There is some good insight in there, and it raises some interesting points.
But it misses a somewhat critical question in my view:
What percentage of global manufacturing would you expect the Chinese to have over the past/next decades?
China, in my view, did a great job in industrializing their country similarly to post-war Germany, Japan or South Korea before them, and that process is still ongoing-- but you could have written very similar articles about the exact same topic (automation) involving those countries instead as "antagonists" (at many points in the last half century).
My perspective is simply that a large (dominant!) Chinese share in manufacturing is almost inevitable from population size and wage development alone (for now), but I would expect their dominance on the international market to level out and then decrease similarly to their "predecessors" as wages approach "western" levels (possibly from both directions!).
myrmidon•3mo ago
But it misses a somewhat critical question in my view:
What percentage of global manufacturing would you expect the Chinese to have over the past/next decades?
China, in my view, did a great job in industrializing their country similarly to post-war Germany, Japan or South Korea before them, and that process is still ongoing-- but you could have written very similar articles about the exact same topic (automation) involving those countries instead as "antagonists" (at many points in the last half century).
My perspective is simply that a large (dominant!) Chinese share in manufacturing is almost inevitable from population size and wage development alone (for now), but I would expect their dominance on the international market to level out and then decrease similarly to their "predecessors" as wages approach "western" levels (possibly from both directions!).