China will struggle when the West can't afford, or indeed want, the cheap stuff they make any more.
China don't just make cheap stuff, they make everything.
The Chinese miracle is beginning to get stuck on several fronts, companies in the US re-shoring or moving to lower cost centres notably Mexico as it's closer to market with shorter runs, workers being replaced by robots with Fox Conn losing one million workers to robots (robot penetration in China is about five times lower compared to the US or Japan ), Chinese banks hiding the mother of all debt bombs, wage rises making the country uncompetitive, foreign companies concerned about copyright infringements, overpriced property market, power supply issue to factories (this is a problem throughout Asia though) and today the World bank markdown on growth by 50bps to 7.5% even though better than expected US retail sales and jobs data announced was then offset by an unexpected fall in prices for US imports and exports signalling cooler economic growth worldwide (cargo grew 6% on the Baltic Index last year to 16.3 TEU containers - so it's not all bad out there, the worlds still spinning).In the 1350's almost half of the manufacted goods in the world were made in China. They are returning to what's normal for them, not becoming something new.
Between the downturn in the Chinese economy and the oil industry (a massive user of steel) the price of steel has plummeted and so Chinese producers are flooding the world market. To put it in context China produces half of all the steel in the world, 5 times as much as the entire EU. The EU taken as a unit is the second biggest producer with Japan and the USA third and fourth. Up until 2014 China consumed about 90-95% of it's own production.Watching BBC New at 10 last night and they were making the claim that due to the slowdown in China, the Chinese were dumping steel on the international market at a loss, which is being blamed for the lay-offs in Port Talbot...
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