At what scale? I pay roughly $3/hr for welding in china.
This means more that cost of inputs (materials, transport of them, etc.) for hardware will go down in the US, while at the same time companies are getting more efficient per worker - reducing our exposure to foreign cheap labor.
Re: Welding - We're actually seeing a lot of advances in automated welding setup, etc. that will allow robots in the US to compete with Chinese welders.
Automation keeps getting cheaper and better, too.
But I could assume that the welding is done in Shenzhen (maybe GP chips in where he sources welding at 3$/h?).
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country...
That hourly rate wouldn't even covering rent of an 1-bedroom apt outside of centre.
* wedding gift
* "business" expense that you did out of your pocket (take your co-workers to lunch, buying gift for your clients)
* gifts (giving red envelopes during Chinese New Year, friend / elder birthday)
* rent
* personal saving
* family support (especially supporting your parents)
* medical expense (for a lot of people they have to pay before they can see a doctor)
Here is an article http://business.sohu.com/20131210/n391561808.shtml. Many people can only afford a tiny room today in the city and this depressing phenomenon is coined "蝸居" (snail house, about 10 square feet, and sometimes less, or sharing that tiny space with two or more people), and has been televised and documented multiple times (e.g. a TV drama called 蝸居 was made a couple years ago).
If you are a blue collar working at a city far away from your hometown, you have to go back to your hometown at least once a year (during new year break), and usually it is expected that you have to get a lot of gifts from the city for your family and your neighbors (to thank your neighbors for helping your family / keeping an eye on your family in your absence).
You can almost say the Chinese culture is all about showing gratitude with gifts, this is why e-commerce is such a big deal in China (also why foreign brands like Apple can make so much money in China ;-))
I am asking about these two specifically because they make the biggest difference between the "western" culture and the Chinese culture. The other items on your list also appear in the lives of the citizens of many European/European based countries.
Costs in the large Chinese cities (which includes Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen) has been steadily increasing over the past couple decades. It can still be seen as cheaper to live depending on what you compare it to (e.g. SF) but to give a point of reference, Shenzhen is on par with Berlin in terms of cost of living (http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/shenzhen...). Shanghai is actually more expensive than Berlin too, Beijing is slightly cheaper.
I couldn't have comfortably lived in Shanghai back in 2005 with 3,000 RMB, and I'm extremely frugal (I don't drink, don't smoke, don't go out and my main hobbies include working out and reading).
You're not offering any constructive feedback while criticizing from your pedestal of inaction. I assume you used a throwaway because you didn't want to attribute that to your personal identity.
Billions of Chinese were lifted from poverty by American globalization, granted at the detriment of American jobs. However it forced American jobs to be more information focused. And if you're Chinese you should understand that. If you're American you can be proud you helped lift a country from the third world into the second.
edit: This is an honest question.
They are not actually communist; they are an authoritarian state controlling a capitalist economy. They started down that path in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaopeng.
Before that, the state did a very poor job caring for its citizens. Millions died of starvation, persecution, and other ills. Look up the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, two government programs, as examples.
After that, probably never in the history of humanity have so many in a time and place escaped poverty as those who have in China. However, the country is so large that there are still many that are very poor.
But back in real life, while $3/hr may not be a lot compared to what some folks make, it's $3/hr more than someone making $0/hr makes, and it's triple what someone making $1/hr makes, and indeed a full 50% raise for anyone making $2/hr.
If I could wave a wand and give everyone who currently makes 0, 1 or 2/hr the skill set and the opportunity to suddenly make $3/hr, I'd be happy to do it. And the billions of people (hundreds of millions maybe?) who suddenly got (in their terms) a huge raise would be pretty happy about it too.
It is true that we should care about conditions in factories such as these and work to improve them. It's also true that if you insisted that Chinese workers get paid what American workers would, there would have been almost no factories and the entire country would still be in desolate poverty. Yes if there were no factories then probably the environment would be in a better condition.
It's a very complex situation. Just picking one angle to it and insisting that angle holds the whole truth does not help anyone.
