[HN Gopher] Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook for first ti...
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Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook for first time ever
Author : jseliger
Score : 219 points
Date : 2022-08-17 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asia.nikkei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asia.nikkei.com)
| syngrog66 wrote:
| reducing China risk is wise
| iloveitaly wrote:
| I wonder how long it will be until Apple is running their own
| fabs, or at least diversifies away from heavily relying on TSMC.
| Has anyone seen news to this effect?
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| I think it's the last thing they would do themselves. Setting
| up and operating their own TSMC-level fabs would cost Apple:
|
| * tens of billions of dollars
|
| * at least 5 years of time
|
| * most of all: immense effort and focus that could be used
| elsewhere
| pedalpete wrote:
| I think it is more likely that TSMC is diversifying away from
| building only in Taiwan. They have the expertise. Apple's
| expertise is engineering, design, and marketing.
|
| They don't own their own factories because that is not their
| expertise, and they probably don't want to bring that in house.
| futhey wrote:
| Why would they? They identified the best semiconductor
| manufacturer, and gave them so much business they basically do
| whatever Apple wants, and prioritize their capacity over
| everyone else.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Doesn't seem far enough away or nuclear armed enough to be a very
| good backup plan.
| coolspot wrote:
| The main criteria for Apple is how poor and abundant population
| is.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Vietnam is not that poor. Vietnam is MUCH richer than its
| direct neighbours, Laos and Cambodia. Thailand is richer
| though.
|
| The actual thing is not really poor population, but how easy
| is to build new factory there.
|
| Vietnam has the best thing for that - it is easy to build new
| stuff there, as the infrastructure exists; however, they
| absolutely ignore any environmental laws and just spew all
| waste into rivers and air.
|
| Look up Formosa Steel incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/2016_Vietnam_marine_life_disas... - huge disaster of a
| Taiwanese company, after which there were big protests.
| Communist government then arrested all protesters and put
| them to 20 years in prisons (for protesting against a foreign
| company!). Nobody protests about environmental waste now.
| hn4000 wrote:
| Not only how poor and abundant the population is.
|
| 'Money is the first thing. Morals follow on.' (based on B.
| Brecht)
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| Democracy Index 2021: Vietnam 131 / China 148 (Norway 1 -
| best / Afghanistan 167 worst)
|
| Freedom In The World 2021: Vietnam 167 / China 184 (Finland 1
| - best / Syria 194 - worst)
| fzfaa wrote:
| I am sure that those indices are NOT biased.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Where were Apple Watch and MacBook made before Vietnam? Is
| the answer just China and nowhere else?
|
| How much does it cost in that location now compared to what
| it's going to cost now to make it in Vietnam?
|
| How many Vietnam workers is this going to employ, and are
| they going to be working for like... $3/day?
| itake wrote:
| Apple Watch was China. I think MacBooks where partially
| made in the US, but I could be wrong. My understanding is
| the MacBook line (and everything other 'mature' product
| line) is heavily automated now.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Foxconn employs 1.2M people in China. And Pegatron, 120k.
|
| So... a lot of people.
| rdsnsca wrote:
| The main criteria for every electronics company, singleing
| out Apple is just BS.
| coolspot wrote:
| Yes, but this particular news is about Apple.
| mountainb wrote:
| It is a good backup plan for sanctions against China and a
| blockade or war with Taiwan because of the port facilities,
| advanced infrastructure, and other advanced industry. For World
| War 3 it's not necessarily a great plan, but it's as good as
| any other plan for that scenario.
| pedalpete wrote:
| Outside Paywall - https://archive.ph/pUZc3
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| I wonder what Gavin Belson is up to. I'm thinking about the
| episode where Gavin opens up a plant in goldbriar north carolina
| (Not a real place)
| tunap wrote:
| I suppose this means Wisconsin is SOL.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/foxconn_wisconsin_fac...
| r00fus wrote:
| Most likely Foxconn/WI just crony capitalism and political
| circus. Numerous articles over the past years about complete
| lack of delivery by Foxconn and lack of political followthrough
| from WI state government.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Let's be clear about what actually happened here: Donald
| Trump and Scott Walker wanted a 'win,' Foxconn was able to
| get some terrific subsidies, and Wisconsinites got a raw deal
| out of it.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/foxconn_wisconsin_fac.
| ..
| missedthecue wrote:
| They were never going to build Apple products there though.
| That was for LCD television components.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I don't think the point they were making was about Apple
| products being built there, but that Foxconn continues to put
| their attention elsewhere with other projects.
| stingrae wrote:
| For Foxconn, making Apple happy is the most important thing
| they can do. It will always get priority over anything
| else.
| yrgulation wrote:
| At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even
| governments. If a real war starts we can use the services
| industry, unless we outsource that too. We'll send the lawyers
| and software engineers in, and power our cardboard tanks with
| wood and steam.
