[phil21]

China is already producing top-tier parts at the current set wages. Wages are unlikely to increase as quality of production goes up - it's already world class.

That's the argument as I see it at least. I tend to mostly agree, with some carve-outs for highly specialized industry and general "social" differences in how business is typically done.

At this point, if you need basic manufacturing - China seems unbeatable on both price and quality for the vast majority of items. Not to mention lead times and iteration speed.

[nebula8804]

That will only last as long as their current generation is not in retirement age (10-20 years left). They have among the worst replacement rates in the world. Its too late to fix that. Afterwards China either becomes fully automated in an extreme fashion or they exit from the world stage as a manufacturing powerhouse. If they become robotic everyone else can as well.

Also on that note Robots are going to have to become real cheap, I suspect the reason they are so good at everything is because there is so much competition from 1+ billion people its that cutthroat

Robots will have to become cheaper than all these people assembling a generic bluetooth speaker or the price will go up eventually tariffs or not...go ahead count the number of people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U

[rafram]

In what economic model is wage growth determined by the quality of the work? That sounds very unrealistic to me.

[ZeroTalent]

I read the parent comment totally wrong.