And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
China will only have a less educated population if they follow the same stupid playbook as America, but that strategy has almost nothing to do with family sizes and has not caused birthrates to drastically increase. Population growth has slowed in every industrialized capitalist country, and many of those countries have not gutted their education system like America. There is no way a modernized economy like China’s will see a population explosion without heavy government intervention, as that would go against the established global trend. The 1 child policy was a mistake, but only because the natural course of modern capitalist economies would’ve done the job for them.
America gutted education so the population would be easier to con and manipulate. The rich gave up on having a functional republican form of government, the very type of government that allowed America to modernize and become wealthy. That type of system provided motivation for Americans to support their own nation, convincing them that their liberal democracy was the superior system. Now China has done the same thing, earning the trust of its own people by improving their country’s wealth and international prominence.
China’s investment in automation is only another way to increase worker productivity, and as history has shown time and time again, that is never the real issue that undermines societies. Rising wealth inequality, centralization of power, mistreatment along ethnic and cultural groups can become problems for China in the future, but not automation. Anti intellectualism could fuck with China as it has in the past, but it won’t be because people have more kids to invest in.
China rising in power is scary and could easily cause problems in the future, but right now it is in a very powerful position and it will not fall anytime soon. It’s likely that countries across the globe will seek to emulate China’s strategies in the same way that they emulated America post WWII. They won’t be as dominant as America was, but they will likely be the most powerful player on the board.