In my last post I started to talk about the remarkable increase in the Chinese manufacturing industry over the last decades, and how China is nowadays the manufacturing workshop for the world. Yet, in addition to opportunities, there are also challenges ahead. In my last post I described that it gets harder to catch up on technology the closer you come to the front runner (example chip making), but that there are plenty of opportunities in new industries (electric cars, solar cells). I also mentioned that past quality flaws also still have an impact on Chinese reputation. In this post I will continue with more challenges and opportunities for Chinese manufacturing. This series of posts is a mixture of facts and a lot more opinions, so feel free to disagree.
China
On China’s Manufacturing Catch-Up—Part 1
A lot of the stuff you own comes from China, either as a completed product or with plenty of parts that were assembled elsewhere. “Made in China” is a label you see very often when looking for the source of your products, albeit not everybody is convinced of the quality. In this series of two blog posts I want to look at how China improved its technological know-how as well as its manufacturing proficiency, and what challenges it faces as well as in its opportunities to completely close the gap with the Western world. This series of posts is a mixture of facts and a lot more opinions, so feel free to disagree.