Folks, up until 2 weeks ago I worked for one of the largest manufacturers on the planet that produces a gazillion products including about half the iPhones and iPads on the planet. A taiwan company with peak seasonal employees of 1.5 million at dozens of giant factory campuses in China.
Implemented SARS era temperature checking of every person going in and out of every factory before Chinese New Year
Up until I left, only had a handful of infections. Including a good friend of mine, who was in a Chinese ICU and is now back working from home.
There is a serious lockdown of the factory complexes. Many are located in Special Economic Zones, which means many manufacturers have factories in the same zone
local governments can exceed the national guidelines for returning employees
Example of one factory.
a) Had to apply with the ID, travel history, medical history, etc for returning factory employees from outside of the immediate area
b) All returning employees had to quarantine outside of the factory for 14 days
c) were allowed 3 sets of 30 employees to enter quarantine in batches spaced 5 -10 days apart
d) the factory needs triple that number of employees
once back in the factory complex and staying in the factory dormitories then
temperature checked multiple times per day including beginning and end of shift
very segregated work areas and no co-mingling
entire shift went together to the cafeteria and bathrooms with temperature checks
if an employee has a temperature, must notify the Chinese CDC within two hours. That employee is taken off site for medical evaluation, treatment and/or quarantine off site
entire shift goes into quarantine in a segregated dorm
entire production area has to be cleaned, tested and approved to restart. Requires government approval
There’s more but you get the gist.
Would appreciate folks on this board fighting ignorance and use the “Chinese government” . I see the demonizing that is going with “CCP” and calling it the “Chinese Virus”. Christ, up until a month ago, I would bet that very few Americans could have told you what CCP stood for. Mao has been dead for decades and the economy is unrecognizable from that time. If you feel you must call it out, then please use Chinese Communist Party (vs CCP as a demonizing term).
The Chinese government is not a monolithic entity that says jump and 1.5 billion Chinese jump
China has a federal system between the provinces and the provincial level municipalities like Shanghai
While the Chinese propaganda machine is more finely tuned than most places, it is simply fanciful to think that Xi Jinping approved every tweet sent by a Chinese Communist Party government official, or is aware of every little thing he gets blamed for in a country almost the size of the US with 4 times the population. Just like Trump isn’t responsible for some ignorant hotel clerk that refused to let Asian American’s check in because they were afraid of getting Covid-19.
Caveat: ain’t no love lost between me and the Chinese Communist Party. They have negatively impacted me and my family in ways you will never understand. That said, I don’t hate cops 'cause I was hassled for having a punk haircut back when I had hair.
Back to the OP, I have said this earlier. This is peak China or the pinnacle of China Inc. It’s kinda like Japan Inc in 1989. The Trump trade war was a black swan incident, and most companies at least started to plan for reducing China exposure. Which isn’t easy. You can move to Vietnam but where do your parts come from? You can’t build an iPad with 99% of the parts. And Vietnam only has 100 million population, so an available workforce near the factories on the northern border with China is maybe 10 million.
Moving the supply chain to China took place over 30 years. It’s going to take at least a decade to move much of it out. And remember you need 100% of your parts in order to build most products.
It depends on the company. Some have said “don’t care what it costs, move it out.” Others have a 2 year wish list and not done squat except “plan”. I’ve seen this with multiple Global 100 companies.
Both Sam and Stranger are highlighting that China is already getting priced out of the commodity market and trying to go up the value chain. In addition, I expect that what will happen is
Drive toward automation. Once you automate, then the labor % goes way down and you can move the production line anywhere. But this requires changing how products have been developed for decades, investment in automation, and is really only practical for high volume/limited SKU products. Again, the iPad is a good example
Will continue to develop and do the manufacturing in China, with a secondary location that uses CKD’s
Slowly shift work loads to different locations. It starts with final assembly, then start backing out the stack. For example, SMT/PCBA lines, plastic mechanical parts, shift to environmentally friendly finishing since most countries won’t allow the kind of dirty manufacturing that goes on in China.
Prices will go up
WalMart shoppers will need to dig deep and pay $50 more for a TV
Of course it’s not the last time because your answer doesn’t address what I said at all.
