← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 17455 | Posts: 20 | Started: 2005-03-22
2005-03-22 13:16 | User Profile
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CHINA IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Look for 'new factory' to grow Kevin Horrigan - St Louis Post-Dispatch Tuesday, March 22, 2005
My children discovered instant ramen noodles during the Reagan administration. At any time of the day or night, one or more of them was in the kitchen boiling water and tossing in a brick of dried fried noodles.
We were late adopters. Much of the world already had caught onto ramen noodles by then. Indeed, in one poll, the people of Japan ranked instant ramen noodles as their country's most significant invention of the 20th century. You can't eat a Walkman. You can't eat a Toyota.
My children would have agreed. They ate ramen noodles by the case. Much of the time during their Ramen Years they ate nothing else. Their mother and I disagreed about the wisdom of this. "High in fat, high in salt," she said. A dime a pack, I said. Sally Struthers spends more to feed kids than we do.
I thought about our Ramen Years last week when I read --- in Ted C. Fishman's new book, "China, Inc." (Scribner's) --- that the ramen noodle industry is yet another one about to be taken over by the Chinese. "So a noodle that originated in China (ramen is the Japanese pronunciation of "lo mein") became popular in Japan, and then, when noodle manufacturers moved from Japan to China, the noodle became popular in China because of its Japanese appearance and soon it may be even more popular in Japan because of its Chinese price," Fishman writes.
There are now 300 ramen noodle manufacturing plants in China, and the government is ramping up production as fast as it can with an eye to the export market. Chinese ramen sells in Japan for a tenth of the cost of Japanese ramen, and the day may not be far off when giant container ships full of Chinese ramen dock in Long Beach and undercut U.S. manufacturers.
Fishman says Americans --- and particularly American workers --- haven't yet fully grasped the enormity of China's intentions. Nearly everything that is manufactured in America can be --- and in many cases, already is --- manufactured in China.
"China still only makes one-twentieth of everything produced in the world, but on the world stage, it plays the role of a new factory in an old industrial town," Fishman writes. "It can spend, it can bully, it can hire and dictate wages, it can throw old-line competitors out of work. It changes the way everyone does business."
China has between 100 and 160 cities of at least 1 million people; they're filling up fast as hundreds of millions of willing and compliant workers (a number that exceeds the entire U.S. work force) migrate from the countryside. They'll work for 25 cents to 40 cents an hour and still send money home.
Their labor allows manufacturers to sell at what's known on the world market as the "China price," synonymous with "lowest price possible." Fishman writes: "The China price is part of the new conventional wisdom that companies can move nearly any kind of work to China and find huge savings. It holds that any job transferred there will be done cheaper, and possibly better."
China is making not just finished goods --- shirts, pants, TVs, radios --- but increasingly, it is manufacturing component parts. Automobile parts, for example, is a $750 billion a year business in the United States; China is coming after it relentlessly. China exported $6.5 billion in automotive parts in 2003, double the amount exported in 2002 Increasingly, as General Motors Corp. or Ford Motor Co. asks a supplier for the China price on a component, suppliers are building plants in China. GM and Ford are building plants there, too. A Chinese company called Wanfeng, having reverse-engineered a Jeep Grand Cherokee, is selling a Cherokee clone on the world export market for $10,000.
What happens to a Ford plant or a DaimlerChrysler plant in the United States when China starts selling knockoff Explorers and Caravans here?
"China, Inc." is a scary and important book. Fishman suggests that while U.S. policy-makers are preoccupied with the "clash of civilizations" with Islam in the Middle East, the drain of jobs and national wealth to China is the far more serious long-term problem. We may wind up eating Chinese ramen because it's all we can afford.
Kevin Horrigan is a St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist. His column appears occasionally.
"China still only makes one-twentieth of everything produced in the world, but on the world stage, it plays the role of a new factory in an old industrial town," Fishman writes. "It can spend, it can bully, it can hire and dictate wages, it can throw old-line competitors out of work. It changes the way everyone does business."
One-twentieth doesn't seem like much, except when you consider that this is primarily directed at the US economy with the idea of destroying it.
We may wind up eating Chinese ramen because it's all we can afford.
Yes, but you will have talk radio to listen to while you eat and you'll be able to hear just how wonderful and better things are because of "free trade" and "capitalism". [sarcasm]
2005-03-22 15:01 | User Profile
It's sobering to contemplate the impact of the Chinese in the U.S. automobile market coming here shortly.
