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by justworkout 861 days ago
A lot of the "it's time we moved away from China" corporations are moving their manufacturing from the authoritarian communist country of China to... the authoritarian communist country of Vietnam. Vietnam has loose regulations due to being undeveloped and seeking business just like China was 30 years ago. In a decade MBAs will be amazed when they find out Vietnam exerts total absolute control of their businesses just like China does.

Manufacturing hubs are shifting hands, but globalism isn't ending. Companies can still get away with paying $10 a day or less to people in some countries and they're never giving that up.
2 comments
csomar 861 days ago
True but Vietnam hates China, so that will work. Also, the Vietnamese can pretend to be a democratic country in 10 years; so that they look cute in the eyes of your average American. You know, kinda like what the Korean or Taiwanese did.
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whimsicalism 860 days ago
Taiwan is a democracy
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shiroiuma 861 days ago
Unlike China, I don't see how Vietnam would ever be some kind of threat to world peace and order or western powers in general. It's not that large, it doesn't have an ongoing war with an important high-tech trading partner, it doesn't seem to have much interest in being a superpower, etc.
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justworkout 861 days ago
Companies don't care about threats to world peace. They cared that China locked down cities, their factories, and exports. If world peace were their concern, there are a lot of countries they'd refuse to do business with. They usually only stamp their feet and whine when countries do things that affect their profit margins, like push for increased wages, environmental regulations, and locking up a factory to prevent disease spread.

One thing to keep in mind: a few years ago, South Korea with North Korea to allow corporations to do manufacturing in North Korea. [1] The result: mega corporations like Korea's Hyundai and Japan's Family Mart flooded in to take advantage of cheap (probably even slave) labor. It closed not because companies felt morally wrong about it--it closed because the governments forced it to close.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region

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