I said that the US response would be more open about the outbreak, but in terms of managing to contain it, it would be a clusterfuck like H1N1 was.
Your response is (paraphrasing) “No, it would be different because the US would be open about the outbreak”.
You agreed with my premise and then ignored the rest of what I said.
Really?
Well let’s look at what the actual response has been as a guide.
The US doesn’t have a pandemic response team; it was disbanded under Trump and still has not be reinstalled. Instead we have Pence.
The US is at the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of Covid tests per 100,000 people. Americans were quarantined on a cruise ship, after we had seen what a mess that can become, because Trump wanted to keep the numbers low.
There’s been crazy amounts of misinformation e.g. the google project and baseless reassurance statements aimed at just keeping the press positive.
And there are reports that experts still cannot candidly advise the government because of Trump’s feelings.
And after all this, you’re making the claim that if the US had been the first responder – that if the US had seen this disease before anyone knew how serious it was – the response would have somehow been much, much more robust, coordinated and funded.
It’s a ridiculous assertion.
Also, I know that I mentioned Trump a lot just now, and someone could say “Well, if it weren’t for Trump…” and they might be right. But nonetheless, he is the president and there is no doubt that the fuckup we’ve seen in the US would have been orders of magnitude worse if the US did not have the luxury of time thanks to the virus starting on the opposite side of the world.
Nope; in China it started from an initial hot spot but now the new cases are hitting all over as borders are still open. China just happens to be doing much better than the US in terms of testing and containing cases that are coming in.
It is my belief that countries like Argentina and others that are too far away to invade, will nationalize the Belt and Road deals. Most of the one’s I’ve looked at stink to high heaven of corruption, bribes, crazily optimistic projections, etc. At some point, Sri Lanka and others will nationalize the port and the other Chinese investments.
Of course, the US will need to be strong and lead a global alliance against such economic colonization. We have to get our shit together on so many levels.
I forgot to reply about this timeline, which seems to get stretched every time.
On 17th November was a case of pneumonia that retrospectively was tested and found to have been covid. There is no evidence that anyone knew it was more than just a one-off case; it great you have such faith in Chinese science but no country immediately knows a single case is actually the first of a communicable viral disease.
The rest of the key events all happened in December. The gap between the epidemiologists being silenced and the WHO being informed was 10 days. That’s a shameful 10 days, and I hope we see convictions, but let’s not keep inflating it over and over and start throwing round “months of delays”.
And of course by the time you were following this, it was already headline news across the world.
Well I’m not saying “There are so many people on the streets, it looks like a full headcount to me”. I’m saying the relaxation of all these restrictions implies that the reports that community spread is over is probably largely accurate. Otherwise the policy is absolutely bizarre and there is not even a feasible motive.
However, I will concede that’s is possible that within Hubei the number of dead could be higher than official reports. I just balk at the assertion that it must be higher.
Meanwhile I believe the official figures about places like Shanghai, because it’s very hard, even for the Chinese government to keep deaths secret. An ambulance coming to a lane house is something seen by thousands of people.
One could argue “well, they’ve suppressed tiananmen” but one difference here is information on specific deaths is being widely shared on social media including the government’s own media. So if I see an ambulance on my street how do I even know I’m not supposed to share information about it?
Maybe; China is clearly doing its level best to get the B&R nations hooked on Chinese goods and services to the extent that they are unwilling to resist, and as I’m sure you are aware this isn’t some off the cuff effort but part of a long term plan with its roots back into the post-Cold War era. You are correct that the US should be leading a global alliance against this infiltration, but we are so focused on the supposed threat of Islamic terrorism and have been busy invading and drone-fighting in one nation after another that we hardly seem to be paying attention to the economic warfare that is causing China to be the dominant over the half of the globe that is in sunlight while we sleep. Still, this could all backfire on China and leave them holding worthless valet tickets, but then, that’s why they are building up the world’s second largest naval force complete with attack submarines and aircraft carriers so they can project force around their sphere of interest.
Meanwhile, the US is spending extraordinary levels of money on high tech development programs while all of the military branches and especially the USN has historical levels of understaffing and inadequate training. “We have to get our shit together on so many levels,” is putting it mildly; we are unprepared for the kinds of conflicts that are coming in the next few decades despite repeated warnings of capability studies and and former military officials.
