Get used to this headline WRT too-expensive Chinese labor
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 12:04AM 
NYT story with headline: "Bangladesh, with low pay, moves in on China" WRT textiles.
The gist:
As costs have risen in China, long the world’s shop floor, it is slowly losing work to countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia — at least for cheaper, labor-intensive goods like casual clothes, toys and simple electronics that do not necessarily require literate workers and can tolerate unreliable transportation systems and electrical grids.
Li & Fung, a Hong Kong company that handles sourcing and apparel manufacturing for companies like Wal-Mart and Liz Claiborne, reported that its production in Bangladesh jumped 20 percent last year, while China, its biggest supplier, slid 5 percent.
Despite its many handicaps, Bangladesh doubled its textile exports over the past half-decade, mostly at China's expense.
We are going to find that China's "century" will be very short indeed, and that, my friends, is a fifth-generation warfare win in the worst way.
Reader Comments (2)
"We are going to find that China's "century" will be very short indeed, and that, my friends, is a fifth-generation warfare win in the worst way."
Come again? How is moving up the value chain a bad thing?
Bangladesh is known for tropical cyclones that kill 50K workers and level entire cities. Much of the manufacturing in China wasn't subject to tropical cyclones. Is that a risk business is willing to take on, or are they willing to pay the premium associated with a more environmentally stable area? Better to have two factories (like distributed data centes)?