly training him up from new-hire status.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by aafcac on Friday October 17, @02:35AM (2 children)
It's a minority of people that feel that way, they definitely do exist, but one of the bases for the people going along with what the party does is that the economic conditions have generally been improving. That's not to say that things are great there, but compared with how things were decades ago they are generally better. It's not a country that's ever had free or democratic rule
As far as folks switching jobs, that's just how things are done there. It's an incredibly common thing to for the workers to do in response to perceived issues with compensation or working conditions. China isn't a capitalist country, but there are aspects like workers taking their work elsewhere that are. I do suspect that that would change as the money coming in from these sorts of facilities come online, there were a bunch of people that I saw working the same jobs for months and even years. But, the party can direct all of the resources to putting those facilities online as there has been a history of great leaps forward. Which is probably what has those execs so scared.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 17, @04:21AM
>perceived issues with compensation or working conditions
Granted, I'm 11 (often feels like 13) time zones away, but the general feel coming back about our turnover isn't that there is an issue with compensation or even working conditions - they are just opting out of city work period. Maybe city life? I suppose that's a kind of working condition....
>a bunch of people that I saw working the same jobs for months and even years
Yeah, that's what we have experienced: a bunch of people working our jobs for months, a very small percentage of them sticking around for multiple years. Stateside, my colleague pool has a median time with the company of about 10 years.
> a history of great leaps forward. Which is probably what has those execs so scared.
The US also makes great leaps forward, but our system seems to chastise large corporations into ultra-conservative risk-averse lawsuit-vulnerable positions whereas tiny "nothing to lose" startup operations are expected to handle all the innovation these days - when they're not locked in tiny regulatory boxes by the big players' lobbying efforts to create barriers to competition... Then, 1/20 of the most promising little idea companies get bought for lottery-win valuations, while the other 95% file for bankruptcy. It's hobbling our "great leap" distances because once those startup ideas get into the big risk-averse companies they lose much of their growth potential due to the ultra-conservative execution of their ideas.
>one of the bases for the people going along with what the party does is that the economic conditions have generally been improving
The angsty 20-somethings seemed more focused on the "tallest tree is first cut" aspects of party life. Don't make too many waves and you just might be able to express a little quiet individuality.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Friday October 17, @02:41PM
Don't forget that they're also masters in long-term planning [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Troll) by ChrisMaple on Friday October 17, @03:03AM (5 children)
Why have American car companies given up on innovation? To the extent that they have, it's because unions and politicians controlled by unions oppose any innovation that would cause job loss.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday October 17, @03:16AM
It's not. It's because there's no incentive to. There are far fewer car manufacturers in the US now than in the past. Right now there are 3 major car manufacturers in the US, and several more foreign brands that manufacture here. The issue isn't the unions, it's the stupid things that the management does along with the unstable environment as the robber barons continually push to get regulations dropped or watered down.
The fact that there's been 40+ years of wage stagnation and changes to the population distribution to make cars more of a luxury than in the past doesn't help, but unions are pretty far down on the list here. There's no benefit to the unions for there to be a lack of innovation. If anything, a lack of innovation hurts the unions due to it being easier to ship the jobs overseas or hire non-union labor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Friday October 17, @03:18AM (2 children)
Innovation doesn't generate immediate profits therefor it is worthless. We'll never see another Bell Labs .
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday October 17, @03:52AM (1 child)
Yep and there's a bunch of government policy that encourages that. From failing to enforce antitrust laws that should prevent larger companies from just buying markets, to allowing companies to buy their own stock back rather than paying dividends to allowing private equity to buy companies and load them up with as much debt as they can before selling the few valuable parts of the company off and declaring bankruptcy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17, @04:28AM
Unintentionally you just helped me understand. It's bugged me forever how so many Americans are so short-sighted with money, finance, and especially profit. It's because of uncertainty, coupled with us (USA) being more capitalistic than China, etc., and also coupled with us (USA) being a much more diverse and non-cohesive population.