|
| I was hoping the pandemic and the war in europe would teach us
| that electronics, particularly high end, should be relocated to
| allied countries at the very least.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Well, there is some substantial outsourcing of the army and
| intelligence services via private (military) contractors [0].
| In a world of increasing PPP (Public-Private Partnerships) the
| line gets very blurry indeed.
|
| One interesting line of thought (I don't share personally (yet)
| but find compelling as a dystopian possibility) is that the
| dirty business of censoring/filtering is outsourced by private
| companies (i.e. Big Tech with their unparalleled outreach:
| Twitter, Alphabet, Meta ... ) so that governments can wash
| their hands of it.
|
| [0]https://medium.com/smartaim-tech/war-for-money-leading-
| priva...
| yrgulation wrote:
| I dont want to sound like trump but even a broken clock is
| right twice a day. We have truly made a joke of ourselves.
| reidjs wrote:
| That quote predates Trump.
| yrgulation wrote:
| He's abused it so often that people associate it with
| him.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| > At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even
| governments.
|
| Chuckled here.
|
| Do you realized that normal American people are being
| outsourced and they don't have much say to determine the
| process?
|
| Your words read like a slave joking with fellow slaves: one day
| our master will outsourcing to some other nations.
|
| That's truly sad analogy.
| rdbell wrote:
| International trade dependency is one of the biggest deterrents
| to war and often helps countries become allies.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| Ukraine's #1 trading partner was Russia, and Russia's #3
| trading partner was Ukraine.
|
| I remember reading the same argument in the 90s, and it
| seemed to have a lot of merit. But, experience shows us that
| it's not correct.
| csours wrote:
| Russia (Putin) sees Ukraine as basically a subordinate
| state; likewise with Georgia and Belarus. That would make
| this action a civil war, which is basically how it's been
| treated by the international community.
| jltsiren wrote:
| No deterrent is effective against a regime sufficiently
| detached from reality.
|
| Putin called it a "special military operation" for a
| reason. It was supposed to be like Czechoslovakia in 1968.
| The troops go in, reach Kyiv in a few days, and take over
| without any real fighting. Ukraine was not supposed to be
| able and willing to resist. Russian military didn't even
| know there was going to be a war, which is why it failed so
| catastrophically in the first days.
|
| The outcome of this war is going to determine whether
| international trade is still an effective deterrent. If
| Russian economy depends so much on Western technology that
| they will lose in the long term regardless of the oucome of
| the war, this was just the exception that tests the rule.
| If the West gives up and resumes trading with Russia, the
| deterrent will be gone.
| vletal wrote:
| Exactly. Russia's #1 gas importer is EU.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Yeah it did exactly nothing to stop the ongoing war in europe
| and little to prevent china from brutally overtaking hong
| long. Meanwhile china is openly flexing muscles around
| taiwan. If anything its us that are deterred from action -
| see germany and russia.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Commonly held incorrect belief. Educate yourself:
| https://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/2005?ln=en
| pedalpete wrote:
| As per HN Guidlines, please don't be snarky. You may have a
| very valid point, and it is great to back it up with links
| to more info, but please state what the point you are
| making is, rather than just a snarky comment with a link
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=It
| '....
| Apocryphon wrote:
| We've already been increasing dependence on PMCs, as the Romans
| did with mercenaries, in our last big war:
|
| https://www.wired.com/2004/07/coalition-of-the-billing/
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Would it be so bad to outsource the US government to say,
| Sweden, or one of those other Nordic countries? I feel like
| they know what they're doing.
|
| Could we at least outsource the NYC MTA to them?
| yrgulation wrote:
| Note the term "allied" in my comment. Cooperation, sharing of
| intel and workload among allies is not an issue in my view. I
| am not a looney nationalist or protectionist, nor do i have
| an issue with china or russia or their people, i simply want
| the free world to end its reliance on countries that will not
| hesitate to use it against us. Also it would help our
| economies and overall progress.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You're ignoring the entire dependence on the worldwide supply
| chain. That's like Cook making a show of "manufacturing Mac
| Pros" in the US for Trump when only final assembly was done
| here.
|
| He did the same dog and pony show in Great Brittain.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Well thats the issue. The whole suite of dependencies needs
| to be moved back, except where impossible - i.e. minerals
| etc.
|
| Having moved all of this outside the free world we slowed
| down progress in our own countries. Imagine being forced to
| come up with cheaper alternatives at home where we'd be with
| robotics, automation and space mining today. Instead we
| finance countries that seek to challenge us.
| scarface74 wrote:
| What good does it do to move all of the dependencies
| _except for the most important foundational dependencies_?
| yrgulation wrote:
| Because we have no option. Such resources are limited. We
| either destroy our own environment - assuming it holds
| such resources - suck up or expand outwards. I'd choose
| the latter but it seems our collective culture is weak
| and unable to sustain radical positive transformation.