Early in the days of the pandemic, there were broad calls for “this is why we need decoupling” that didn’t even make much sense back then but make even less sense right now. If America had made all of America’s masks, then Americans would be running out of masks right as all the factories are shutting down due to lockdown. Because China makes America’s masks, America can start buying masks from the now restarted China.
There will be decoupling but it’ll be driven from the opposite direction. Prior to this, there were broadly two strains of thought in Chinese culture: “China should be a part of the global world order and work in cooperation with a committee of peers” and “The existing dominant powers will never trust China and will look for any opportunity to handicap us and we should develop independence and self-reliance”.
Right now, Chinese citizens have been staring collectively in horror for months as the Western world has been simultaneously cavalierly ignoring China’s advice while at the same time spitting venom and demonizing China for every single mistake their leaders have made. They’re seeing the images of partying on the beaches of Florida, they’re seeing British leaders stand up and say the words “herd immunity” with a straight face, they’re seeing the images of Trump’s speeches with the word Coronavirus crossed out and replaced with “Chinese virus”.
Any residual goodwill of the West as a more advanced place that China still has many things to learn from is being replaced by the very real images of rank incompetence and a serious disillusionment with Western Liberal Democracy if this is what it leads to. Why should the Chinese send their kids to American universities if Harvard can kick students out on a whim and not even bother to help them find housing? Why should the Chinese buy Teslas when Elon Musk has been tweeting for months that Coronavirus panic is “dumb” and kept workers working even after the state government tried to stop him? Why would they travel through a US airport when Beijing airport looked like this and Chicago O’Hare looked like this on the same day?
People are only talking about this from the US perspective but people in China are also having these debates and they’re looking at the world very differently.
China had seen depressed growth from the trade war already, and its economy is connected to its trading partners. The idea that the U.S. can enter a depression and China suffer no ill effects is silly, and it won’t just be one country that has a negative economic fallout from covid-19, but virtually every country on Earth.
I also am highly skeptical of the Chinese coronavirus numbers. I suspect that Wuhan had millions of cases of a disease whose true mortality rate is less than 1%, which resulted in 80,000 or so “serious” cases. I suspect it’s relatively easy to fold anything but an immense number of infected people into a relatively large population and not notice it’s anything but an uptick in influenza. Lots of people diagnosed with “influenza like diseases” every year actually have something else. “Flash points” like Wuhan and Lombardy and New York City won’t necessarily happen everywhere.
I do think that finally, at long last an undeniable truth can be drawn from China’s behavior in the last few months and while there’s been lots of debate about the U.S. relationship with the United States, it’s time all rational people accept:
China is an enemy of the United States, and an enemy of free people everywhere. We should recognize China not just as an economic aggressor but for what it is: the PRC and its people are hateful, nationalist, monstrous humans that have a set of gross and disgusting ideals at odds with freedom loving humans everywhere. China can no more be a valued part of the international community than could Hitler’s Germany. I think we need a set of broad and permanent policies to sever most of our relationship with China.
We’ve hemmed and hawed about this because we’ve not been willing to accept economic pain, even when pain now could have prevented worse pain later. After decades of that the pain will be great. But if anything covid19 has given us a gift–we can still take big hits and keep moving, and it’s time we realize big ideas aren’t off the table, big responses aren’t either. I think the U.S. should make the following moves vis-a-vis China:
Declare that as a matter of national self defense, we will levy permanent tariffs on any imported good from China of 45%.
Declare that no Chinese national may visit the United States on a tourist or educational visa, and short duration visas for business travel should be subjected to the highest scrutiny.
Declare that any country that uses Chinese telecom for their national communications infrastructure will earn the status of “Promoter of Internet Insecurity” and their companies will lose any and all contracting privileges to provide any and all forms of technological services to the U.S. or any State government.
Make it illegal for Americans to make personal investments in the Chinese economy.
Make it illegal for Americans to travel to China for educational or leisure purposes, and apply strict scrutiny to allowing Americans to travel there for business purposes.
Offer large tax credits to any American firms that relocate off-shored operations from China to the United States or any other country that isn’t China.