Chinese are much more cohesive; have a strong sense of unity, and of course could be in big trouble if they're not CCP supporters. They're much more ethnically monolithic, hence operate much more in unison. In fact that strong sense of unity, plus desire to own technology, is why they want Taiwan. Plus most of their economy and large-scale investments are done by CCP which has very very long-term goals.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Sunday October 19, @11:22PM
To partially support your point, below is something I emailed someone recently in relation to this Bernie Sanders video:
"AI Could Wipe Out the Working Class | Sen. Bernie Sanders"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dthbi4lzO58 [youtube.com]
Many years ago I read an interesting essay (forget offhand where or by who) on how historically in the USA, the Democratic Party -- given strong union support -- became aligned with an anti-technology position in order to protect jobs from automation. By contrast, the pro-business-owner Republican party celebrated automation (to reduce business costs and promote economic growth). That difference has had profound effects on the politics of the USA in the 20th century, and sometimes left Democrats on the wrong side of progressive change. Kind of like when Trump claimed essentially that he was the best political ally Blacks ever had due to increased employment from economic progress under his administration (not necessarily claiming that is true, but just pointing it out as relating to this decades-old political narrative and related messaging).
Tangential to that, I have been reading "Abundance" by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who claim to be liberals writing for liberals. They write about about how liberals have sabotages themselves by essentially being symbolically liberal but operationally conservative (e.g. people in California claim to care about the homeless by putting up signs in their single-family home yards but then voting for zoning and building codes that excludes affordable housing like boarding houses which used to be homes of last resort in order to keep their property values high as the main repository of their wealth). Ironically, they say red states may often be symbolically conservative but operationally liberal (e.g. having lax zoning and building codes, and so also generally have less of a homeless problem because poorer quality housing is available and affordable). A big emphasis in the book is how Democrats push subsidies while Republicans push cuts to taxes and regulations -- but neither generally focus on using good government for smart growth related to collective needs like housing, transportation, education, or healthcare. I'd add that China seems to be doing better on that score for what it is worth (even as they have their own problems). Anyway, I haven't finished the book yet, so probably their full argument is more nuanced than my summary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_book) [wikipedia.org]
I would add that if everyone was wealthier (like if the benefits of AI and robotics were broadly distributed like Sanders proposes) then restrictive zoning and building codes might pose less of an affordability problem for people at the lower end of the economic spectrum. On the other hand, a tax on robots (as opposed to, say, generally raising corporate taxes) may delay robotic deployment in the USA. And that comes back around to the issue mentioned above of Democrats historically fighting for decades against wealth-producing automation in order to preserve jobs. An echo of that is in the Bernie Sanders video, since he remains focused on preserving jobs (though with a 32 hour workweek) -- rather than, say, emphasizing transcending the notion of a "job" altogether like Bob Black's 1985 essay on that (which is neither a current Democratic or Republic policy position).
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday October 17, @05:49AM
It's hard to tell corporations not to rent-seek while passing laws that make rent-seeking the most profitable option on the table.
Tax law needs to encourage creating employment and discouraging monopolies. All this does is make gaming the system extremely profitable for socially connected cliques. My feeling is all artificial ( enforced ) monopolies should be public utilities.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Friday October 17, @06:58AM
So you are saying they have both the high-end factories to produce advanced products, and the sweat shops to mass produce cheap stuff? In other words, they cover the whole range of production? And you think that makes them less of a threat?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Friday October 17, @12:47AM (1 child)
They have cities that are run around "We make socks". Everything about that city goes to making socks, or supplying for the making of socks, or the feeding and housing of people who make socks.
They have it down to a science, and now it's being automated.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18, @02:21AM
> They have cities that are run around "We make socks".
Not all that long ago, we had Pittsburgh, "We make steel", Akron, "We make tires", etc. Didn't take any special gov't planning that I'm aware of. More likely, I think that one or two innovators were copied by others in the same area, until all of a sudden it looked like a one-product-city.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18, @11:23PM (1 child)
China is also Communist/Socialist.
It's easier for China than the USA to go from where they are to a society where robots do most of the work but the humans still get fed, clothed and sheltered whatever jobs they do or do not.
Just look at how many US people are against universal health care, basic income etc. They'd say such stuff is Communism or even Theft.
China has a smoother path to a sci-fi utopia (with dystopia hidden in the shadows).