| The industrial revolution couldn't take place today even
| if we wanted, let alone ambitious resource extraction
| projects.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Is your assumption here that all minerals are distributed
| equally, or equally accessible?
| scarface74 wrote:
| I am saying just the opposite. Most of the easily
| accessible "rare minerals" are in countries that aren't
| our allies.
| thankful69 wrote:
| I though we were going to move all those tech factories back
| home? I mean, we are literally paying for it, at least our taxes
| are.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap
| labor.
|
| Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do
| with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's
| important to think more carefully about the impact of companies
| investing in developing economies.
|
| By and large, the factory work done by people in developing
| economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and
| safety than the agricultural work that they would be doing
| without economic development. It would be better if the factories
| were more often owned domestically (instead of owned by Chinese
| companies), but the actual workers are not suffering in the short
| term as a result of Apple bringing jobs. The complete opposite is
| true.
| eej71 wrote:
| If anything, the decline in needing cheap labor is going to be
| a problem for large countries like China. China needed those
| cheap labor factories to be the engine to help lift people out
| of rural poverty.
|
| Unfortunately that engine will now falter and many will be left
| behind.
|
| For an eye opening survey here, I highly recommend the book
| Invisible China.
| granshaw wrote:
| They are well on their way of climbing onto the next rung of
| the manufacturing ladder and manufacturing more complex items
| with higher margins that can absorb higher wages
|
| ...and transitioning more to a service economy
|
| ...no?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Nope. By most standards the PRC is stuck in the middle
| income trap.
|
| To paraphrase an earlier comment I wrote sometime back:
|
| Chinese household median income is around $4,700-4,800 in
| 2021, with massive disparities between First world
| comparable regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin,
| and rust belt regions like Wuhan [0]. Even the Chinese
| Premier Li Keqiang has noted that 600 million Chinese earn
| less that $140/month [1].
|
| [0] http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t20
| 22011...
|
| [1] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1189968.shtml
| pishpash wrote:
| If they are poorer than people in Vietnam they can just go to
| Vietnam to work. That's not that much different than going to
| southern China to work. It is almost a common market.
| prox wrote:
| Wouldn't Vietnamese people be massively favored? How much
| chance would a common Chinese person have. Language is also
| different enough, and culture probably as well.
| alephnerd wrote:
| A number of rural migrant workers in China DO go to Vietnam
| to work[0], though this has been increasingly cracked down
| on by the Vietnamese government[1]. On a similar note, the
| Belt and Roads Initiative itself essentially acted as a
| jobs placement program to alleviate labor issues after the
| 2015-16 Stock Market crash in China [TODO: Find page
| numbers from notes]
|
| [0] - https://data.vietnam.opendevelopmentmekong.net/datase
| t/fefed...
|
| [1] - https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/workers-102920
| 2011165...
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Given their poverty, are you certain they have enough
| disposable income (let alone the personal freedom) to just
| pick up and move to an entirely new country?
| wwweston wrote:
| Labor rarely has the mobility that capital does, especially
| when international borders are involved.
| alephnerd wrote:
| +1 on Invisible China. Scott Rozelle's group at the FSI has
| been doing some good work on trying to alleviate the
| opportunity gap that exists in several prefectures in the
| PRC.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| Xi Jinping know this problem all along. And his poverty
| eradication project is essentially siphoning embezzled fund
| from corrupted officials into rural areas.
|
| I bet Xi Jinping knows research work in the similar lines
| of Invisible China.
|
| https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
| release/2022/04/01/l....
| koheripbal wrote:
| There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining
| about foreign cheap labor.
|
| They claim to be championing labor rights, but they are often
| just angered at companies for stopping all manufacturing in the
| West. They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that
| companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go
| elsewhere.
|
| The obvious truth, and what literally all of these Vietnamese
| workers will tell you, is that foreign tech manufacturing is an
| amazingly better paying job than what is currently available.
|
| The true story with China is that moving Western manufacturing
| to China raised the standard of living for literally hundreds
| of millions of Chinese people out of poverty.
| Aunche wrote:
| If you want to decrease inequality, it would make sense for
| people to be compensated for reducing inequality. This is
| what exactly what outsourcing is.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| > The true story with China is that moving Western
| manufacturing to China raised the standard of living for
| literally hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of
| poverty.
|
| And thereby strengthened the hand of the CCP.
