Archive for the 'China' Category

Note to Obama: Apple Products—and Any Others for that Matter–Will Be Built in the U.S. when U.S. Workers Own and Run the Factories that Build Them

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

By CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER
SolidarityEconomy.net via New York Times

Jan. 21, 2012 - When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.

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Learning from China Is the Better Path

by @ Wednesday, November 9th, 2011. Tags: , ,
Filed under China, Energy, Green Energy, Green Industry, Technology

Solar: Smart Policies, not Trade War

By Adam Browning and Jigar Shah
SolidarityEconomy.net via Politico.com

Nov 8, 2011 - The German company SolarWorld recently filed a trade complaint against China. The claim: China’s government has unfairly supported its domestic solar industry, and the U.S. solar industry can’t compete.

If there’s wrongdoing afoot, it should be addressed. But it is important to remember the big picture—the solar industry exists in a globalized market, and solar’s market growth depends on continuing to bring down costs. A trade war with China could close off America’s $1.9 billion net solar exports, raise prices for local solar markets (reducing U.S. solar demand) and hurt consumers and the more than 5,000 U.S. companies that support solar installation.

Countries around the world have cumulatively invested tens of billions of dollars in solar energy over the last five years — a tremendous increase over the previous decade. That’s true of China — just as it’s true of Spain, Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S. This investment has paid off in spades — global manufacturing capacity has soared. In the United States, solar is the fastest growing energy source.

It’s true that the U.S. share of solar investment lags behind China’s. Sadly, Uncle Sam’s investment in solar also falls far short of its support for fossil energy resources — which have a century-long history of continuing federal support. U.S. government subsidies for nuclear, oil, coal, gas and fossil fuels add up over $380 billion over the next five years, according to the Green Scissors report. Historically, fossil fuels receive annually about 13 times more than incentives going to all renewables, according to a recent report by DBL Investors.

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Worker Cooperatives, Chinese Style

by @ Tuesday, July 12th, 2011. Filed under China, Socialism

Huaxi Coop: Sharing the Wealth and

Living Large in a Tiny Chinese Village

By MICHAEL WINES

SolidarityEconomy.net via New York times
Published: July 11, 2011

HUAXI, China — Ask not why the citizens of this village of 2,000, a few hours by car northwest of Shanghai, have built a 74-story skyscraper next to their prim town square. Everybody in China knows the answer: it is another step in their plan to create the communist utopia envisioned by Mao. The skyscraper will include a five-star hotel, upscale shopping mall, revolving restaurant and five life-size statues of a water buffalo, Huaxi’s symbol.

The utopia part certainly seems plausible. Whether Mao would have approved is a bit more in doubt.

Huaxi’s so-called New Village in the Sky — at 1,076 feet, a bit taller than the Chrysler Building in Manhattan — is getting finishing touches this summer in preparation for an October opening. Among other attractions, it will have a five-star hotel, a gold-leaf-embellished concert hall, an upscale shopping mall and what is billed as Asia’s largest revolving restaurant. Also, it will have five life-size statues of a water buffalo, Huaxi’s symbol, on every 12th floor or so.

That this half-billion-dollar edifice is a good 40-minute drive from a city of any size is part of the plan. For though not many foreigners have heard of Huaxi, Chinese far and wide know it as the socialist collective that works — the village where public ownership of the means of production has not just made everyone equal, but rich, too.

Two million tourists come annually to view the Huaxi marvel, no small number of them officials from other villages who yearn to know how Huaxi did it. The enormous skyscraper, topped with a gigantic gold sphere, will never win architectural awards. But it will add to Huaxi’s allure, the village fathers confidently predict — and soak up tourist money as well.

“We call it the three-increase building,” said Wu Renbao, 84, the town’s revered patriarch, meaning that it will increase Huaxi’s acreage (by half), increase its work force (by 3,000) and, hardly least of all, increase its wealth.

If he is right, all 2,000 villagers will get a little richer. They all own a piece of the building — just as they own the town’s steel mill, textile factory, greenhouse complex, ocean shipping company and other ventures. That is Huaxi’s carefully curated narrative: by rigidly adhering to socialism with Chinese characteristics, the citizens of this little village have created an oasis of prosperity and comfort that is the envy of the world.

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Low-End High Design and the Butterfly Effect

by @ Tuesday, June 14th, 2011. Filed under Censorship, China, Technology

Egyptian Woman with Cell Phone

China's Cell Phone Pirates Are Bringing Down Middle Eastern Governments

By Greg Lindsay

SolidarityEconomy.net via Fast Company

1. Enter The Shanzhai

In 2004, a Taiwanese electronics firm named MediaTek [1] unveiled its latest product--a cell-phone-in-a-box aimed at manufacturers, equipped with everything they needed to make the guts of a working phone on one chipset. Write some software, add features, and snap a plastic case on the front and you've produced a new model. It was an immediate hit with China’s notorious counterfeiters, the shanzhai [2].