The US has a smoother path to an "in your face" sci-fi dystopia.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Sunday October 19, @02:02PM
Agree in principle. Disagree in practice. China's pretty limited in their government-funded social safety net. They work really hard to make sure consumer prices for non-luxury goods and medical care stay low and low wage jobs provide enough for food shelter and medicine, and that unemployment isn't too high.
But the ways that they insure low-to-zero homelessness often involves shipping people back to their hometown and forcing them to live with family. Being communist plays a role in how these things are possible, but they're far more oriented towards the idea of full employment than low-risk unemployment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 16, @09:21PM
>We are in a global competition with
JapanChina, and it's not just EVs. And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.From my perspective, Ford is already dead. A one trick pony car that's now some weird SUV crossover mess of focus group excrement, and Chicken Tax [wikipedia.org] protected trucks. Ford has lobbyed Congress for bailouts and protection until it has become a hot-house flower, unable to survive actual competition or even the changing global (political/economic) climate, while being a major driver of that change itself.
>the cheap "Made in China" goods that many Westerners have associated with the "workshop of the world" in the past
Anybody with actual knowledge of Chinese capabilities has known, for 50+ years now, the Chinese are capable of high quality work - you just have to pay them the price required to get it done to the level of quality you require, and that includes (just like it does in the West) the price of rigorous quality controls to ensure that corners are not being cut. Where China was unique on the world stage was its ability to cut corners and deliver remarkably cheap products which were good enough to sell, creating thriving markets which didn't exist with higher priced near equivalent goods.
>robots added in China last year was 295,000, compared to 27,000 in Germany, 34,000 in the US and just 2,500 in the UK.
So, China added 1 robot per 4776 population, Germany 1/3093, US 1/10,000 and the UK 1/27,692. Germany wins by a significant margin, but the UK still loses big.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by epitaxial on Thursday October 16, @10:01PM (4 children)
Lots of denial and copium around here. Look what happened to Shanghai in the span of 26 years https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/08/26-years-of-growth-shanghai-then-and-now/100569/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by darkfeline on Friday October 17, @02:11AM (3 children)
Now look at what happened to the 99% rest of China in that time.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Saturday October 18, @01:13PM (1 child)
Like Chongqing East station? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYayq9Rp-Kg [youtube.com]
They pulled that, which happens to be the largest railway station in the world, off in about the time we take to do just the planning for a single bridge repair. Of course, when we've never even heard about Chongqing before (which I consciously did first when reading about drone shows there, coming from the other article), we can't know what's going on there. Interesting facts about Chongqing are that it's pronounced more like Chong-Ching, and, going by "people within official city limits", it's also the largest city in the world with 32 million inhabitants. For comparison: The entirety of Scandinavia has 28 million.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday October 19, @11:40PM
Again, that doesn't help the millions who are currently suffering from floods that have been going on for a week now and which occur every year because China fails at basic drainage outside of its Pyongyang cities designed to propagandize for Western nations.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18, @10:55PM
Sure:
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience [worldbank.org]
https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271 [bbc.com]
So what's your point?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday October 17, @12:25AM (1 child)
Maybe they saw that scene from Minority Report [youtu.be] and said "Hey, we can build a false floor and improve on the the way the US factories do it!"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday October 17, @12:58AM
Lots of engineering projects have taken their inspiration from one piece of science fiction or another, and, of course, conversely.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 17, @02:10AM (5 children)
Years ago I had a journal entry that touched on this, that more or less boiled down to "imperialism is parasitism, and empires die morbidly obese, palsied, and choking on their own waste."
This is why. When rent-seeking replaces actual productive work (remember the Clintonistas and their "service economy" promises?), when said actual productive work is outsourced, *especially* when there is hideous human suffering and even slavery involved in it, that is a sign of imminent collapse.
I am going to make you think of the Roman Empire again today, since apparently that's a trending thing. Look at what happened when the republic became an empire. Notice the parallels between Trump and several Roman emperors. Think about Rome's imperial ambitions and how its economy tied into them. Look at who was doing what jobs, and compare what kind of money (if any) they made to how useful their output actually was.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday October 17, @02:39AM
That was more or less my thought on the matter. I'm not really sure why anybody thought that outsourcing all this to foreign countries wasn't eventually going to lead to them working out how to use the stuff they'd been given, along with stuff they themselves developed, when the only thing that we've been giving them the last few decades is money for the stuff they've made. China, and India, in particular are large enough countries that they can develop an internal market for this stuff large enough to not really need outside markets to achieve the necessary economies of scale for things to be affordable.
