Chinese Tech Companies Building Factories In India 104
jfruh writes: Over the past two decades, China's relatively high skill, low cost workforce made the country a powerhouse of tech and electronics manufacturing. But in a sign that things might be changing, several large Chinese companies, including Foxconn and Huawei, are investing billions to start manufacturing in India. Xiaomi is expected to announce its first India-made phone today, as well. The article says that Foxconn's planned factory in Maharashtra "would create employment for at least 50,000 people, state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said after the signing of the agreement at which Foxconn CEO Terry Gou was present."
Foxconn is Taiwanese (Score:4, Insightful)
Foxconn is a Taiwanese multinational headquartered in New Taipei, Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn
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Re: Foxconn is Taiwanese (Score:1)
It's known as 'The Taiwan Extremely Autonomous District.' Sometimes also known as 'Taiwan Province.'
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Given that wikipedia has less credibility than my rectum in these situations, it is of absolutely no use as a source.
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And Taiwan belongs to China [wikipedia.org], depending on who you're asking.
Yes, and Austria has always been a part of Germany - Adolph Hitler
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I thought Taiwan was "Nationalist China" or some such.
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Africa after That? (Score:2)
* Along with low wages - a related characteristc anyway.
what about UNICOR? (Score:2)
maximum of US$1.15 per hour,
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I make 4 bucks an hour working in IT for an USA company and I'm located in Romania.
Re:Africa after That? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Since the summary is about "Chinese Tech Companies" and the first company mentioned is Foxconn, it should be noted that Foxconn is not a Chinese Tech Company. They are Taiwanese.
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Well, according to both the People's Republic of China [wikipedia.org] and Republic of China [wikipedia.org], Taiwan is part of China. They merely disagree where legitimate government currently resides (ie Taipei vs Beijing).
Therefore, it's perfectly legitimate to call Foxconn a Chinese tech company.
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War is merely the continuation of diplomacy by other means. - Clausewitz.
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War is merely the continuation of diplomacy by other means. - Clausewitz.
Clausewitz can suck my asshole - Patton
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No, they're Taiwanese. Only three things could make it Chinese.
1. Foxconn moves to, or is sold off to China. 2. Taiwan re-unifies with China under its own volition via diplomatic agreement. 3. WAR! China takes Taiwan.
Except that their name is the Republic of China. We just happen to call the country Taiwan. I'm not at all certain about this, but I believe we call it Taiwan to avoid confusion and because the Peoples Republic of China does not really want anyone calling the RoC anything that has to do with China.
Re:Africa after That? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody is malleable, conformist and submissive when the best hope of eating and keeping a roof over your immediate+extended family is with the big manufacturing corporation. It happens everywhere, it's not exclusive to cultures where it is expected to submit to authority and your elders.
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Anybody is malleable, conformist and submissive when [it's] the best hope of eating and keeping a roof over your i.. family
Only until they smell the potential for more money.
Re:Africa after That? (Score:5, Insightful)
But. Africa. Regional political unrest can undermine labor costs, raw material availability, and friendly tax packages.
For the next industrial emigration, manufacturers are going to want cheap and easy.
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Cheap labor remains an important consideration when moving manufacturing facilities.
But. Africa. Regional political unrest can undermine labor costs, raw material availability, and friendly tax packages.
On the other hand China has been investing in Africa (First link from google China Is Besting the U.S. in Africa [usnews.com]). So China is already playing a long game there and while India may be a good choice right now, they may be looking at Africa after that.
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But. Africa. Regional political unrest can undermine labor costs
China has plenty of weapons and military advisers to send to Africa to prop up the regime of their choice. Even troops, if necessary. Any rebels won't have a chance against a government backed up by the Chinese.
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If the opposition / rebels / terrorists (*) are backed up by the Americans the resulting proxy war will chase all manufacturers away.
(*) pick one, depending on your preference.
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Just choose an country with no oil.
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But. Africa. Regional political unrest can undermine labor costs
China has plenty of weapons and military advisers to send to Africa to prop up the regime of their choice. Even troops, if necessary. Any rebels won't have a chance against a government backed up by the Chinese.
See, they are getting more American every day! Give them another fifteen years, and they'll be the ones invading the middle east.
I just have to laugh at the irony ! (Score:1)
But. Africa. Regional political unrest can undermine labor costs
China has plenty of weapons and military advisers to send to Africa to prop up the regime of their choice. Even troops, if necessary
You guys are projecting what you guys and your ancestors have been doing in Asia, South America and Africa, for the past 2 centuries, into China?
