iPhone Maker Foxconn Says China's 'Days as the World's Factory Are Done'

cocky jeremy said:
Anything that hurts China is a win for everyone else.
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Except that “the other countries” also have the same history as banana republic autocracies? Vietnam still commie. Thailand you get jailed for life if you say anything bad about the King or the ruling Generalissimo and his goons.

Those smaller countries are no better than China in human rights. I speak truth.
 
EugW said:
Hopefully they are successful, because it's always best not to have everything in one basket, but the various companies that have been been trying to diversify in this fashion have run into serious problems. This has been true of places like India and Thailand for example, due to corruption, political instability, and lack of infrastructure.

As much as we all love to hate China's policies, you have to give them credit for emphasizing stability and infrastructure support for industry, precisely to attract this type of investment.
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This is a terrific point and probably one of the most under-appreciated points in the discussion about where to manufacture. China has an infrastructure that is VERY difficult to duplicate elsewhere. It's not just about cheap labor. There's cheap labor in many parts of the world. It's cheap labor combined with a large population, manufacturing expertise, strong government support for establishing stable infrastructure, etc. You can find several of these things in many different places, but few places have all of them.
 
1rottenapple said:
Unless we are all willing to spend mucho bux on carp we manufacture overseas it’ll never come back. I work in management and with labor laws, lawsuits, benefits etc, it’s expensive here in the USA. Unless 80% is automated like tesla, manufacturing is not feasible in the USA. So quit blaming China or India or other overseas country and look at our selves, our spending habits and unwillingness to pay up to the American worker. You think this smart phone revolution would have happened if iPhone s cost $2k in 2006? Lol please. Yah will buy one every 5 yrs if that’s the case and innovation will slow.

Look at small cars manufactured in Mexico across the border. The manufacturers cannot break even producing small low margin cars. So should they produce them at a loss? That’s not capitalism and the free market which goes against our countries beliefs.
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Yes, 80% automated. Correct. We don’t have the shear manpower to rely on near slave labor living in work camps to build things. If we brought Chinese jobs to America 6:1 ratio, 10:1, or even 20:1, the boom would be enormous for the USA.

But if course a lot of those jobs will go to India, Vietnam, Brazil and Mexico.
 
JPack said:
More importantly, it reveals the lack of investment into automation by Foxconn.

If you look at Chinese domestic smartphone brands, many of them are assembled using highly automated equipment. Luxshare, the maker of AirPods, is buying an iPhone factory from Wistron in China precisely because they’re betting on full automation in the future to compete with Foxconn.
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thats interesting. I always thought that the precision and dexterity needed for these tasks just wasn’t worth the hassle from an automation point of view. The robots actually end up costing more and it’s not easy to just make a brand new product line the next day. With humans all that stuff is easier to do.

i suppose the more integrated to chipsets are made and if products shrink even more (AirPods, Apple watch) I can see robots being good for those types of products maybe..
 
Solomani said:
Except that “the other countries” also have the same history as banana republic autocracies? Vietnam still commie. Thailand you get jailed for life if you say anything bad about the King or the ruling Generalissimo and his goons.

Those smaller countries are no better than China in human rights. I speak truth.
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"Vietnam still commie." "I speak truth." You sure convinced me. /s

That's not to say that the statement you responded to is any better. The word is not a zero-sum game. China can thrive along with the rest of the world, but that requires people to actually come together under the common goal of improving life for all of humanity rather than trying to carve out their own little fiefdoms, the rest of the world be damned.
 
Theyayarealivin said:
China blew it! I'm surprised the operations are still running!
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They didn’t blew anything, quite the contrary since China been aiming to stop being the cheap labor force and become more service oriented, so this move fits the Chinese agenda perfectly. Americans no longer have the biggest purchasing power due to low minimum wages and slew of other reasons. China has the biggest middle class now, hence the reason why a bmw 3 series long wheel base only exist in China because the Chinese market is that important.
 
JPack said:
More importantly, it reveals the lack of investment into automation by Foxconn.

If you look at Chinese domestic smartphone brands, many of them are assembled using highly automated equipment. Luxshare, the maker of AirPods, is buying an iPhone factory from Wistron in China precisely because they’re betting on full automation in the future to compete with Foxconn.
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Take a look at this:

www.imore.com

Apple has discovered that humans are better at assembling products than robots

A report from The Information has revealed how Apple has tried to automate iPhone production without success.
www.imore.com www.imore.com
 
1rottenapple said:
Unless we are all willing to spend mucho bux on carp we manufacture overseas it’ll never come back. I work in management and with labor laws, lawsuits, benefits etc, it’s expensive here in the USA. Unless 80% is automated like tesla, manufacturing is not feasible in the USA.
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Agreed. Try to fire someone for non-performance! Also, don't talk about labor unions at the every level.
 
steve333 said:
I was just about to mention this on another thread.
China needs to learn a lesson and The West needs to stop propping u
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steve333 said:
I was just about to mention this on another thread.
China needs to learn a lesson and The West needs to stop propping up a country that is run by tyrants who want to achieve world domination.
Next step is to ban any internet companies associated with China until they allow Google, Facebook, and other companies to operate in their country unfettered by censorship. Like that would ever happen.
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While I appreciate the sentiment I don’t think the next step you propose is the right idea. Don’t slam the door with a ban, allow it through but let the market choose. We don’t have a ban on Italian olive oil despite the cartels but I know of this issue so I specifically go after Spanish and US olive oil. Same thing can happen here. I can look for an iPhone manufactured elsewhere too. A US ban on Chinese products through the government is just as bad as what they are doing. We need to lead and show a better way. Let the people and the dollars speak and they will change.
 
ilikewhey said:
Automation works for Tesla because their 2012 model s is still the same design as today, iPhone change every year, it’s just not feasible to have a automation on a product that changes on a annual bases.
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Read the article. The main takeaway is that robots are simply not good at certain assembly tasks.