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's exactly the opposite.
|
| People who can afford a good education are _harder_ to
| control.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| Yes, that's why American people are so dumbed down
| nowadays, intentionally by some people who happened to
| share this ideology.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| No it isn't. People with nothing to lose and living in
| poverty while seeing their democratic neighbors
| prospering are _harder_ to control. People with
| education, jobs, and families - something to lose - are
| easier to control. How many Tienanmen Squares has China
| had since Asian and Western democracies opened their
| markets and enriched China.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Even if this is the case, do you honestly not think the
| tradeoff is worth it? Lifting a billion people out of
| crushing poverty seems worth it even if it came at the cost
| of giving a dictatorship stronger geopolitical influence.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Assembly plants are just one kind of manufacturing, albeit a
| very visible part. Petroleum refining and other chemicals are
| manufacturing. The US does a lot of that.
|
| Manufacturing has been a growing share of GDP for the past
| few years, interrupted surprisingly briefly by COVID. Just
| that most of it isn't assembly lines.
| LtWorf wrote:
| But now we can't build anything and if china embargoes us,
| we're doomed.
| xwdv wrote:
| We produce things that matter, such as food. We'll be fine.
| LtWorf wrote:
| With no chips to repair the john deere tractors? Yeah
| food won't happen.
| koheripbal wrote:
| We produce lots of chips now, and soon we're going to be
| producing enough for ourselves.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I submitted a thoughtful analysis of this recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32214320
| surfpel wrote:
| > There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining
| about foreign cheap labor.
|
| This is a strawman.
|
| You're conflating different groups of people with different
| interests. Some people complain about labor conditions, some
| people complain that jobs are leaving the country. Almost
| nobody is "dishonest" about this.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| There are plenty of people who are extremely selective with
| regards to their outrage on each issue, though.
| [deleted]
| atwood22 wrote:
| So? Most people's entire existence is predicated on
| unsustainable consumerism. There is literally too much to
| care about. If you require that people must care about
| all issues to care about any issue, then progress won't
| be made. Maybe that's your intention.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I don't require everyone to care the same about all
| issues, that wasn't my point.
|
| My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping
| jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific
| issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.
| atwood22 wrote:
| The same type of argument can be made about any specific
| issue. For instance, labor rights is incredibly broad. I
| don't think it's a realistic requirement for someone to
| care about every possible labor-rights issue. It's fine
| if people want to be selective.
| upupandup wrote:
| The people complaining on Twitter that foreign cheap labour
| is being used are writing on devices that were produced by
| that same labour. Those very same people are the ones that
| are demanding that we bring those labour back but unwilling
| to brunt the cost that companies will then pass on to those
| same customer. It's not a strawman its the reality of
| Western society, whatever _feels_ wrong is totally and
| completely detached from any logic or intellectual
| discussion about why the reality they feel like they are
| entitled to is at conflict with their own contradictory
| desires.
|
| It is virtue signaling, largely to placate and pat
| themselves on the back to deflect blame from them, that
| their consumption, their vote with their money, and
| unwillingness to pay the true cost, is what creates this
| situation.
| baybal2 wrote:
| 95% of Vietnamese support capitalism: https://eu.usatoday.com
| /story/news/world/2015/03/13/vietnam-... thus making it the
| most capitalist country in the world...
|
| Second in line is Bangladesh
|
| P.S. USA had a capitalism approval around 70% in the same
| survey.
| latchkey wrote:
| Quite a few of the factories are actually owned by Koreans...
| Vietnam is their cheap labor force.
| another_story wrote:
| And Taiwanese
| mattigames wrote:
| Can't shake the feeling that a similar rationality was used to
| partially justify trading slaves "The new master feeds them
| bread and milk instead of just rice and water! Its a clear win
| for them!". Yeah I get it, its an improvement for sure but
| maybe the problem has roots a bit deeper that must be adressed
| and therefore righfully critized despite being an improvement.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| It wasn't true though. The lives of enslaved people were
| obviously, measurably worse after enslavement and
| transportation. They had shorter lifespans, less freedom,
| literally enslavement, etc. The lives of people groups in
| African captured for slavery were also worse.
| astrange wrote:
| Economics is called the "dismal science" because slavers
| called the economists that when the economists pointed out
| slavery was both bad and inefficient.
|
| The slavers' argument was that treating them bad taught them
| proper Christian character.
| Sakos wrote:
| China was literally able to lift hundreds of millions of people
| out of poverty with all the manufacturing that was moved there.
| I think most people don't understand anything about economics.
| Vietnam absolutely wants and will benefit from an increasingly
| industrialized economy.
|
| edit: I'm seeing a number of comments pointing out how these
| are companies owned by Koreans. Which maybe isn't optimal, but
| the potential for knowledge transfer coupled with investment in
| infrastructure and logistics chains is a great opportunity that
| just needs to be used well.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How long before Vietnam pulls a move from China's playbook
| where they start to manufacture things based on the plans
| foreign companies brought them and sell the product under
| Vietnamese company brands?
| echelon wrote:
| That's just the algorithm. Every nation leveraging
| manufacturing for growth will do this.
|
| When it eventually gets too expensive for native workers,
| manufacturing moves again [1]. Except the locals now have a
| sizable middle class and knowledge economy, and there are
| high value industrial processes left behind: automotive,
| aerospace, scientific, etc.
