Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 17:12:55 :
In Reply to: Norm...... posted by Kevin in Ohio on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 11:59:48 :
In 1985 I was working for Fluke and they were starting their first venture in Chinese manufacturing. They Chinese factory sent over 4 of their best engineers along with a political "minder" to keep watch over them, and we taught them how to build the 8840A voltmeter we'd just designed. Even though they were completely communist back then, they knew they wanted to not just buy the meters, but build them. They did that with everything all the way up to airplanes. It was a long-term plan to catch up with the free world on technology and manufacturing and they've clearly succeeded. Unlimited amounts of free labor didn't hurt either.
The thing that's going to bring China to a halt eventually is their birth-control policies. They newest generation of kids are spoiled rotten (the call them "little princes" in China) because their parents can only have one child and the dote on them. Right now there are a lot of poor farmers who come to the cities to work in the factories for subsistence wages, but they're going to get old eventually, and the next generation's not going to want to work for any amount of money. Meanwhile, today's workers are going to be pensioners living on old folks' homes needing young people to care for them. That's what's happening in Japan now and it's crippling their economy. It'll happen to China in another 30-40 years. Nothing stays the same forever.