It's like pedophiles always wary their own children gotten raped by others
Oh, what irony!
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If your read the article you will see that Chinese workers are not as malleable and conformist as they once were, and are now demanding more pay.
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If your read the article you will see that Chinese workers are not as malleable and conformist as they once were, and are now demanding more pay.
I've been reading history and I see that corporations take their show all over the world to the place where they can fool the locals into taking the least possible pay. They put up factories and pump money and pollution into one spot until the people smarten up, and then they move on to somewhere else. 100 years ago they put up factories in the Northeast US, dumped pollution into the rivers, and built enormous factories. Now the jobs are gone but the pollution and the dead factories remain behind. I'm
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yes, but the chances of the Indian Government coming in and competing with unfair advantages (like forced labor), as has happened in China, makes those costs worth it, at least from a business continuity standpoint.
If a natural, or government, crisis hits either company, the likelihood of both sites going down is slim.
It might work out (Score:5, Interesting)
The labor is extremely powerful in factories. One simple personal anecdote, a worker was drilling holes in the wind tunnel model for me to mount the sensors. Did a 9.9 mm hole, and had mounted the 10mm reamer bit in the machine. He had one hole to finish when the siren sounded for tea time, he walked off! I was standing by him and asked him to just finish the last hole, (move the handle once down like in a slot machine, that was all that was pending) he was upset by that request, and refused to finish that job for three weeks. No other worker would touch the machine, other drilling jobs were piling up. I was a very fresh rookie at that time. I did not even had the perception to understand he was waiting for me to apologize for the affront. I would have readily done it if I had known it. No one clued me in on it too. They were all having fun watching me running from pillar to post to get the model to the four-foot tunnel. No one dared to order a worker to finish the job.
There are other stories of workers deliberately opening the autoclave some 24 hours into the cycle, corrupting the tempering process of all the pieces inside. They were aircraft parts, all of them had to be scrapped. Loss of almost a million rupees. A foreman was injured in a shop floor. Ambulance could not reach the location. They had a battery truck. But the workers would not let it be used to transport the guy. Why? foremen belong to the "management"! It is that bad there.
But almost all the unions are controlled by the communists, and China being nominally communist, they may be able to sway the leadership. Also communist party leaders in India have a reputation of being above bribery etc. But the reality was that USSR would give their children scholarships to study in Soviet universities and use their publication (Mir publications, New Century Bookhouse etc) arms to pay them for books that never sell. My cousins have audited the inventory of millions of unsold books being eaten by moths in warehouses.
So given the money China has and the nominal communist government it has, it could bribe the union leaders the way USSR did. It could have factories with much less labor trouble.
So it could work out for China the way it would never work out for USA or European companies.
Re:It might work out (Score:5, Interesting)
The labor is extremely powerful in factories. One simple personal anecdote, a worker was drilling holes in the wind tunnel model for me to mount the sensors. Did a 9.9 mm hole, and had mounted the 10mm reamer bit in the machine. He had one hole to finish when the siren sounded for tea time, he walked off! I was standing by him and asked him to just finish the last hole, (move the handle once down like in a slot machine, that was all that was pending) he was upset by that request, and refused to finish that job for three weeks. No other worker would touch the machine, other drilling jobs were piling up. I was a very fresh rookie at that time. I did not even had the perception to understand he was waiting for me to apologize for the affront. I would have readily done it if I had known it. No one clued me in on it too. They were all having fun watching me running from pillar to post to get the model to the four-foot tunnel. No one dared to order a worker to finish the job.
There are other stories of workers deliberately opening the autoclave some 24 hours into the cycle, corrupting the tempering process of all the pieces inside. They were aircraft parts, all of them had to be scrapped. Loss of almost a million rupees. A foreman was injured in a shop floor. Ambulance could not reach the location. They had a battery truck. But the workers would not let it be used to transport the guy. Why? foremen belong to the "management"! It is that bad there.
Very interesting stories. My father's family worked in factories in Ohio/West Virginia/Kentucky area for several generations, and they were all union. He has very similar stories about people sabotaging the line, crashing a lift to cause an incident to get a break, etc. There's no doubt unions have done a ton of good, but that type of action just doesn't sit well for most Americans.