|
| The whole world is growing up, and wealthy nations are
| paying for it (because they love low cost goods). It's a
| win-win situation.
|
| ([1] doesn't mean every nation shouldn't think defensively
| about its own supply chain for essential inputs and
| outputs.)
| upupandup wrote:
| They've already pulled this on Samsung but it has nowhere
| to go. Where else can it find tens of millions of young
| workers?
| usrusr wrote:
| No doubt about any of that, but China played a really tough
| game to become more than just a cheap workbench. All those
| forced joint ventures, and the immense discipline required to
| make those become more than just easy profit-share for some
| lucky ones who know the right people. They did a lot of
| things extremely well to get to where they are now. That
| won't be easy to replicate. Particularly when one of the
| partners knows that game so well. It could end as
| colonization 2.0.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Most of those tough rules emerged well after the boom in
| Chinese manufacturing. It's not required for achieving what
| they did.
| upupandup wrote:
| > hundreds of millions of people out of poverty
|
| This is false because majority of Chinese citizens do not
| make more than $1000 per year or something very low. The
| average GDP is something like $6000, which is far below its
| neighbours. Even the ones that do make more, while not in
| complete poverty, they are barely live due to expensive
| housing and cost of living.
| marricks wrote:
| > By and large, the factory work done by people in developing
| economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life
| and safety than the agricultural work that they would be doing
| without economic development.
|
| Do you have numbers on how it improved life of Chinese farmers
| compared to 100 years ago, 200?
|
| When the US went through its industrial revolution we went from
| people owning farms to basically being owned by the factories
| boss. Child labor was rampant so we're ridiculous working hours
| and blacksmiths and others who were put out of a job basically
| drank themselves to death.
|
| Someone none of that seems to ever happen in other countries
| and all we hear about is "how great of an opportunity it is for
| them to get to build iPhones" odd stuff
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| I think many of us would be more supportive of outsourcing
| manufacturing to developing countries if their government
| aligned more with Western ideals. The fact is many countries,
| like Vietnam, are still "developing" because they have
| authoritarian governments that have been oppressing their
| population to some extent keeping their labor cheap while
| stunting their economic potential.
|
| We see the problems with this situation right now with Russia
| and China, whether it's buying oil from Russia or manufacturing
| in China, we've given these countries enormous amounts of power
| and influence by essentially funding their regimes. As we can
| see with the situation in Ukraine and Taiwan these regimes are
| not our friends or allies, even though we have allowed
| ourselves to become attached at the hip to them economically.
| As a western consumer I would much rather see my money either
| stay in country or go to a country that is a political ally and
| shares more western political and economic ideals.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| Opression is necessary to development. Looking back for the
| cruelest opressions done by some nations towards American
| Indian, Asian, African in the early and haydays of industrial
| revolution.
|
| You are going to see opressions happening again and again in
| the future as well. It's just a natural process of society
| development.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Capitalism is one of the biggest eradicators of poverty. 1B of
| people in China was lifted from poverty because of it. And once
| it's done with one poor country, it starts taking care of the
| others :)
| CameronNemo wrote:
| .
| krrrh wrote:
| It's hard for me to understand how someone can hold this
| view, and it's hard to know where to start, but no. As
| capitalism has expanded it has dramatically reduced
| absolute poverty. It's not even close, and the change only
| got more dramatic when communism collapsed as an
| alternative.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-
| Sin...
| robin_reala wrote:
| I'm no great defender of capitalism, but feudalism did a
| great job at that a long time before capitalism.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Or any system where owners of property could extract
| profit by employing non-owners of property. Much of the
| strife in the later Roman Empire was caused by large
| property owners exploiting slaves and depriving non land
| owners (including many legionaries) of a chance of making
| an income. Said legionaries and other plebeians supported
| politicians with a policy of land reforms.
|
| Not to mention the poverty of the slaves themselves.
| hbn wrote:
| Similar to how modern medicine made 40 an early age to die
| extragood wrote:
| There's an interesting argument in 'Sapiens: A Brief
| History of Humankind' [1] that capitalism is primarily
| responsible for the Enlightenment period in Europe. By the
| same token it may also be associated with some of the worst
| aspects of (relatively) recent history, such as colonialism
| and the slave trade.
