Dr Winston O'Boogie
I have been to China twice - in 2011 and 2016. I work in the heavy manufacturing sector and toured many plants during those two visits. In the course of those five years, there were several large changes that were evident:
- Automation in manufacturing and shipping is much greater (robots and automated machinery taking the place of what had been labor intensive activities)
- Factories/plants were much cleaner and more modern in 2016 that 2011. In 2011, I visited foundries with dirt floors and barefoot workers. In 2016, most places I saw had modern structures and better safety measures.
- Cooperation with schools. In 2016 there was a much bigger emphasis on apprentice-type programs as opposed to five years earlier when no training was evident.
- Investment into R&D. The Chinese economy was largely built on copying technologies from elsewhere and often with an inferior quality. That was not the case during my second go around. Every company I visited was making huge investments into R&D, both people and assets. The message was that instead of being followers copying others, they want to become the technological leaders.
One of the big byproducts of these changes was the movement of simpler manufacturing processes to other places like Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Textiles is a big industry that has largely vacated China.
My takeaways are that these manufacturing jobs will never be back here and that China is going to become more and more of a leader in developing newer and better things in all sectors. The latter has already been happening, but it will likely happen with greater regularity in years to come.