Empower the government to create lists of “basic necessary medicines”, outlaw the importation of these medicines from China and make it a requirement of receiving novel drug patent protection that U.S. pharmaceutical companies produce these “basic necessary medicines” as needed, if the market does not organically develop a replacement for the lost Chinese production.
Outlaw the export of a series of products to China as a matter of national defense, not limited to: coal, agricultural products, aircraft, automobiles, corn, cotton, aluminium and copper.
Make it U.S. policy to see China expelled from the WTO, under threat of American withdrawal. America should use the full weight of its economic and military partnerships and agreements to make it known clearly that countries like Japan, South Korea, and all the countries in NATO are expected to be in line with this at threat of permanently harming future military cooperation.
It should be the policy of the United States, using its intelligence services, to harass, undermine, and harry the government of the PRC by all means legal and illegal. This should include large scale development and deployment of cyberwarfare targeting Chinese research and industrial production. This should also include widespread attempts to help disseminate negative and regime-undermining propaganda throughout China. Especially in regions with religious or ethnic minorities.
It should be the policy of the United States to immediately build close relationships with India, Asia’s largest democracy. This should include promotion of increased trade relationships and military relationships, including explicit support of India’s position on all disputed territories with its neighbors, and a general rejection of Pakistan as a U.S. ally of any degree.
I’ll stop your rant right there. What behaviour are you talking about?
Yes China fucked up the first couple of weeks handling of this virus.
But if that in itself was reason for economic war and expulsion from the international community, then the whole world should have done this to the US years ago over HIV, H1N1 etc.
HIV did not originate in the USA and its spread was worldwide. Your response is as extreme as the post you quoted. The USA also has/had not set up vast propaganda machines to hide its culpability.
Don’t be ridiculous; I am not suggesting any action of any kind. I’m asking, if the new rule is that mishandling of a virus means expulsion from the international community, are we going to be consistent in applying that rule.
As for where the virus originated, let’s do a hypothetical. Let’s say we found that the index patient for Covid-2019 was actually from Mongolia…would you think that would, at a stroke, remove all culpability from China for a virus that exploded in China, and spread to the rest of the globe from China? Of course not.
HIV largely spread out of the United States, and was handled terribly by the politicians (and even some senior medical officials) of the time. The fact that we can trace its origins to West Africa is irrelevant.
I personally feel that China should probably be “punished” or sanctioned in some meaningful way, but I also know that the US is not really interested in living up to democratic and humanitarian ideals. Supporting apartheid governments, brutal dictatorships, arms dumping, and environmental degradation knocks us off our high horse.
And it’s not China’s fault we can’t prevent Americans from going into bankruptcy…just for getting sick. Maybe America’s a failed state.
And how do you feel about China? Because that will be the real test. If you feel the same, and that they are the same, then it will say something. If you feel China is better, that will say something. Really, it will say something about the value of your opinion and how prejudiced and biased you are. Should be interesting, either way.
I don’t like the PRC government at all, their human rights abuses are appalling, and there are some Chinese cultural aspects, like the animal parts and ivory trades, I abhor.
But I don’t feel nearly as strong about China as I do about the USA, because it’s much less of a threat internationally. The USA has generally been a force for evil internationally when left to its own devices, and pretty much has since WWII ended, with the very odd blip. It does better when it’s under the UN banner (Korea, Kosovo), but my personal feeling is that’s in spite of its own inclinations, rather than because of them.
There are no Chinese warships halfway around the world throwing their weight around. Sure, they push around their immediate neighbours, like with the islands fuckery. And that’s terrible. But it’s not Iraq-invasion-level terrible by any measure. And it’s not 70 years of *international *terrible.
I’m not particularly concerned about the opinions of people who are either Chinese or Chinese-profiteers so see no reason to respond to them. MrDribble is an individual who lives in South Africa, a relatively unimportant and irrelevant country to U.S. national interests, and further I doubt he represents the South African government. I’m perfectly fine with drawing lines in the sand, and finding countries like that on the other side of it.