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens
| DowsingSpoon wrote:
| It's well documented that there were no poor people at all
| prior to the publishing of The Wealth of Nations in 1776.
| /s
| adolph wrote:
| Is it ironic that the capitalistic poverty lift solidified
| the CCP?
| mattigames wrote:
| Did it eradicated poverty in Burundi? South Sudan? Malawi?
| Pakistan? I can cherry pick examples too; means nothing, and
| what about the tankman? Was he lifted out of poverty? Or all
| the other victims of the goverment? Also China capitalism
| includes things like stealing tech secrets from the companies
| that manufacture there[0], is that part of the "ideal
| capitalism" you advocate for?
|
| [0] https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/14/news/economy/trump-
| china-tr...
| LtWorf wrote:
| Capitalism with a strong central government that regulates it
| tightly you mean.
| [deleted]
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| The China duality: It seems that China is a capitalist
| country when people want to discuss their achievements, and a
| communist country when they want to discuss their faults.
| relativ575 wrote:
| They are capitalism since private sector is allowed and
| encouraged. They are an authoritarian country as there is
| no democracy and there can be a single political party. Why
| is that so difficult to understand?
|
| They call their country communist because they can't afford
| to undermine the legacy of the communist party by admitting
| that they made huge mistakes in the past.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| China is dominated by state owned enterprises and many of
| the private investment is in joint ventures with local
| governmental authorities.
|
| People like to gloss over the more complex reality that
| is Chinas actual economic structure when it benefits
| their personal ideological agenda.
| alphabetting wrote:
| A ton of the achievement has to do with Western
| investments. For example, Apple spent $275 billion in the
| late 2010s to build up Chinese tech manufacturing
| capabilities. That's one company doing a 5X larger
| investment than the "historic" CHIPs bill signed by Biden
| this year.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Western FDI has definitely played a major role in China's
| growth, yes.
|
| Note that my comment doesn't call that into question
| though, only that the conversation around chinas success
| is almost always grossly oversimplified to suit
| ideological agendas.
| kube-system wrote:
| Well yeah, they _are_ both; China has a mixed economy.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| They are indeed.
|
| It is quite clear, however, that most analyses of their
| economic successes don't add that nuance and come to the
| predetermined conclusion that I outlined above: the
| success is due completely to adopting western capitalism,
| and the negatives are due to the elements that don't fit
| that mold.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's fairly clear which policies have contributed to
| their economic rise.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Shift to markets, stringent capital controls,
| consolidation of massive state owned enterprises,
| encouragement of joint ventures between Chinese
| companies, western companies, and the government, lack of
| stringent IP laws/rights.
|
| Some of the above is "capitalistic" and some of it is
| not. Commentators have been predicting China would
| continue to shift towards becoming more capitalist or
| fail for decades and they've been continuously proven
| wrong. China has developed a completely different model
| of development from the western consensus, but people
| still want to have their cake and eat it too.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, there are lots of reforms that contributed to their
| rise, but adopting elements of a market economy and
| engaging in open trade with the rest of the world were
| key elements. Reforming their centrally planned economy
| wouldn't have resulted in the same outcome without the
| those.
|
| But yes, I totally agree that you don't need to be 100%
| capitalist to benefit from having a market economy. Even
| the US's economy is ~15% public sector. Usually when
| multiple ideologies are competing, there's elements of
| truth all around.
| theonething wrote:
| It's (mostly) capitalist in terms of economy and communist
| in government/politics.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| It is not mostly capitalist.
|
| A system with the property rights that exist in China is
| a long cry from any reasonable definition of capitalism.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [deleted]
| supernova87a wrote:
| I'm interested to know to what extent this is just assembly of
| parts imported from China, or whether the real control over
| things like the M1 chip assembly, secure element, logic board,
| etc. are also moved to Vietnam? Seems like that's the secret
| sauce / real proprietary stuff that tells you whether the high
| value is moving too. (or maybe that is not even in China either)
|
| And do they have the surrounding parts + engineering ecosystems
| that is so touted as why China is _the_ place to get things
| built?
| wmf wrote:
| Apple Silicon is made in Taiwan.
| randall wrote:
| Wow. Is the geopolitical hedge there with Texas or something?
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Our Disaster Recovery Plan is still in the discovery stage
| pishpash wrote:
| It's almost certainly final assembly, and plugged into the
| supply chain next door.
| astrange wrote:
| The other parts aren't all made in China. The displays are
| made in Japan and Korea.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >Apple suppliers Luxshare Precision Industry and Foxconn
|
| lol this is a political move, they are just creating Vietnamese
| shell companies owned by their same Chinese suppliers to get some
| good PR.
| bergenty wrote:
| I think like 7% of iPhone 13s are also made in India and that
| number is supposed to grow so I think they're trying to hedge
| well.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| However they still actually make the products there.
|
| Last time I look, Apple was hiring a lot of HW engineers in
| Saigon. (Still no SW engineers, though :))
|
| Also, Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, not Chinese. (Setting
| aside the issue of "what is China, really".)
| rjzzleep wrote:
| It's not a political move. Vietnamese manufacturing is cheaper
| than Chinese. Chinese labour has gotten expensive over time.
|
| EDIT: politics are definitely a welcome side effect, but not
| the main reason
| alphabetting wrote:
| Why would Apple decide to build in Vietnam after secretly
| committing $275B to advance Chinese manufacturing? Western
| political heat seems most logical.
