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Comment by christkv | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious but would not the move to automated factories in the long term negate any cost benefit of making it in China and move the emphasis to cost of transportation, energy and materials ?

With the rapid increase of wages in china and move towards more automation there if automation is bad for the west imagine the havoc it will cause in china.

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When Chinese labor becomes too expensive, (some of) it will be outsourced to Africa. Chinese economy seems to be in pretty good shape for this, but political instability could ruin it.

Jobs moved to China are likely to be lost forever. Automation is still far from autonomous: some human interaction is required.

Factory automation was a trend long before China become "capitalist". If other costs are more important for some indistry, they wouldn't move to China in the first place. Besides, for most production transportation costs using container ships are neglible.

That's a theory I see a lot of people having but I'm not sure it will happen. Africa does not have the stable governance of Asia nor the infrastructure to support the rapid industrialization that China went through.

When it comes to transportation cost it would depend on oil prices going forward.

I would guess that China will provide infrastructure to some african countries in exchange for raw materials. Political stability will also improve as China will support the regimes regardless of lack of democracy.

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