In 2004, MediaTek sold 3 million of its chips [3]; six years later, its sales had soared to 500 million, more than a third of the worldwide market. Nearly half of those went to shanzhai. The sudden ability to design, manufacture, and ship millions of dirt-cheap handsets in total secrecy led to an explosion in Internet-enabled devices in China. “Five years ago, there were no counterfeit phones,” the sales manager at a Chinese component manufacturer told The New York Times in 2009. “You needed a design house. You needed software guys. You needed hardware design. But now, a company with five guys can do it.”

After conquering China, smuggled shanzhai phones made spectrum so valuable that India’s telcos allegedly bribed government ministers to get their hands on it for $40 billion less than it was worth, triggering an ongoing scandal that might bring down the government. Once India cracked down, however, the shanzhai were forced to look for new markets further afield, to the Middle East--where the glut of cheap phones would help enable the Arab Spring.

2. “Nckias” And “Blockberrys”

The key to the cheap phones was the combination of MediaTek’s chipsets and the vast component bazaars of Shenzhen. While MediaTek’s engineers focused on adding software features such as touchscreen recognition and instant messaging to their chips, shanzhai tricked out basic models with speakers, telescopic photo lenses, and flashlight-strength LEDs. Before long, “Nckias” and “Blockberrys” began appearing across Shenzhen and Shanghai.

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China: ‘New Left’ Meets ‘Red Culture’

by @ Monday, April 25th, 2011. Filed under China, Marxism, Socialism

Socialism 3.0 in China

Photo: Bo Xilai

By Peter Martin and David Cohen
SolidarityEconomy.net via The Diplomat

April 25, 2011 - Bo Xilai has a reputation as a rising political rock star. But do his ‘Red Culture’ policies in Chongqing really offer a viable model for China?

As China’s 2012 power transition approaches, politicians and academics are racing to find the theme that will define the country’s direction for the next eight years. The inclinations of Xi Jinping, heir apparent to the presidency, are still unclear, but his recent visit to Chongqing suggests that he’s taking a particular interest in the ‘Red Culture’ policies of municipal Party Secretary Bo Xilai.

Bo is the highest-ranking Party member of the Chongqing Municipal area, an administrative zone four times the size of the US state size of New Jersey. It embraces acity of 10 million, as well as a vast rural hinterland that contains more than 1,200 towns and villages. Over the past few years, Bo has made himself the centre of media attention with eye-catching initiatives such as a ‘red song’ campaign and a ban on advertisements on local TV.

But the significance of Chongqing runs much deeper than socialist gimmicks—Bo has tried to rewrite the social contract of Chongqing with an attack on economic inequality, an expansion of the state role in the economy, and political moves taken straight from Mao Zedong’s playbook.

People often say that politics in China have stood still while the economy has raced ahead. But the placid surface of single-party rule conceals vigorous debate within the Communist Party over China’s future….

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Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?

by @ Wednesday, April 6th, 2011. Filed under China, Environment, Green Energy

 

One Chart, One Thousand Words

Source: G-20 Report



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China Think Tank: Gorbachev Correct, But Failed on Political Stability

by @ Thursday, March 3rd, 2011. Filed under China, Marxism, Socialism

China's Socialism Beats Democracies

From IndianExpress.com

Mar 02 2011, Beijing: China's experiment of mixing economic reforms with socialism has achieved more success than democracies and averted a Soviet Union style collapse in post Mao Zedong era, a think tank here said projecting it as a new socialist role model.

China's economic and political achievements since late 1970s owe to a unique socialism-featured development model, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' (CASS), an official think tank's study on World Socialism said.

China's development path lies in implementing necessary structural reforms and in learning from others' success, while, at the same time, refusing any form of foreign intervention, it said.

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China’s Rise & The New Multipolar World

by @ Friday, January 7th, 2011. Filed under China, Economy, Globalization

Think Again: American Decline

This time it's for real.

BY GIDEON RACHMAN

ForeignPolicy.com

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

"We've Heard All This About American Decline Before."

This time it's different. It's certainly true that America has been through cycles of declinism in the past. Campaigning for the presidency in 1960, John F. Kennedy complained, "American strength relative to that of the Soviet Union has been slipping, and communism has been advancing steadily in every area of the world." Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One was published in 1979, heralding a decade of steadily rising paranoia about Japanese manufacturing techniques and trade policies.

In the end, of course, the Soviet and Japanese threats to American supremacy proved chimerical. So Americans can be forgiven if they greet talk of a new challenge from China as just another case of the boy who cried wolf. But a frequently overlooked fact about that fable is that the boy was eventually proved right. The wolf did arrive -- and China is the wolf.