| scarface74 wrote:
| How does Apple "secretly" commit to spending $275B? It
| couldn't be too much of a secret if random HN posters know
| about it.
| alphabetting wrote:
| it was secret for years until The Information reported
| it.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/report-apple-ceo-
| tim...
| mr_toad wrote:
| Most businesses deals are secret by default. All my
| contracts have confidentiality clauses. The only reason
| to make a deal non-secret is PR.
| alphabetting wrote:
| >Most businesses deals are secret by default. All my
| contracts have confidentiality clauses.
|
| Not true for investments in the hundreds of billions.
|
| >The only reason to make a deal non-secret is PR.
|
| This deal was kept secret for PR reasons.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Because the trade war happened and we just had two years of
| supply chain disruptions.
| thetinguy wrote:
| Because 0 Covid policies are leading to unpredictable and
| extended delays.
| newsclues wrote:
| Also Covid-19 lockdowns, and diversified factories is making
| sense.
| baybal2 wrote:
| jollybean wrote:
| Since the Russia-Ukraine war broke out politics is now a
| primary driver.
|
| China has indicated that it is 100% going to retake Taiwan.
| Their threat is credible. There were indications it would be
| soon.
|
| War is a 'new reality' again and we can see the consequences
| of it.
|
| If you have geopolitical liabilities and you have 10 year
| strategic planning, then you calculate the odds of 'major
| conflict' the diversifying away from China is a priority.
|
| Anyone not divesting from China right now is going to get
| rocked.
|
| Not fully divested but I mean the critical things. We have to
| plan for China arm of the business dissapeaering overnight.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Your little rant seems to have missed that these companies
| are still owned by Foxxconn and Luxshare. And while
| Foxxconn may be Taiwanese both the company and the owner
| are on very very friendly terms with China, which is
| unlikely to change.
|
| The world didn't start with 2022 Ukraine(even the Ukraine
| conflict didn't magically begin in 2022), most of these
| conflicts started long before Ukraine. The Indian foreign
| minister also tried to remind the world that it's foolish
| to try to make everything about Ukraine(see minute 2:30)
| and yet people don't seem to want to understand the
| viewpoints of the other 5 billion[1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2EdQD_Eag0
| [deleted]
| foepys wrote:
| It's probably not even for good PR. As far as I know China has
| become quite more expensive for manufacturing, so companies
| switch to other countries like India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and
| Vietnam.
| mstudio wrote:
| Is this a fact (or have other co's done this)? I'm genuinely
| curious. I assume they'd hire Vietnamese employees though.
| jsnk wrote:
| It's a start. What other reasonable moves do you expect to
| reduce Chinese manufacturing dependency? At Apple scale, you
| can only make such large transition over multiple years.
|
| Vietnam is a capable developing country that may do a lot
| manufacturing in the future. Samsung has been working with
| Vietnamese subsidiaries for a while now, so move by Apple is
| already proven to be viable.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| I don't really see what the problem is with offshoring. If other
| people elsewhere want to work for cheaper, then it's fair
| competition. It's not like protectionism would work long term
| anyways. And in this particular case, Vietnam is more aligned
| with the US than China, geopolitically, so this makes a lot of
| sense.
| qaq wrote:
| Problem with offshoring of high tech is that a big chunk of US
| economy is on the hook to a few authoritarian governments not
| really aligned with US or the west.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Because you slowly shift your economy out from underneath you
| and effectively give it away. In the process you lose the
| ability to have any of these core competencies yourself.
|
| In the end what's the point of having cheaper products if no
| one has a job to buy them.
| pishpash wrote:
| But they don't need jobs to buy them, they get dollars
| printed for them to buy them. If one day the dollar can't be
| printed without tanking itself, they will also have the jobs
| that allow them to buy the products.
| sfvegandude wrote:
| > In the process you lose the ability to have any of these
| core competencies yourself.
|
| Nonsense. The US could obtain the core competencies
| themselves and indeed will as globalization winds down.
|
| People will never stop coming to the US for opportunity.
| willcipriano wrote:
| We offshore, but only the pleb stuff. God forbid you want to
| get a degree in a foreign country, or import medicine, or a
| doctor.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| Usually nobody has problems with offshoring unless it's their
| job that's being offshored.
| president wrote:
| Nobody does until it affects them personally or unless they
| have some compassion for others in their country who don't have
| the same opportunities and skillset as you. Many of the drugged
| out people on the street without homes or a future could have
| been hard working factory workers but wealthy people thought it
| would be better to save a few bucks and boost their own
| paychecks by offshoring.
| chaosbutters314 wrote:
| 2 words: national security. as the world's police and adult, we
| have to be self sufficient in food, tech, defense, resources,
| etc
| scarface74 wrote:
| And good luck with that with China holding so much of our
| debt. Military leaders in the US for decades has been warning
| politicians that our debt is one of our biggest threats.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Do you mind sharing an example of military leaders in the
| US warning about our foreign debt being one of our biggest
| threats?
| scarface74 wrote:
| https://brooks.house.gov/media-center/news-
| releases/after-mo...
