Why does China produce a lot of the United State's goods?

Question

I know that after the Opium War in the 1840's their economy suffered a huge hit and that a lot of the world came to colonize the country. But why and how did other countries come in and start setting up factories for cheap labor? Sources would be nice.

Answer 1

So many people there, therefore the cheap labor. Let's say you have one company and need only 100 people. However, 1000 applied! Therefore, the management can bargain about the wages, benefits, etc. Some may back out but the desperate ones won't.

Answer 2

This has occurred over the past 50 years, and has to do with the theory of comparative advantage and labor mobility.

The US lost its factories since 1950. This is because it resists any social benefits which help low-paid labor such as national health care and employment security, and will not permit reasonable numbers of immigrant or non-immigrant foreign workers. Our system is anti-labor. U.S. factory workers have therefore collectively bargained for these benefits directly from the manufacturers and priced themselves out of the market.

The Japanese took over much of our factory production as part of the post-wwii reconstruction, but in the 1980s it too found the lure of cheap labor just too attractive.

Asia is the current area of choice for cheap labor. It has an industrious well-educated population. When their labor market is saturated, Latin America and Africa will have to be developed.

Answer 3

China produces so many products for the US because of one thing and one thing only..........cheap labor.........Companies from the US send their representatives, offer incentives to the chinese government in exchange for US to set up factories to make goods that the chinese government makes a pre-determinated profit of all goods.

Answer 4

Read Will Hutton's The Writing on the Wall: why we must embrace China as a partner or face it as an enemy

Answer 5

Its quite simple:

The natural law of capitalism ruling the biggest surviving "communist" country... supply and demand. So many workers searching for limited employment causes wages to decrease (lowest bid wins)- so much so that it offsets the shipping costs.

Answer 6

Lazy but rich Americans and poor but hard working Chinese.Perfect combo,suits both.

Answer 7

The largest concern with China, is that they poisoned our dogs with poisoned dog food, put date rape drugs in our children's toys(recent GHB that drugged kids when they swallowed it), put lead in our children's toys(that can cause neurological diseases), put poison in our toothpaste(toothpaste recall from last year)....

The same country who recently executed their FDA's(food and drug administration) top chief because of corruption.