Their initial product offerings will doubtless be met with widespread derision and ridicule, as were the first Korean Hyundai's, for example.
Like with Hynudai or Honda before them, I predict smirks will be wiped clean off faces within eight or ten years.
2005-03-22 17:12 | User Profile
Like I wrote last year, Waltmart will soon start selling Chinese cars and I will buy one but only if they are better than Toyota.....I wont even talk about Americans cars because all you get from them is a big headache.
2005-03-22 17:29 | User Profile
Like I wrote last year, Waltmart will soon start selling Chinese cars and I will buy one but only if they are better than Toyota.....I wont even talk about Americans cars because all you get from them is a big headache.
Let us hope that we can get some economic nationalists in positions of power before then. We can send the Red Chinese commies packing and get the good folks in Detroit back working again.
Japanese I don't mind so much as the Chi-Coms. Toyota makes a few cars and trucks in Indiana and Kentucky.
2005-03-22 17:39 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Let us hope that we can get some economic nationalists in positions of power before then. We can send the Red Chinese commies packing and get the good folks in Detroit back working again.
Japanese I don't mind so much as the Chi-Coms. Toyota makes a few cars and trucks in Indiana and Kentucky.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure there are any good folks left in Detroit. The ones who worked there when the US was the world's sole industrial giant have all retired and moved to Florida, on pensions and health benefits negotiated in the 1950's and 1960's. GM is staring at $300B in debt on $16B in market cap. The creditors won't pull the plug because their debt isn't marketable and they know they're undersecured.
American workers are among the most productive in the world, but unions and workplace legislation are killing them.
2005-03-22 17:41 | User Profile
Like with Hynudai or Honda before them, I predict smirks will be wiped clean off faces within eight or ten years.
Possibly, or we could have the next "Yugo" on our hands. [img]http://mcdev.nolansys.dsvr.co.uk/mark/images/yug.jpg[/img]
2005-03-22 18:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=SteamshipTime]I'm not sure there are any good folks left in Detroit. The ones who worked there when the US was the world's sole industrial giant have all retired and moved to Florida, on pensions and health benefits negotiated in the 1950's and 1960's. GM is staring at $300B in debt on $16B in market cap. The creditors won't pull the plug because their debt isn't marketable and they know they're undersecured.
American workers are among the most productive in the world, but unions and workplace legislation are killing them.[/QUOTE]
No doubt we have problems and admittedly I'm not knee-jerk anti-union. The bottom line for me is the answer to the question of whether or not this country was a better place when Detroit and our 'Rust belt' was strong. I think it was.
2005-03-22 18:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]No doubt we have problems and admittedly I'm not knee-jerk anti-union. The bottom line for me is the answer to the question of whether or not this country was a better place when Detroit and our 'Rust belt' was strong. I think it was.[/QUOTE] Of course it was. Then came Progressivism and the New Deal. We coasted after WWII because Europe and Japan were wrecked, China was commie, the Third World didn't even have electricity, and the Republican Congress told Truman to back off.
Now that we've lost that advantage, the generous collective bargaining agreements and labor and employment legislation are bearing their fruit. Also, as you mentioned on another thread, the silly idea that everyone should be an English major rather than learn a trade has undercut our competitiveness as well.
2005-03-22 18:23 | User Profile
[QUOTE=SteamshipTime]Now that we've lost that advantage, the generous collective bargaining agreements and labor and employment legislation are bearing their fruit. Also, as you mentioned on another thread, the silly idea that everyone should be an English major rather than learn a trade has undercut our competitiveness as well.[/QUOTE]
Maybe it's because of where I come from and where I sit today, but I just can't put the lion's share of blame on labor. Some excesses? Yeah, but I fault the corporate managers in bed with our politicians for selling out this country's industry, not the working man.
2005-03-22 20:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Also, as you mentioned on another thread, the silly idea that everyone should be an English major rather than learn a trade has undercut our competitiveness as well.[/QUOTE] There is another variation of this used by Economic men when they are losing an argument and that is to say it is the worker's fault if he loses his job or his wages are cut because he should have gone into another line of work via education. ("horse and buggy whip industry") Unfortunately, not everyone can either afford to do this or have the necessary academic background to go back to school in a timely manner to benefit from new skills. Furthermore, why in the hell should a person have to give up a job he likes just to accomodate the cheap labor lobby and "cheap trade" lobby? These jobs provide a means to become part of the middle class. It is interesting to note that the folks who make the above argument are usually the same ones who are in favor of open borders.
