Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The current average monthly salary in China is $3000-$4000 US dollars. This is not about cheap labour anymore but simple economies of scale.

The whole talk about subsidies is pure smoke screen. US automakers have received a lot more subsidies than their Chinese counterparts. The top chinese firm receiving government subsidies, CATL, got ~$500M USD last year. BYD is said to have received $3.5 billion in total in its lifetime. In the meantime, the US government offered $12B just last year for automakers to start making more EVs, and Ford is reported to have received a total of $33B in loans, bailouts and tax rebates.

In any case, if you could put down $3.5B and get a BYD out, everyone would be doing it, reality is a bit more complex than that.

??? The average BYD line autoworker earns $640 to $840 USD a month, but that require overtime; 1.5x pay on weekdays and 2x pay on weekends.

BYD Wuxi workers went on strike in 2021 because BYD was trying to restructure to eliminate overtime, which would effectively drop the workers wage to under $400 USD a month.

Which is about the same a factory worker in Mexico, building the Ford Mach-E, makes. I imagine the purchasing power in China will be a lot higher.

China currently has multiple times higher costs than countries like Vietnam. Cheap labour is not a major factor anymore.

> The current average monthly salary in China is $3000-$4000 US dollars.

Source, please. I do not believe this.

Yeah doesn’t look true, median is more like $800 for those in private companies.

https://finance.sina.cn/2024-05-19/detail-inavuhsp2237661.d....

That report says averages are $1381/month (120k RMB/year) for "non-private" employees, $800 for private (?), $3000/month in IT, $1500/month in mining. You happened to pick the lowest number.

There seem to be wildly different numbers reported online, but from a more thorough search it looks like the national median is indeed around ~$1400, while the 3k-4k range I mentioned is specifically for the Shangai area.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com