I don’t agree that “Made in China” is the next best thing. Samsung manufactures it’s phones outside of China and are doing fine.
Why do you assume that China is the cheapest country to manufacture electronics in the long run?
- China is not so poor anymore. The wages increased dramatically over the last 30 years. 30 years ago the average African was richer than the average Chinese. Now the situation is completely different.
- Every risk can be accounted for with a price. China brings currently huge political risks and potential inability to fulfil contract obligations in case of a war as it was during the COVID pandemic when the Chinese factories were sometimes closed. These risks have their price. Insurance has a price.
On the short term China might still be attractive because of the established supply chains, logistics, infrastructure, and short distance to other Asian suppliers.
But this does not tell us anything about the long run.
The World is huge. There is Central America, South America, Africa, East Europe. Why China and not for example Nigeria or Egypt or Mexico or Ukraine? I know if you look at today you can always find argument “why not”. But if you look 20 years in the future, China could get some serious competition if the consumers and manufacturers start taking the question of diversification seriously. It is just plain stupidity to put all eggs in one basket.
russia hoped that Europe would have accepted the annexation of Ukraine due to a huge natural gas dependency. They expected that Europe could not afford to say no and would accept blackmailing. China hopes that the World would accept the annexation of Taiwan due to an even larger electronics dependency and expects that the World could not afford to say no. Sorry, but for me after what russia did, such dependencies and blackmailing are simply not acceptable anymore and people who don’t see the problem and are only interested in price and quality need to finally wake up.