- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/50900195
Robotics has catapulted Beijing into a dominant position in many industries
“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.
“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.
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.
Other executives describe vast, “dark factories” where robots do so much of the work alone that there is no need to even leave the lights on for humans.
“We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” recalls Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus.
In Britain, Shenzhen-based BYD multiplied its September sales by a factor of 10 this year – overtaking far more established brands such as Mini, Renault and Land Rover.
As these types of articles always do, they leave out China’s huge unemployment problem and dismiss the existential threat of wealth inequality.
Wealth inequality is worse in the US than in China.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem, right? There’s always a country that’s even worse off.
Could be, that data for wealth isn’t easily available for both countries.
Income inequality is about the same in USA and China though, Gini coefficient around 0.41 in both countries. Most figures put China slightly more inequal than USA for income.
It appears those are specifically problems China is on the trajectory of solving/improving for itself.
The American CEOs going to China are returning to find those issues getting worse everyday with no solution in sight.
It felt a bit implied and would seem really contrived to reassure the reader China has those problems.
How’d they end up with a huge unemployment problem after the 1 child policy plus being the biggest manufacturer in the world?
Still just too many people for the amount of good paying jobs.
Like most developed countries with youth unemployment, there’s work to be done, but most of it doesn’t pay a livable wage.
Dealing with surplus humans has never been a problem for communist countries. Just stop allocating them food for 2 months.
Not sure if China is a communist country these days though, but it sure retained the authoritarian parts.