It isn't something that I've personally spent much time thinking about because it's not super relevant other than the impacts that have been had on the poor and working class while that works itself out as it's been pretty bad with wages failing to keep up with inflation and a bunch of rules being blocked by trade agreements when they harm trade, even if there's a good reason for it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17, @04:35AM (3 children)
You were doing stellarly until you mentioned Trump. He's not an emperor, but sadly your types can't see that. TDS and all. It really is a thing, and I'm sure someone has cooked up some pharmaceutical cure for it. Trump is just trying to do what We the People want and voted for. Even AOL danced around questions about our taxes paying for illegal immigrants' healthcare, and she pretty much said the law should be followed. Oh noes, is she falling to the dark side?
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Friday October 17, @05:50AM (1 child)
They could probably have got AOC to do a better job for them...
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 4, Funny) by khallow on Friday October 17, @07:20AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Friday October 17, @12:21PM
Then it's terrifying. Even the brown shirts didn't wear masks when jews were rounded up for transport to camps.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Friday October 17, @02:30AM (3 children)
Unitree G1 model EDU Flagship C-U5 version is coming to local market in November.
Estimated price without tax is set to 1 427 290,- CZK which corresponds to 68 000,- USD at current exchange rate.
EDU means it's fully programmable, cheaper basic versions (from about 16 000,- USD) have fixed software only.
43 motors, NVIDIA Jetson Orin, WiFi 6, BT 5.2, 9000mAh, 3kg arms load, 120Nm, 132cm/35kg.
I am tempted...
Well, can I buy some American equivalent instead?
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17, @04:44AM
Tricky answer. EE here. Much of our "innovation" (I hate that word- I hear Bill Gates' voice every time) goes into high-end stuff like medical and military. It's where the real $ are, and kind of needs to be top-notch and for many reasons somewhat (or much) secret.
While I'm on the topic, I've been meaning to admonish you, hopefully somewhat politely. More than once you've chided engineers for bad products, bad software, etc. I'm surprised you'd discredit engineers, especially as you seem to be one. Not sure about your world, but here in the US we engineers generally don't get to make decisions. It's the business-types who make the decisions, and it's pretty much always: hurry, push it out the door (ship it, ready or not). Always pressure to hurry, and cheapen. Most important thing to have on my resume is how I cheapened, ahem, sorry, cost-reduced something. They don't want to hear how I improved a product (really, they don't).
(Score: 4, Informative) by epitaxial on Friday October 17, @12:25PM
Best we can do is a shitty AI assistant that spams ads for crypto and dick pills.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by oregonjohn on Friday October 17, @06:23PM
https://www.robotshop.com/products/unitree-g1-edu-ultimate-c-u5-humanoid-robot [robotshop.com]
Wow. I wonder if it stacks up to the hype.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Friday October 17, @02:42AM (3 children)
I've seen this article mentioned in several locations now. It hadn't occurred to me until now; but why come back *terrified*? Why not come back *inspired*? The US and other developed countries have been in China's position before. Russia, Japan, probably others saw stuff we were doing and said, "let's do that". Then in the case of Russia they often copied it badly, but in Japan they made better copies. I don't know if they were initially terrified there and they quickly decided to roll up their sleeves and get to work or what; but they did. We can too.
The guy who sees how China makes EVs and withers? Fire him. Get somebody who starts making phone calls as soon as the plane lands, asking what we can do to equal and surpass it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17, @04:46AM (2 children)
Because China are determined to dominate the world, and at the rate they're accelerating, they'll do it within most of our lifetimes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17, @04:50AM
Unless they kick off world war 3, and in which case it won't matter what they economy, capacity or capability is. In the case where all countries in the world, except Russia and NK, all line up against China it is only a matter of time until they lose. The cost will be extraordinary, but perhaps it will be possible to get them to pay for the costs of COVID afterwards. Just like Germany paid the price for WW2.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Friday October 17, @05:27AM
As things stand at the moment in the US, is this any different from what the US wants to do too?