BTW, Musk also learned the hard way that automation doesn't always work well. Tesla changed course and has no higher degree of automation than other car manufacturers today.
 
Well with all the USA reassessing how stupid it was to trust an authoritarian dictatorship with our supply chain...yeah. Thats a good idea.
 
Rigby said:
These jobs will not return to the US, but diversifying the supply chains should reduce risks and bring more stability to the markets. But it remains to be seen how serious companies like Foxconn actually are about this. I suspect many of these statements are primarily made to placate Trump. Also, China has been steadily climbing up the value chain, they are no longer dependent on manufacturing alone.
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People say this but there is no reason they cannot. There is not a universal rule that says people in the USA cannot do these jobs. Its just we have made it painful and hard to manufacture in the USA with our laws. If we want the jobs we can reform things so companies want to build here.
 
incoherent_1 said:
I respectfully disagree. Here’s the theory I’ve heard promoted by western political theorists (I’m not saying it’s right or wrong or that I agree or disagree with it): Over the last 50 years, China has made a Faustian bargain with its people: give up large amounts of your civil liberties and we’ll raise everyone from poverty and make you wealthier. That arguably only works insofar as foreign corporations are complicit in that by operating in China. If foreign capital dries up, the Chinese government may realize it’s facing millions of citizens who want a change of government.

It’s pushing for political change through economic means. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, so it’s no surprise that’s their political orientation. What’s new is that they’re willing to state it so boldly.
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I agree on the theory you provided. Globalism is a double-edged sword, in that what has been given can be taken away. China under communist rule has never really had a great track record of shepherding its economy. The last two or so decades of prosperity in China, largely due to heavy foreign investment, has been the exception not the norm. To be sure, the western world was deeply naive to think that the CCP would change its ways, but I suppose that's 20/20 hindsight. The exporting of western ideals to China failed; in fact, the opposite has occured. China has never been more ultra-nationalistic, and never more orwellian in their anti-free speech, anti-rights, and anti-religion than at any point before.

China also has 1.4B people who have to eat and earn a living. Many of them are old too: most projections put China's population topping out at over 1.45B sometime this decade. After that, it's estimated that negative population growth will occur, with China's population decreasing by a whopping 400M people by 2100. That's a lot of elderly. Imagine everyone in the U.S. just vanishing over the span of 80 years. During that time, it'll be a huge economic strain, compounded by having businesses divest from their country.

The story of the 2020s will be how China and the world get along. It's not looking good, so far.
 
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jimbobb24 said:
People say this but there is no reason they cannot. There is not a universal rule that says people in the USA cannot do these jobs. Its just we have made it painful and hard to manufacture in the USA with our laws. If we want the jobs we can reform things so companies want to build here.
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It's the lack of education and infrastructure in the U.S. Lack of high speed rail. Complete lack of automated port terminals. Not to mention the U.S. bet the farm on a FIRE economy, based primarily on the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors.

Can you imagine if U.S. workers were asked to put on a cleanroom suit? They won't even put on masks to save their lives.
 
jimbobb24 said:
People say this but there is no reason they cannot. There is not a universal rule that says people in the USA cannot do these jobs. Its just we have made it painful and hard to manufacture in the USA with our laws. If we want the jobs we can reform things so companies want to build here.
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This has less to do with laws than with our standards of living. The Trumpists keep saying that China "took advantage" of us, but the reality is that we (and other western countries) took advantage of them and other low-cost countries to fuel our way of life, being higher up on the economic value chain. Now that China has started climbing up themselves, we complain. BTW, we actually do still have more highly productive manufacturing than many people think, but that's in large part because of automation. Low-level manual labor will not return.
 
calzon65 said:
Foxconn is a huge manufacturer ... this is a big deal.

China (i.e., the CCP) blew it and are now paying the price.
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I think their game plan is to keep pushing it until they pay a huge price... they're relying on the fact that they can take any hit and their citizens have to accept it vs. "the West" where consumers and shareholders will cry "Uncle" as soon as there's any economic impact.
 
Since courtesy of a duplicitous, repressive government they infected the world, it seems the right thing to do. Shame their citizens will need to suffer but thats the way it is.
 
aknabi said:
I think their game plan is to keep pushing it until they pay a huge price... they're relying on the fact that they can take any hit and their citizens have to accept it vs. "the West" where consumers and shareholders will cry "Uncle" as soon as there's any economic impact.
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The reality is, China's plan is to pivot to Belt and Road countries, where over 130 countries have already signed, including Italy, Greece, and South Korea. There's a reason why the IMF predicts China will be the only major economy in the world to grow this year.
 
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