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China Cites Toffler in New Year Message

by @ Friday, December 31st, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics

 

2010 Ends with Immense Opportunities

for both China and the World

China's leading and most influential national newspaper, the People's Daily, on Friday carries on its third page a lengthy signed article signed by Guo Jiping on immense development opportunities that have been provided for both China and the world. Its excerpts are read as follows:

With new, qualitative changes accumulated in China's relations with the outside world in the outgoing 2010, the nation's development has become a supportive prop of vital importance in the contemporary era.

Economic recovery in developed countries is slow overall in the outgoing year, and China's domestic growth product (GDP) for 2010 is around 20 percent of world economic growth. Moreover, the nation's active participation in global economic governance and international economic policy coordination has promoted the enhancement of the representation of developing nations in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

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China’s Strategic Framing of Global Ecology and Sustainable Growth

by @ Sunday, December 5th, 2010. Filed under China, Green Industry, Socialism

 

While delivered nearly a decade ago, this speech by Zhu Rongji holds up rather well. Zhu was Premier of the State Council of The People's Republic of China, and spoke at the Round Table of World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa, August 26-Sept 4, 2002

 
Mr. Chairman, today I am delighted to be with you here to discuss issues relating to global sustainable development.  The speeches of previous speakers were full of wisdom and most enlightening.  The question of how to implement the plan of action of this summit and to honor our commitments in real earnest bears not only directly on the success of the summit, but even more on the future of human society.


As the world's largest developing country in terms of population and land area, China attaches great importance to sustainable development.  In handling the relations between economic development and population, resources and environment, we have learned the following from experience:


----Emphasis on harmony between economic development and resource and environmental protection.  The primary task of developing countries is to develop the economy and eradicate poverty.  Without economic growth, there would be no material basis for a better life or better environment for the people.  But economic growth must not be achieved at the cost of environment or resources.  In the absence of proper resource and environmental protection, there could be no sustainable economic development.

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China’s Peaceful Rise: Looking Backward, Looking Forward

by @ Sunday, September 5th, 2010. Filed under China, Globalization, Socialism

Poster: 1989, Only Socialism Can Save and Develop China

 

Information and Analysis:

Towards a world for people not profit

How China Rises

by Noah Tucker

Nov 4th 2007

SolidarityEconomy.net via 21st Century Socialism

What lessons can be drawn from China's spectacular and sustained economic growth?

As Hu Jintau remarked at the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the period since the previous Congress five years ago has been extraordinary. China's economic achievements have been arousing not only astonishment and admiration but also some anxiety.
In the past twelve months alone, The People's Republic of China (PRC) has overtaken Canada as the biggest source of imports to the USA, and overtaken the USA as the biggest source of imports to the European Union. Concern about the low level of investment in Africa has been displaced by concern about the effects of the high level of Chinese investment in Africa; there is now even anxiety about the effects of investment by Chinese state-owned firms into the Western economies.

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China’s Audacity in Paying Attention to the Toffler’s Three Waves

by @ Sunday, August 29th, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics, New Left

China 2020: Double and Quadruple Happiness

by Frank Feather

SolidarityEconomy.net via Toffler Associates

Introduction

Frank Feather is a business futurist, with a remarkably accurate 30-year forecasting track record that often defies conventional wisdom. He is ranked as one of the “Top 100 Futurists of All Time” by Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of the Future. A best-selling author and dynamic keynote speaker, Feather was born in the UK but is now based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has consulted to companies including Ericsson, IBM, Ford, Nokia, and Shell. Continuously since 1984 he has been special adviser to China on economic modernization and market reforms, and he has seen many of his ideas implemented there. He previously worked for Barclays Bank, Toronto-Dominion Bank and CIBC.

Alvin Toffler

China’s Growth

China has a remarkable and unmatched 30-year track record of doubling and quadrupling its gross domestic product. In 1978, the country’s GDP was US$147 billion and falling, per capita income was only US$190 a year, and more than 250 million people were living in abject poverty. Adjusted for inflation, the country’s per capita output in 1977 was no higher than it had been in 1957.

Undaunted, China set itself some audacious goals. It aimed to quadruple its GDP between 1980 and 2000, something it had achieved by 1996. It then determined to double its output between 2000 and 2010. Again, the goal was achieved ahead of schedule. The country’s next goal is to quadruple GDP between 2000 and 2020 and to achieve “moderate prosperity.” China’s long-term 70-year goal, laid down in 1978, is to boost its per-capita GDP to that of medium-income countries by 2050, a goal which it will almost certainly surpass before the self-imposed deadline.

Wave-Like Economic Development

China’s overall economic strategy is simple. It is based on the “third wave” concept developed by the futurist Alvin Toffler in his book by the same title, published coincident with reforms in 1980. The book was translated into Chinese and read by every mainland Chinese politician and academic and “third wave” became part of the vocabulary. (more...)



