China Manufacturing

High speed trains in China are phenomenal. I could sit by the window for hours watching the passing landscape. They do not run on ground. They either soar high on concrete bridges and piers or pierce through tunnels. It is thousands of kilometers of piers and tunnels. And the landscape mostly flips from agricultural fields to endless seas of industrial buildings - factories.

It is totally unlike anywhere else. When the train enters an industrial zone, there are thousands and thousands factories. It probably takes such a train ride to understand the hypothetical effort of moving manufacturing to the West.

The factories form a unique and super efficient industrial supply chain. It is not about the iPhone. While a flagship symbol of Western dominance, we could do without iPhones. But probably we could not do without lights, linen, pots, just about every daily used item is made in China. And then there are basic components to make them: wires, bolts, glue, paint. And then the raw materials.

More than 70% of goods on Amazon are made in China. 90% electronics, 80% toys, 80% home/kitchen, 70% apparel.

Then there is one other ingredient: energy. Electricity generation (and transmission) has increased in China by 400% since 2000. That includes plants but also transmission lines, substations (huge transformers) and the grid management systems.

China is a one huge factory for the World.

And this factory does not operate 40 hours a week. On average smaller factories run close to 80 hours a week while the big ones operate non-stop. In other words, the industrial base has a huge workforce, lots of people and each and everyone working twice as most people in the Western hemisphere. Hard working, efficient, skilled and in high numbers. Yes there are robots too. Actually the rise of robots is what keeps China manufacturing moving and increasing the output while bringing costs down.

The robots too are made in China. The software that orchestrates them is made in China. And of course what makes this trend possible is the robots are serviced locally.

Moving that all to become local is an impossible task. It would take a couple dozen years and in the end the local manufacturing would still be less efficient and more costly. People say that China stole our jobs. Actually the Western companies shipped the jobs to China (and other Asian countries) for a profit. That is why - in the end - no investor would back up a company plan to bring back manufacturing from China. 

Probably the only possible way to do this is to cut down consumption. While I would welcome such trend a lot, that would mean something close to a global cataclysm, as the Western civilization, build on the premise of continuously increasing consumption, would collapse.