Apple has started production of iPhone SE in India

The Chinese manufacturing behemoth is really a thing to behold and respect.

> It's impossible to imagine this ever happening in India.

It was impossible to image that in China also till a few years ago.

Jagadish Bhagwati of Columbia has a ton to say about how India screwed up on trade. Basically there are many trade-unfriendly laws dating back to 60s and 70s which are hard and slow to undo because they have to be done via parliamentary procedures (kinda how Congressional gridlock makes lawmaking slow in the US). Here's a good interview of his with Russ Roberts on Econtalk: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/08/bhagwati_on_ind.htm...

Edit: this is in contrast to China where laws are made by diktats.

India missed the boat on manufacturing but did good on service industry because the government did not have a way to control the flow of information. We say this in India - we flourish in spite of our government. While attitudes have changed (with both major national parties), protectionism still runs rampant for fear of losing their voter base. All said and done, there is hope that these restrictions combined with incentives could potentially kick start manufacturing in India - at least to the extent of sustaining domestic demand.

Actually this is the perfect example of why protectionism doesn't work.

Manufacturing is such an iconic aspect of the economy that every government or policy maker loves to talk about it and show progress in it. India has unnecessary incentives put in place for manufacturing and Apple is taking advantage of it. But overall it's a bad deal for India.

benefit' in this concept, is typically defined solely in terms of net short term financial impact to the parties involved

things like self sufficiency, long-term strategic growth planning, etc. are not factored in.

also:

labor costs are huge in these scenarios.. if indian factory workers were paid what US auto workers are/were paid, I doubt apple would be taking the same strategy.

same could be said for indian mfg in general and also china..

>but China and now this feel like counterexamples.

You don't need to make 30% of something to sell it Chinese retail stores, so I don't think the two are comparable. India also has strict employment laws where once a company reaches a trivial size, it is illegal to fire anyone. The firing is then done by via government petition and you better have an airtight case to do so. So a lot of companies don't scale past x employees to avoid all the added regulation that would hurt them. That's a brake on their economy.

China is almost the opposite of this. They have so few rules and regulations that western product manufacturing moved there to enjoy the low prices. This had a trickle down effect locally. All those jobs and cheap stuff meant that they could ride the coattails of these behemoth Western economies looking for the lowest cost of manufacture. Then the Chinese slowly turned that momentum into their own manufacturing with their own brands and added token protectionism at best to keep the Westerners at arm length, but not enough to chase them away like Brazil and India do with their strict protectionism.

These two countries couldn't be more different. China has a $11T GDP while India has merely has $2T, even with similar populaions. China has literally 5x the economy India has due to market liberalization, low regulations, and embracing the world economy.

because it's a lie

India setup the "protectionist" license raj to protect a few reigning industrial houses for "nationalistic" purposes [1]. The predatory state made it difficult not only for offshore companies, but practically impossible for domestic upstarts (without political arm-wringing). No doubt, it protected the folk it was meant to protect. In a "history-repeats-itself" moment Indian unicorns like Ola/Flipkart are seeking similar "nationalistic" laws today, seeking "protection" from "foreign capital" when it comes via Amazon and Uber - but not via VCs investing in Indian startups. Of course, all this was dressed up in "nationalistic" and "socialistic" costumes, with the media playing the tune.

China on the other hand went full Leninism and destroyed the elite (which TBH might have been more suited in India's case after Independence), so when Deng Xiaoping opened up, there were few "special interest groups" to guide things in their favor. Things today are different. China appears to me to be increasingly taking the old (crony-)capitalist route (is there any other ?). China does exactly what Ola/Flipkart want. Let's be clear as to who this benefits.

One moral is that systems can't compensate for a systematic destruction of social ethics. The other probably is to not fall into the word trap. Things meaning vastly different things are "PR-ed" with similar names to attain semantic advantages over the plebs.

[1]. Amusingly, many of these houses were built in collusion with the British Empire, and some even had their origins in the Opium trade with the Qing.

Yes, it is amazing what near-slave labor can achieve, and how glowingly executives will feel about their work.

If I understand your question correctly, submissions have up-vote and flag. They don't have down-vote.