China’s factories are in another world
by Inside China Business [3-23-2025].
(RAD: The level of automation in China's factories needs to be seen to be believed. We are long past the days where China competed on low cost labor. It now has total domination of the supply chains, of engineering, and an industrial sector that builds other machines entirely on their own. All of the world's supply chains run through China. His company is having China build quality houses that are shipped to the US to be assembled for a niche that is no longer served in the US. He discusses how this Chinese company can build a few houses for his company and seamlessly build different type houses for customers in other parts of the world. This doesn't require large production runs. He is constantly amazed at what the Chinese are doing. — RAD)
China's industrial proficiency is shocking to manufacturing experts. Their degrees of automation, of engineering expertise, and supply chain domination have no close peer across other modern economies.
China's latest innovation is "dark factories", massive production centers that produce complex products with no humans involved. In an absurd example, a Chinese factory in Guangdong builds robots, exclusively by other robots.
Also astonishing is these factories' capability to manufacture highly customized product lines, fast, and at low minimum order quantities.
Chinese smart manufacturing is likely the largest in the world, today. It is growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 18%, and will more than double in size by 2030.
Deep challenges remain for other economies to challenge China in smart manufacturing. Chinese Artificial Intelligence systems are already in place, cost little, and its engineers are strongly proficient in their applications. Chinese electricity costs far less than peer countries. And, here again, China's monopolistic control over the global raw materials and logistics chains is probably an insurmountable hurdle for North America, Europe, and other Asian countries.
Closing scene, Nantong, Jiangsu.
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