There is not as much cooperation with allies and friends any more..
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Friday October 17, @06:20AM
I just came across a great, an on point, quote from John Mearsheimer: "In the Cold War days, we spoke Russian and read Russian authors."
How many "experts" on China speak Mandarin or Cantonese? How many can read Chinese authors?
If you don't know your enemy, you can't defeat him.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Friday October 17, @07:40AM
Yeah, you know when, for the last ten years or more, governments were telling you that EVs were the future and you needed to abandon your obsolete, prehistoric carbon-burning nonsense and get on board as they were literally putting in dates for a ban that are still only a few years away?
And instead of making EVs you lobbied to push those deadlines back as far as possible, tried to get away with just making hybrids, released a range of stupidly expensive and half-hearted EVs, which are still 2-3x the price of more niche competitors, and then basically still haven't done anything significant in that area?
Yeah... there's a reason that China are ahead.
I love my Fords. My next car will be 100% electric. And hence, it will not be a Ford. Because you simply don't have any affordable electrics. And for the same price I can basically get two electric cars from your competitors that... basically do the same thing, and have just as good a reputation by now.
Fail to keep up, through ignorance and apathy in this case, your business dies.
Welcome to being the next Kodak.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Friday October 17, @10:54AM
Perhaps it also signifies a difference in desires/demands of customers? Perhaps in China they all dream of a BEV with facial recognition, self driving and what other spyware (or more likely they are forced, so don't have a choice), but that may not be what people living outside of the CCP want?
We in the Anglosphere still have the ability to choose (although rapidly decreasing I admit), to "vote with our wallet". Everyone I talk to actually wants a "simpler" car, that is has less electronics, less touch screens and similar nonsense, be cheap to maintain with good spare parts availability. Generally a preference for ICE (Diesel in this part of Europe) but I suspect that is not a dealbreaker if the rest is fulfilled.
However I can't think of a single car manufacturer that offers that in their modern line-up. The result of which is that second hand cars (especially those 10 years and older) have been increasingly hard to find, unless you want to pay almost the same price as for a brand new model. Literally when I look at second hand cars, you either get very tired cars in need of restoration for my budget (€10k-€15k), or well maintained ones for perhaps 20% less than the MSRP of the latest model.
Demand for the older cars is through the roof, because people figure even if the cost is nearly as much as a brand new car, the older car will be cheaper to run and maintain over the long term. Parts are cheaper (or you can get second-hand parts for even less), and your local independent garage can maintain and fix it, instead of only dealer authorized garages that need to lease expensive ECU readers to access the DRM encumbered modern car ECU systems (and will squeeze you for every penny as a result).
To me there seems to be a ever widening chasm between what people want to buy and what manufacturers offer. Yes, some minority are all giddy at the new features, some may be coerced (or bribed with subsidies) into them, but by and large people round here reject it, hanging on to what they already have (or buying second hand) instead.
It isn't even limited to cars, from fridges with built in advertising to AI-spyware enabled "smart TVs", it does feel that the "chasm" is becoming a thing in more and more places, and the second hand market for older "non smart" goods is blossoming.
Perhaps you can think that if your mindset was still stuck in the 90's or early 2000, but China has for a long time been able to produce high quality goods, you just had to pay for them rather than look for the cheapest. However even the Chinese high quality goods could be 50-70% of the price of equivalent western goods.
For example the 3rd generation ipod (from 2003) was made in China, and those were very well built. Its been obvious for a long time that the Chinese can make good stuff when asked to. However at this point China is very much the workshop of the world, I look around my house and 99% of stuff is made in China, even the stuff with non-Chinese branding.
Literally the only stuff I can find that does not say made in China is my car (which is 20 years old, but I suspect all the electronic components are made in China), and my kitchen (which has Bosch equipment, made in Germany or the UK) but that is from circa 1997.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday October 17, @02:53PM
Instead of wondering what this means for the USA, or Europe, we'd better ask the question what this means for SE Asia, India.
There's a whole lot of people in the world, and they have their own interests at heart. The next Lebensraum war is highly likely to involve China -- but the West will only be a secondary actor in that.