China has a social contract that they've been suffering in poverty for years, rather than experiencing immediate economic benefits, to boost their nation. It's one of the reasons they're so anti-immigration at the moment: they're on the verge of being rewarded for their suffering, at least as far as the general populace is concerned. Obviously how that plays out in reality will be a different question.
Anyways, once these cars start being made by someone who makes a salary that doesn't look like a joke to someone from a modern nation, I imagine their prices will rocket up to match other manufacturers.
I still don't get why people are so shocked that Chinese products are cheap. It has been this way for decades at least.
I'm not so sure they are living as badly as people imagine.
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/china-reduced-extre...
But China do have significantly lower labour costs internationally. Part of that has been due to keeping their currency artificially low by sinking money in US bonds (which also inflates the US dollar). They also have plenty of specialised workers in manufacturing after they out-priced and out-classed every other country. Setting up an advanced manufacturing facility in China is far cheaper than basically anywhere else on the planet.
Take BYD as an example. Its wages are much lower than Tesla’s, but BYD has nearly one million employees, most of whom are in China, and many of its factories are in non-major cities. The wage levels in those places are certainly higher than in Vietnam, and BYD’s wages are higher than the local average. Thanks to China’s advantage in cost of living, a BYD employee earning 5,000 RMB (>700USD) a month can actually live quite well in a non-first-tier city. Rent is below 1,000 RMB, and cooking at home usually costs only a few hundred RMB. They already belong to the local middle class and generally do not face much financial pressure.
alexnewman•2mo ago