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https://chinaglobalsouth.com/podcasts/global-tech-wars-james-kynge-china-manufacturing/
China is not "passing on" the shit manufacturing jobs like other developing/developed countries have before. It's keeping to pull up its remaining poor agricultural population and/or massively automating them. This means the development "ladder" is breaking and the Global South needs a new model.
This is a myopic reading of economic history: "Typically, as countries progress up the value chain, they transition from agriculture to light industry, then to heavy industry, and ultimately to high-technology and services. And as they move up the value chain, this creates opportunities for less-developed countries to advance."
The true story would would be more like: the plunder of other peoples and countries through slavery and colonialism created massive flows of capital that enabled industrialisation in some places at the expense of others, an inequality preserved into our own time by unfair trade and investment - which also enabled developed countries to live off investments rather than industry - and this fundamental inequality has been mitigated only by colonial liberation and socialist political movements, as exemplified especially by China...
@GeofCox @Tallish_Tom I think a service-oriented reading might be a more optimistic one. I wonder if solar is the new "textiles" when it comes to economic development: that one industry that requires local labour, develops technical expertise, and builds foundational, local manufacturing know-how.
Solar installation is always going to be a service. Frames, wiring, and power management equipment can be locally created. None of that part is hard, but it's at least (going by local prices) 2/3 of the job.
Batteries are a bigger step, but doable after materials research is communicated.
This leads to local experiments in panel production, perhaps only to reduce transport costs, perhaps as a political move.
Once a country or economic block understands all the processes it can protect local manufacturing (IIRC) Swiss-style: imposing a tariff that matches import prices to local production, but only until local production quantities are sold. Local production is forced to compete on quality, not price.
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