Do leaders (political & economic) in non-western countries ever deserve any responsibility for their countries overall well-being?
It's an issue that China has been criticized for a very long time over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/world/asia/man-details-ris...
or even
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-tech-factories-turn-to-st...
This isn't a "well suck it up because at least you're getting paid /something/" issue. Chinese workers can still be beneficial to their country and the world while making a decent wage and without being abused.
If it weren't for American capital, and the American consumer, China would have developed drastically slower (if at all). China's GDP per capita in 1994 was ~$480. That's ~45 years after the Mao revolution.
There was no alternative than to pay them cheap wages to start. If you paid them 'first world' wages, nobody would have set up manufacturing in China to begin with; those manufacturers would have kept that manufacturing domestically or sought out another cheaper source. The sole reason China boomed the last 20 years is that they had 250 million low-wage workers available and willing to do low-cost manufacturing.
If we're talking exploitation, the primary exploiters of cheap Chinese labor, are the 200 Chinese billionaires that have gotten rich off of leveraging their own impoverished workers - they own all the factories, the real estate, et al. China's wealth inequality puts every other country to shame.
There is a difference between being successful financially and being able to sleep well at night.
What is actually happening is good for them, and the majority of them will not side with you or even care how you sleep at night. There will always be casualties and exploitation of workers in China, but that's more due to corruption than it is to systematic underpayment of Chinese workers.
The Chinese factory workers are choosing from the options provided. From their perspective they've been given a better option. From a western first world perspective, people here can't seem to relate to how $3/hr could possibly be a better option, but it is. Over here we have the benefit of minimum wage, welfare, higher standard of living, etc. Unfortunately it is a very egocentric viewpoint to not think of this from the perspective of an actual factory worker.
American business is a significant reason China was so poor to start with. To understand China, I recommend reading what is meant by the 'century of humiliation'.
> There was no alternative than to pay them cheap wages to start.
They can pay less than American-level wages, and yet still pay a living wage and provide safe, reasonable working conditions.
> the primary exploiters of cheap Chinese labor, are the 200 Chinese billionaires
That someone else does wrong doesn't justify doing it yourself. Otherwise, everyone's standard is whatever the worst do.
I've always found that to be the absolute shittiest of rebuttals, given by those who have absolutely no point whatsoever. This person is not "giving" anyone a job; they are not being seeing a group of people and saying, "Hmmm, they look like they could use some work. I will create some and give it to them." No. This person needed some work done, and they were offering work. That's it. The person is not a "job creator"; those things don't exist.
"If you're American you can be proud you helped lift a country from the third world into the second."
And do we get to be proud of the complete and utter skull fucking the Chinese environment has taken as a result of that?
I had a bunch of money. I could have kept it locked in a box somewhere. Instead I decided to pay a bunch of people to help make something cool. Yes, that's a transaction, but for my part, I didn't have to engage in it. (In fact some days I kind of regret it, given all the garbage one has to put up with when running a company.) I could have kept the money locked in a box and felt happy that I feel rich. Or something.
No they don't. There are people who want work done, and people who provide that work. That's it. You're not "creating jobs" simply because you feel like you want to create jobs. You have decided that getting the work done will benefit you more than not having it done. That's it.
If "I have money, and I have a thing I am willing to exchange it for that requires someone else to do work" makes you a job creator, everyone who purchases anything in the economy is a job creator.
Business owners factor costs into their strategies. They/we don't just have a bunch of jobs, and then go looking for people to fill them. China's cheap labor force has made possible products that wouldn't exist otherwise.
Basically there are people there that need to make a living wage to pay for food, medicine, education, etc. The reality is without the $X/hr jobs they have no other options or worse options.
An external actor like you, me, or a business can sit around talking about how shit it is, or go in and offer something at least slightly better. You're basically trashing the people who decide to take any action at all (giving them a low paying job). If the action isn't taken, they go back to their worse option. From your perspective you are failing to empathize with the Chinese because you don't see their other crappier options or can't imagine that they could possibly have crappier options.
No, they were lifted from poverty by their own hard work.