> Something about having the whole supply chain in one place

I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like giant assembly lines. The companies that process the raw materials are located mostly inland, then the companies that form those raw materials into metal and plastic stock are next door, and then the companies that take that stock and make components are next door to them, and the companies that input those components and output subassemblies are next door to them, and so on all the way down to the harbor where the companies that produce finished products output directly onto the loading docks where the ships await.

The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation. How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the ocean?

This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

Sorry, but this sounds more like a myth, or at least heavily exaggerated. Similar to how Japan often gets romanticized.

Organizing the entire chain geographically at the scale you described (inter-city) doesn't bring huge cost advantages by itself. In China labor has historically been cheap, so the transport cost between regions was never the dominant factor anyway.

Most industrial clusters in China formed organically over time just like the rest of the world. Aside from some exceptions like mining, there isn't some master plan laying out entire cities as linear supply chains to the ocean It's not SimCity.

One thing you're right about is that there is less bureaucratic friction or 'lawyers' in the way when it comes to economic development. For the former, it's because economic growth is THE metric for the government, especially at the local level, so they do whatever it takes to make it happen. For the latter, it's because… well, in China no one sues the government, period. I'm not sure it's a good thing.

Disclaimer: I'm Chinese living in China.

So, there’s a decent amount of electronics manufacturing in Anhui Province which is pretty far from the well-known hub of Shenzhen. Anhui is generally more known for their mining industry.

So, to your query, maybe somewhat? But not strictly.

> I can't find the source but I thought I read somewhere that the major manufacturing cities in China are all geographically laid out like giant assembly lines.

... like Factorio, just in real life.

> The US can't even zone a residential neighborhood without lawyers and special interests jamming things up for decades through endless impact studies and litigation.

A lot of that is to prevent our cities from looking like China did before they haphazardly cleaned up shop before the Olympic Games. Remember all the smog alerts? Athletes being afraid the smog and pollution would impact their performance?

> How is it going to compete with a country that can lay out entire cities, organizing the value chain geographically towards the ocean?

There's a tool for that, it's called tariffs - basically, make it uncompetitive for manufacturing moving off to a country that systematically undercuts pricing even at the cost of its environment.

Unfortunately, the current administration doesn't even have the concepts of a plan on what they want to achieve with tariffs. It's mind boggling to watch.

In Houston there is no zoning.

Apple as a company that does not pay taxes should at least invest in the country they are located in. *Designed in Cupertino, Taxes paid no where, profit leveraged in the US