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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

China appears to be ensuring that their economy continues to grow rapidly with the Belt and Road initiative. By some measures they have already passed the United States.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-10-18/who-ha...

At some point soon, shouldn't the ability to grow the economy 6-10% a year become impossible?

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The real growth rate is never the same as the official published rate. It was said last year China only grew less than 2%.

I said China grew negatively for years and the people are still living in caves

Just curios, do you think the earth is flat?

I have a feeling if some production switches to India it might put a damper on Chinas plans. That would slow their growth a lot.

I am not going to argue if the Trump tariffs on China are good or bad. But they might force some companies to explore alternative manufactuing facilities with countries friendlier to the US. Apple looking at india as a possible move and some other large companies i have seen articles that are exploring the possibiliy.

This is the problem with being dependant on other countries. China desperately needs exports to sustain their growth as a nation. U.S. needs China because we are use to overbuying cheap goods, however it goes back to supply and demand, if their are other suppliers it places the entity on the demand side in a much safer place. Just my opinion, i am not an economics guy so i am probably wrong.

I think if India actually made sense as a place for western companies to invest in and build factories, they would have done it long before now.

You could have said the same thing about China 50 years ago. Places aren’t appropriate for investment until they are, and then the change that can take place is staggering.

I agree, the disdain China has for the US and the Tiawan issues and other factors are causing this administration to do some crazy things (it will probably change in 2 years when elections are held again in the U.S.). I mean we (U.S. citizens) are being advised not to travel to China for risk of being detained and prevented from leaving the country (I mean they execute drug traffickers from Canada, pretty harsh).

I didnt think someone as big as apple would consider moving production (and they might not). But given the chilly relations of our two countries and the less chilly relations we have with India it is not to hard to imagine things changing.

I guess we will see in the coming months, i can't do anything, i am just along for the ride.

We have pretty good relations with India, yes, but then why haven't western countries been building factories there for the last couple decades? I think it's because, despite the good relations and India's democratic government (as opposed to China's authoritarian one), India has severe internal problems that make it unattractive as a location for factories. India has long had an extremely bad problem with corruption, namely. You can't get anything done there without a bribe.

India has a lot of built-in hostility to overseas investment, especially in manufacturing. The reason software took off before anything else is largely because it avoided that hostility (and even then, challenges remain like income on patents).

Even saying our relations with India are better than China is a bit misleading. The USA always backed Pakistan in any of their wars, while India was always the canonical third-world country that prefers Migs to F16s.

China did some crazy things during Xi. Like South China Sea military bases to bully other states, recent reactions against Taiwan etc. I would not fully blame your current administration since China probably had it coming.

And not Apple, but it's supplier Foxconn is shifting production to India.

That's why Made in China 2025 exists. China is trying to transition its manufacturing sector to focus on high tech, high valuef products. Shoddy growth strategies (e.g. IP theft and forced technology transfers) aside, it's a sound plan to avoid falling into the middle income trap.

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