I think Western people still call this situation “outsourcing” when in reality what is happening is that China is better at manufacturing than everyone else, and they’re starting to be better than everyone else at design and engineering, too.

When we buy software from Silicon Valley or a nice Mercedes Benz from Germany we don’t use this same language “outsourcing.”

Colloquially, outsourcing implies low quality or cheap price. No, what’s happening here is that China makes the best products in numerous categories and we are choosing to import them, because the best products are the most desirable.

The west is interested in funneling most of the money to the top no matter what for the last 60 years that has been the drum beat/cry It can’t be done. It can’t be done.

In America, there is one fast food place that does it differently than everyone in the market they don’t franchise and they don’t lease/rent.

They own everything as they expand (the land and the building), which means it’s a little bit slower when you expand, but they don’t care but they are very profitable.

The owner probably gets a call every other week from large equity companies trying to sell them on doing it like everybody else and their pitch they can make you a worldwide company if you just let them in to f you.

Well at this point they are probably the only country in the world that can produce a car end to end starting from the raw iron ore and other elements up to the chips and software that runs on them (I’m sure they will still need to import some small stuff probably like Rhodium or Iridium maybe), who is going to compete with that? Everything done in country, no tariffs at all throughout the entire production cycle.

That said some of these industry especially metallurgical ones will never return to Europe or US as they basically destroy and pollute the environment on a large scale, in China that still seems acceptable but also might change promoting them to outsource to other countries which they already do in some areas I think.

Fair point. Outsourcing was not the right word to use, China today makes products over all quality ranges and almost always they are cheaper than any other alternative. “Giving away” would be a better word.

I think it’s a matter of perceptions catching up to reality. 15 years ago China was definitely still ripping off american products down to the english silk screening.

China didn't get that way by magic. They ran the same playbook that allowed Alexander Hamilton to snatch manufacturing from Great Britain to the US, and the US gave up manufacturing for the same reason the UK gave up manufacturing (suppression of labor interests).

It will be interesting to see what China does. They aren't ideologically committed to exclusively serving the interests of the wealthy, but they still have lots of rich people in the (ahem) Communist Party, so who knows.

It's manufactured in Taiwan.