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Coronavirus pandemic: All stories
OpinionLetters

LettersCoronavirus pandemic to make the West cut factory links with China? Not so fast

  • Western countries will not easily be able to bring production back home, and alternatives such as Vietnam and India may struggle to match China’s manufacturing power

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Employees at work on the assembly line at FAW-Volkswagen Automobile in Chengdu, in southwest China’s Sichuan province, in February. Photo: Xinhua
Letters
Cary Huang is one of many who opine that Covid-19 will “usher in a new era of economic development” (“China faces economic reckoning as world turns against globalisation”, May 3). Indeed, some commentators in my country, the Netherlands, wax lyrical about how now is the time to change everything for the better: we will only have sustainable companies selling relevant products, operated by well-treated, well-paid employees in permanent jobs.
Wishful thinking rules. It’s true that many in the West are in shock, having discovered the extent to which their economies are interwoven with China’s, not just for cheap goods (as many like to think) but for advanced products and components as well.
While this interweaving took form, most people did not care that much about the development of democracy in China. What we saw – certainly people who visited China – was impressive development, and millions of Chinese tourists travelling abroad.
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Decoupling economies is easier said than done. Western economies cannot – and do not want to – start up millions of factories in their own countries. Just think of the pollution and labour costs.

Let’s consider some other locations. Is the political climate in, say, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Cambodia or Turkey really so much better than in China (ignoring bureaucracy and corruption for a moment)? More importantly, can these countries seriously match China’s production power?

China did not become “the world’s factory” just like that and Chinese workers have made immense sacrifices in the process, something many people in the West fail to grasp. We think we can just reach for the globalisation switchboard and press the reset button. Well, maybe we should wait for a few months until we have our own face mask production up and running.

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