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Eating Meat vs. Soup: China, I-Pods and the Value-Chain of the Future

by @ Sunday, August 8th, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics

Why Can't China Climb Up the Value Chain?

I-Pod Assembly line in China

August 05, 2010

By Liang Jun

People's Daily Online

China is to a large extent at the bottom of the value chain. Though its high GDP and export figures have aroused world envy, it is the huge multinational corporations like Apple and Toshiba that make more handsome profits.
A U.S. market research firm deconstructed an Apple iPod and studied the manufacturers, costs and profits of each of the parts and components. The final results show that for every 299 U.S. dollars made from the sale of an iPod sold in the United States, Apple makes 80 U.S. dollars, the costs of distribution and retail sales stand at 75 U.S. dollars and the other costs altogether total 144 U.S. dollars.


Out of the 144 U.S. dollars costs, for hard disk and display screen alone, added value of Japanese enterprises reached 93.39 U.S. dollars, with Toshiba accounting for the major part. The other costs include the fees of parts and components made by enterprises of the United States, Japan and South Korea as well as patent fees.
But China, which was actually responsible for the assembly of this iPod, earns a few dollars through processing.
Recently, most Chinese people felt proud upon hearing reports that China may have overtaken Japan as the world's second largest economy. But if we carefully analyze the figures of GDP and trade, we will find China is to a large extent at the bottom of the value chain.


We do not intend to inspire the public's anger toward companies like Apple and Toshiba, but a rational reader should reflect on why Apple had the lion's share of the big cake created by the iPod, while China only got the crumbs. In the context of globalization, there is no conspiracy of imperialism and no coercion of vessels and cannons. However, it is differences of status among countries in the international division of labor that cause the placement along the value chain.


In other words, Apple and Toshiba "eat meat" because they have the core technology, design and brands. We have to "eat soup," because we provide only cheap labor in the entire value chain.


Sure enough, "eating soup" is a kind of progress. Before China carried out reforms in 1978 and became the "world factory," we were isolated from the international division of labor and could not eat soup some times. Even now, many developing countries could not eat soup because they have no advantages like China in costs, size, efficiency and infrastructure.


But for China, a country with a population of 1.3 billion, which may have become the "world's second largest economy," eating soup is obviously not our ultimate goal. That's why we have to restructure and transform growth in the context of globalization. China must have its own ability to innovate, core technology and world-renowned fist-class brands.



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Reject the Old Patterns – China’s 21st Century Path

by @ Sunday, February 7th, 2010. Filed under China, Global Justice, Socialism

Poster: Oppose hegemonism, uphold world peace - maintain a foreign policy of independence and own initiative, 1983

'Three Strategies'

to Tackle the

'Three Challenges'

 

By Zheng Bijian

It is far from easy for a country of 1.3 billion population to achieve peaceful rise. During the first half of the 21st century, in particular, China faces a period of both "golden opportunity for development" and "standing out contradictions". The latter, in the field of economic and social progress, can be boiled down to "three major challenges".

The first challenge comes from resources, particularly energies. China lags behind the world in terms of per capita hold of resources; meanwhile, due to a fast developing speed yet low technical level, China's manufacturing industry is among the most energy-consuming ones in the world. The huge consumption is intensified by a large-scale shift of manufacturing bases to China. As a result resources, including energies, have been in tight supply.

The second challenge is from ecological environment. A spoiled environment caused by serious pollution, worsened ecological conditions, huge consumption of resources, and low reclamation has become a bottleneck in the sustainable development of the Chinese economy.

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China, ‘Clean Coal’ and New Technologies

by @ Thursday, January 7th, 2010. Filed under China, Environment

World's Top Polluter

Emerges as Green

Technology Leader

 

By SHAI OSTER

BEIJING -- Dec. 15, 2009 - Xu Shisen put down the phone and smiled. That was Canada calling, explained the chief engineer at a coal-fired power plant set among knockoff antique and art shops in a Beijing suburb. A Canadian company is interested in Mr. Xu's advances in bringing down the cost of stripping out greenhouse-gas emissions from burning coal.

Engineers led by Mr. Xu are working to unlock one of climate change's thorniest problems: how to burn coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere. China's Push for Clean Coal

Mr. Xu is part of a broader effort by China to introduce green technology to the world's fastest-growing industrial economy -- a mission so ambitious it could eventually reshape the business, just as China has done for everything from construction cranes to computers.

China looms large over the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where Chinese officials are pressing the U.S. and other rich nations to accept new curbs on their emissions and to continue to subsidize poor nations' efforts to adopt clean-energy technology. China is the world's biggest source of carbon emissions. Less understood is the way China is now becoming a source of some of the solutions.

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