From my own experience, about 20 years ago I was setting up an exhibit at a tradeshow in New York. Most of the exhibitors were big companies who paid for union labor to put together their displays. I was a one person operation and had one tiny booth in a large hall with one table covered by a tablecloth. All I had to do was drape the tablecloth and set up my flyers and inventory--nothing elaborate. The table I had ordered from the convention service was at an angle near the entrance to the booth. I started to move the table towards the back of the booth--about six feet total--and you would have thought I was starting a nuclear war. Several of the union staff ran over yelling that I wasn't allowed to move anything and I had to wait for an authorized laborer to move the table for me. I had to wait over two hours until the floor boss had someone come over and move my table five feet. Like you, I had no idea what I had done and was baffled by the response. I could have been out of there in ten minutes if I had flipped them some cash...
Having gone to many tradeshows across the country since then, the convention handling unions have been greatly reduced over the last 20 years.
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From my own experience, about 20 years ago I was setting up an exhibit at a tradeshow in New York. Most of the exhibitors were big companies who paid for union labor to put together their displays. I was a one person operation and had one tiny booth in a large hall with one table covered by a tablecloth. All I had to do was drape the tablecloth and set up my flyers and inventory--nothing elaborate. The table I had ordered from the convention service was at an angle near the entrance to the booth. I started to move the table towards the back of the booth--about six feet total--and you would have thought I was starting a nuclear war. Several of the union staff ran over yelling that I wasn't allowed to move anything and I had to wait for an authorized laborer to move the table for me. I had to wait over two hours until the floor boss had someone come over and move my table five feet. Like you, I had no idea what I had done and was baffled by the response. I could have been out of there in ten minutes if I had flipped them some cash...
Having gone to many tradeshows across the country since then, the convention handling unions have been greatly reduced over the last 20 years.
I would have told them to move it now of fsck off and complain to someone who cares. Seriously, I've never understood what they can do other than complain at you. Assault you to keep you from moving it? I'd love that. The lawsuit would bankrupt the union. Maybe there's something in the agreement you signed to have a booth there, but if not...
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I would have told them to move it now of fsck off and complain to someone who cares. Seriously, I've never understood what they can do other than complain at you. Assault you to keep you from moving it? I'd love that. The lawsuit would bankrupt the union. Maybe there's something in the agreement you signed to have a booth there, but if not...
No, they would assault you after the fact. There are some unions out there that are a positive influence (IBEW springs to mind) and some that are negative, and some that are absolute thugs. Teamsters[1] tend to fall into the latter category.
[1]- By no means do I mean to imply that all Teamsters are thugs, but their leadership tends heavily in that direction, and that leadership ALWAYS has a ready supply of people to do the dirty work.
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Next morning you come in and mysteriously, the roof leaked right over your booth and nowhere else, and of course the lights are out. Don't worry, they'll get someone right on that, shouldn't be more than 2 or 3 days.
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From my own experience, about 20 years ago I was setting up an exhibit at a tradeshow in New York. Most of the exhibitors were big companies who paid for union labor to put together their displays. I was a one person operation and had one tiny booth in a large hall with one table covered by a tablecloth. All I had to do was drape the tablecloth and set up my flyers and inventory--nothing elaborate. The table I had ordered from the convention service was at an angle near the entrance to the booth. I started to move the table towards the back of the booth--about six feet total--and you would have thought I was starting a nuclear war. Several of the union staff ran over yelling that I wasn't allowed to move anything and I had to wait for an authorized laborer to move the table for me. I had to wait over two hours until the floor boss had someone come over and move my table five feet. Like you, I had no idea what I had done and was baffled by the response. I could have been out of there in ten minutes if I had flipped them some cash...
Maybe I'm just a dirty commie that doesn't want to think anything bad about unions, but my first thought was that the people running the convention were scared by the liability threat. If you even pulled a muscle while moving the table, they might end up facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
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Re:It might work out (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not anti-union. I'm anti-dumbassness. The reason so many people are tired of unions is because shit like this. The desire to work to make the company successful is completely gone in union shops, it's just show up, do the bare minimum and collect a paycheck. (not saying this about all unions, but UAW is notoriously bad).
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Strong support for unions seems natural in a country where pay is low and the factory you are working in might spontaneously collapse at any moment.
Re: It might work out (Score:1)
Support for unions should be natural in any country. Here in the US we pop off unproven anecdotes to justify why unions are bad to ourselves while ignoring the massive number of shady and illegal things corporations and other businesses do on a routine basis.
Heaven forbid workers ever get together for anything. I'm a special snowflake and I'll emerge victorious from a highly imbalanced negotiating position! People like that don't even know much they're being screwed..
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Unions are good, but not when they get special protections.
For instance, factory workers should be allowed to organize and strike for bargaining and whatever.
But management should be allowed to fire every single one of them and replace with non-union workers.