NOTE: I wrote above: > One-twentieth doesn't seem like much, except when you consider that this is primarily directed at the US economy with the idea of destroying it.
Should read: "One-twentieth doesn't seem like much, except when you consider that this is primarily directed at the US ** manufacturing** economy with the idea of destroying it."
2005-03-22 20:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE=MadScienceType]Possibly, or we could have the next "Yugo" on our hands.[/QUOTE]
No way.... like I said, their first efforts will likely mirror the inauspicious Daewoo/Hyundai/Yugo debuts, but the Chinese will keep pounding away until they get it right.
They can easily afford to make plenty of early mistakes.
2005-03-22 20:21 | User Profile
No way.... like I said, their first efforts will likely mirror the inauspicious Daewoo/Hyundai/Yugo debuts, but the Chinese will keep pounding away until they get it right. They can easily afford to make plenty of early mistakes.
They do tend to take the long view on things.
2005-03-22 21:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=EDUMAKATEDMOFO]No way.... like I said, their first efforts will likely mirror the inauspicious Daewoo/Hyundai/Yugo debuts, but the Chinese will keep pounding away until they get it right.
They can easily afford to make plenty of early mistakes.[/QUOTE]
I am beginning to wonder about Japan and where they are going, as you know the Sony corporation now has a Jew as its president......is that good or bad? nothing to say for now.
And Ted? you are right China will keep at it till they get it right and they even will test the safety of their vehicles with live people instead of dead people like we do in the US.
PS: The dead bodies are bodies donated to science, not to many people know about this.
2005-03-23 02:15 | User Profile
[quote=Sertorius]There is another variation of this used by Economic men when they are losing an argument and that is to say it is the worker's fault if he loses his job or his wages are cut because he should have either gone into another line of work via education.
Not only that, but jobs are being shipped out of the country faster than one can retrain (as if that's a piece of cake) for the next one.
2005-03-24 13:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=MadScienceType][/QUOTE]
I didn't know that armadilloes are marsupials.
I thought they were rodents.
I looked it up, and it looks like we're both wrong, they're a [URL=http://www.msu.edu/~nixonjos/armadillo/index.html]separate branch of mammal:[/URL] [QUOTE]Whatââ¬â¢s an armadillo? Armadillos are an amazing group of animals that originated in South America. Armadillos are mammals, just like you. Contrary to what you may have heard, the armadillo is neither a rodent nor a marsupial, and they are not related to the opossum any more than you are. There are twenty different species of armadillos. They belong to the order Xenarthra, family Dasypodidae. Their closest relatives are sloths and anteaters. [/QUOTE]
2005-03-24 13:54 | User Profile
There are armadidlers in Texas. One night at Ft. Hood a good old boy caught one and proceeded to put it in someone's sleeping bag. That person wasn't as amused as we were, nor the armadilloe.
2005-03-24 14:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]There are armadidlers in Texas. One night at Ft. Hood a good old boy caught one and proceeded to put it in someone's sleeping bag. That person wasn't as amused as we were, nor the armadilloe.[/QUOTE]
Do they bite?
2005-03-24 14:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]I didn't know that armadilloes are marsupials.
I thought they were rodents.
I looked it up, and it looks like we're both wrong, they're a [URL=http://www.msu.edu/~nixonjos/armadillo/index.html]separate branch of mammal:[/URL][/QUOTE]
Yeh, I know they ain't marsupials, I just like the way the title flows. You rarely see the critters alive, mostly in various states of compression on the side of the road, though you can see where they spend all night digging in your yard come morning. State mammal of Texas they are.
Do they bite?
You rarely get close enough to find out, but they do carry rabies, so I suppose it can get transmitted somehow. Possums & skunks are a bigger rabies danger.
2005-03-24 15:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE=MadScienceType]You rarely get close enough to find out, but they do carry rabies, so I suppose it can get transmitted somehow. Possums & skunks are a bigger rabies danger.[/QUOTE]
We don't have armadillos in Wisconsin. At least I never saw one.
We do have lots of skunks and possums, though.
And no shortage of other vermin.
2005-03-24 16:30 | User Profile
We don't have armadillos in Wisconsin.
Too cold, I imagine. They're pretty susceptible to the weather, in spite of being mammals. They don't hibernate, so they go out in the day in winter when it's warmest, but stay nocturnal in the summer. They're pretty interesting, if ugly, creatures.
If it stings or bites, we have it down here.