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thanks for that link! I think it's reasonable to argue
| that fiscal responsibility is related to national
| security. That being said, I don't know what this has to
| do with China holding any part of the national debt?
| kelnos wrote:
| China holds 3.2% of the US's outstanding debt[0]. I'm not
| particularly worried about that angle. Even if China owned
| an order of magnitude more, what practical benefits would
| that confer?
|
| [0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080615/
| china...
| r00fus wrote:
| The number one holder of US debt is not China. It's US
| investors and own citizens from Social Security
| "entitlements" (misnomer: they are fully funded by our
| mandatory contributions).
|
| https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-
| guide/debt/...
| dan-robertson wrote:
| China holds US debt denominated in dollars, which is
| different from eg holding Sri Lankan debt denominated in
| dollars. In the US case, the government can issue more
| treasuries to cover payments or if things are dire they can
| just print more dollars. Sri Lanka can't make new dollars
| so they need to get them through trade and if they have an
| imbalance there it can be very hard.
|
| I think it isn't really very relevant to think about China
| holding US government debt because it isn't like they will
| call up the bailiffs or otherwise be able to exercise
| control over the US because of that debt. I think it would
| be basically equivalent to say that China holds US dollars
| which doesn't feel particularly concerning to me.
| siquick wrote:
| > As the world's police and adult
|
| I can't tell if this is parody or not
| nick9847 wrote:
| And the products will be more overpriced than ever.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Not if you make money using them
| olyjohn wrote:
| I have a $20,000 MacBook Pro to sell you. You can use it to
| make money.
| brailsafe wrote:
| smart
| Rackedup wrote:
| And ads are coming....
| threeseed wrote:
| Ads have been present on the App Store, News+ etc for years
| now.
| Rackedup wrote:
| With latest news, I was under the impression that they are
| adding a bunch more ads: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/new
| sletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
| gleenn wrote:
| How is no one mentioning that China is threatening Taiwan. If the
| US ends up in a war with China, suddenly most Apple products
| would have serious operations problems if not being shut off
| completely. Cheap labor isn't a bad reason, but this is also a
| hedge against the heating politics between the West and both
| Russia and China.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And how does that help when raw materials still need to come
| from China and many of the components?
| [deleted]
| thankful69 wrote:
| Vietnam is also a communist (which we invaded and got badly
| defeated btw), dictatorship loving (Cuba, Venezuela, ....)
| country, whatever you see in China, you also see in Vietnam,
| media isn't just as vicious with Vietnam. In the other hand,
| Vietnam have a bright future, they have developed significantly
| in the last decade, I wish them well.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| If the US goes to war with China, I can imagine Apples supply
| chain problems won't be very high on our priority lists...
| threeseed wrote:
| Also based on recent analysis many countries e.g. China, South
| Korea have increased exports to Russia including dual use
| technologies which are prohibited under recent sanctions.
|
| This combined with upcoming war games involving China and
| Russia shows clearly where their allegiances lie.
|
| So the risk of China being economically punished is not
| insignificant and Apple is very likely to be caught in the
| cross-fire if it does happen.
| fleddr wrote:
| I would be interested in that analysis, as I've read the
| exact opposite. China will be the sole supplier of many goods
| for Russians as they have nowhere else to go, but
| simultaneously China is careful not to overstep bounds as it
| does not want to upset the US, a trade partner about 10 times
| more important than Russia. It also stopped/delayed many
| promised infra investments in Russia.
|
| As for allegiances, China has none. Not with anybody. China
| has no moralistic or principal allies. It simply does what is
| best for China, and happily plays all sides all at once.
| kelnos wrote:
| I have a hard time blaming Southe Korea here. Russia and
| China are their literal neighbors. If China decided to invade
| SK, their relationship with the US wouldn't save them.
|
| Russia wouldn't have quite as much military success there
| right now (given their preoccupation in Ukraine), but it
| makes sense to keep them happy.
| LtWorf wrote:
| China is not threatening Taiwan... USA has once again decided
| to raise heat because having realised that all the computers
| are made outside of USA.
| kcb wrote:
| Yeah and Russia was not preparing to invade Ukraine.
| noselasd wrote:
| All the recent chinese military exercises and direct threats
| from chinese news outlets and military leaders are not ..
| threatening ?
| president wrote:
| They have been threatening the island by flying military
| aircraft across the Taiwan air defense almost daily for the
| past year and have now surrounded the island and fired
| missiles over the island in a show of intimidation. What
| definition of "threatening" are you using?
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