Unions were made to strengthen workers bargaining position.
But by taking away managements bargaining power the whole thing becomes one sided and companies can't compete.
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the whole thing becomes one sided and companies can't compete.
But management should be allowed to fire every single one of them and replace with non-union workers.
yeah, how soon we forget that we do all this stuff to enrich coroporations, screw the people if they don't want to play along
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Yet I was still modded down for the comment.
Re:It might work out (Score:4, Interesting)
I could be misinterpreting, but I teach a lot of masters students from India and China. The Indians in particular seem to have a massive entitlement complex. In particular, they feel entitled to cheat with impunity. I'll give an assignment with an old problem I borrowed from a previous year, but with the numbers changed. Six of them will turn in exactly the same assignment, with exactly the same formatting, with all of the wrong answers, because they copied the older question's answer without even bothering to look at it. And then they get angry when they get a zero for the assignment. This semester, I'm going to just fail the cheaters out completely. (With ample and repeated warning about the rules, of course.)
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I was the opposite.
A teacher once gave me 3 out of 10 for a test.
I argued with her every day during her lunch break for a month. I went so far as to take my test and have a different teacher from a different school grade it, so I knew I was in the right. I didn't stop until I had an 8. She probably did it because I was white and didn't just accept all the BS she said in class.
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Hmmm. I remember having an astrophysics teacher who gave each student the same problems for examination, year after year. When I presented my solutions neatly LaTeX formatted (that was not common then) he was quite unhappy because this would be a good starting point for others to copy the answers from. I did get a good grade but now he had to put much more work in exam questions.
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I could be misinterpreting, but I teach a lot of masters students from India and China. The Indians in particular seem to have a massive entitlement complex. In particular, they feel entitled to cheat with impunity. I'll give an assignment with an old problem I borrowed from a previous year, but with the numbers changed. Six of them will turn in exactly the same assignment, with exactly the same formatting, with all of the wrong answers, because they copied the older question's answer without even bothering to look at it. And then they get angry when they get a zero for the assignment. This semester, I'm going to just fail the cheaters out completely. (With ample and repeated warning about the rules, of course.)
I saw the same thing when I was working on my bachelor's degree. I had one class where over half the students were from India. They would loudly and quite obviously exchange answers in their native language DURING exams. The teacher asked them to be quiet. They persisted. He brought in a proctor to try and help manage them. Didn't even phase them. For the final, the teacher made a special exam just for that section. The exam was so difficult, and such a large portion of the total grade that everyone
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You go ahead and fail all cheating students. At least they will stop registering to classes offered by you. Good riddance. I was
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Stereotypes exist for a reason. Ask anyone who's worked with specific races and they'll give you generalizations which ODDLY FIT with stereotypes about that culture. That doesn't mean EVERYONE is like that, but it means the average person you meet will be similar to that stereotype in some ways.
If you can't accept that, or if it offends you, then you can fuck right the hell off along with your over-sensitivity.
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Stereotypes exist for a reason.
justification for racism
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USA next? (Score:1)
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Well, at least the infrastructure for companies to buy politicians is already in place and works much better than in China.
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scott walker is working hard to change that
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Too many unions in the USA - which is why the jobs went to China in the first place.
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Too many unions in the USA - which is why the jobs went to China in the first place.
corporations in the US are tired of paying for worker's health insurance, they go to other countries where the government pays for it
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An aquaintence quit her job and began working there in quality control. She said the Chinese management staff is going to drive that place into the ground, they don't understand American workers are not going to put up with the same abuse factory workers in China occasionally face.
Foxconn Isn't Chinese (Score:2)
They are a Taiwanese company and this is hardly the first factory they have opened outside mainland China. They have factories in South America, Mexico, Eastern Europe, USA, India, etc. I would contend they have little allegiance to mainland China and are more than willing to pull up stakes if need be.
OH THE HELL OF IT ALL (Score:1)
Foxconn's planned factory in Maharashtra "would create employment for at least 50,000 people,
I think he meant "enslave 50,000 people who voluntarily leave their dirt floor shack and move into an apartment in the city and start getting fat".
The enemy isn't buiness. It is sweet, tender nature that demands you put food in your mouth
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Tariff the hell out their stuff until it becomes economical to build their crap in the US
Yeah, encourage them to do business in other countries instead of the US, that's the ticket.
Simple soution to prevent Wage slavery (Score:1)
Tax Corporate Revenues, Not Profits;
We're paying Income Tax on our Salaries, not our Savings
wh.gov/ijhBs
Yo dawg! (Score:1)