We make a lot of assumptions about the necessity of the U.S. China relationship that I think are based on this idea that status quos built over the past decades are inviolable. I think the dramatic shift in our lives from this virus should be a wake up call that a lot of things we assume can’t really change, certainly can. Before the 1970s we had virtually no meaningful economic or political relationship with the PRC, and before the 1990s that relationship was only relatively small. We have made decisions that have changed that over time. The idea that we cannot reverse these decisions is built on unsound logic and a desire, frankly, by globalists to promote the concept that entanglements entered into can never be unwound.
The reality is the United States and its allies have many opportunities for trade and investment without allowing China to benefit from lower trade barriers found in WTO membership and other special trade agreements. Given China’s innumerable and hostile actions taken towards any sort of principles of free trade, and its incapability of complying with any international treaties to which it is party–a favorite Chinese tactic is to agree to do something then simply use the corruption and obfuscation built into its bureaucratic state to not comply with treaty obligations whatsoever–the West needs to seriously reconsider the nature of its relationship with China. We certainly don’t need rhetoric like “war” and such, but the West could easily decide to simply view China as a modern day Soviet Union and significantly curtail (but not end–we still traded with the Soviets fwiw), the economic relationship.
The deal we supposedly made with China is we’d give it much freer access to our markets and trading relationships in exchange for its compliance with our rules of the game, it has never delivered on its side of the bargain so it’s time we just rescind these agreements and create large barriers to widespread entanglements with the Chinese economy.
What about organ harvesting and mass imprisonment of various ethnic groups for the crime of being ethnic groups, or for disagreeing with the CCP or…just because they are into meditation? Or, because they are a good match for someone willing to fork over the bucks for their kidneys? I get it…you dislike the US, and you hear more about the US. And you clearly don’t know that much about the stuff the CCP has been up to internationally, if you think the extent of their threat is some ‘islands fuckery’ any only impacting ‘their immediate neighbors’. As to Iraq level invasion, I’d say that just their, um, liberation of Tibet piles on the body count as much as Iran, Afghanistan and Vietnam combined…and it’s still ongoing. Thing is, it’s not in the news. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. Plus, Tibet was clearly part of China Since Ancient Times™, so it’s all good.
You being from South Africa, however, you maybe should start paying a bit more attention to what they are doing in Africa. China has opened their first large scale military base, and they are doing a lot in Africa wrt their belt and road initiative. You probably think that’s a good thing, but, personally, I’d watch this space. There are already a lot of examples of this going not so good for the countries that aren’t China that are involved.
At any rate, fair answer. You hate the enemy you think you know, and not the one you clearly don’t. That’s pretty standard, especially in a climate where the press seems to want to bend over backwards (or just bend over for that sweet, sweet China money) to handwave away or ignore what the CCP is doing. It’s why it will be interesting if the CCP does go down after this, seeing all of the shock and surprised looks of the press and the public if it happens, since the CCP is so great, so well loved at home, doesn’t do anything to mess with other nations, and is everything the US should be, including that great authoritarianism stuff in times of crisis.
A big thing to point out is I don’t think it’s the role of myself or the United States or even the West to decide how China behaves internally. What I do think is we largely built a relationship around an idea that we’re going to give China significant free trade rights and economic access to our economies, and in exchange there were conditions they were expect to uphold. By and large they are not willing to do so.
I think we sold it to the American people, dating back a generation or more now, that part of the justification for building such a close economic relationship with a Communist autocracy was that it was ultimately promoting good diplomatic relationships with a growing superpower, and was bringing China more round to our way of thinking on things like free markets and free people.
It’s entirely valid for China to not want that, but if they’re not wanting that we need to frankly reassess the relationship. I don’t want the United States to be totally amoral in its trade relationships like France or Germany, that never found a murdering dictator they didn’t want to build power plants or gas pipelines for and things of that nature. China does not have to be our mortal enemy, but neither do they have to be our friend, disassociation is a valid path and one we should strongly consider.
Some things I think we should do–like significantly ramping up cyberwarfare against China, is entirely responsive by the way, based on things China is already doing to us, and that for 25 years the official party line has been for our political leaders to not “make much noise” about it because it’ll strain the trade relationship. If China wants to keep playing “fuck fuck games” we should start playing them too, if it ceases, I have no interest in us being a unilateral aggressor.