In recent years, there has been a continuous stream of news that manufacturing orders from overseas have flowed out of China and into the hands of Southeast Asian countries. Among them, our biggest competitors are India and Vietnam, of course, in addition to Singapore, the Philippines, and Mexico, which is far away in America. But now it seems that the rapid economic growth of countries like India and Vietnam is likely to be just a flash in the pan. Under the United States' intensified harvesting, these Asian countries may regret the manufacturing orders they have obtained in the past.
Why do we say that?
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A while ago, the news of Foxconn's factory withdrawing from the Chinese market sparked discussions among netizens. What kind of impact would this have?
Firstly, Apple's supply chain has a market value of as high as two trillion dollars in China, and the OEM companies in Apple's supply chain provide 5 million jobs.
If Apple's supply chain withdraws from the Chinese market, it would cause a huge impact on the domestic talent market, with many people facing unemployment, which would also have a certain impact on the country's economic development.
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But in fact, even earlier, many of our country's manufacturing processes for bags, shoes, hats, and clothing have already been transferred to Vietnam. Some international big brands' manufacturing orders have almost all been transferred from mainland China to Vietnam.At that time, it also sparked a lot of discussions and concerns, but now it seems that the problem is not as serious as we imagined.
The transfer of labor-intensive enterprises abroad is actually beneficial to our industrial upgrading and optimization.
On the contrary, the current situation in India and Vietnam shows that over-reliance on low-end manufacturing orders from Western countries is likely to be a huge trap.
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Due to continuous interest rate hikes in Europe and America, demand has significantly decreased, leading to a substantial decline in Vietnam's exports in the first quarter of this year, with a drop of nearly 12% compared to the same period last year.
According to incomplete statistics, there are already 43,000 enterprises in Vietnam that have ceased operations, and more enterprises have to adopt measures such as extending holidays and even laying off employees to save costs.
To cope with the existing economic difficulties, Vietnam has started to learn more from China and also treats trade with China as a priority.
But unfortunately, there is a certain problem with Vietnam's attitude.
Recently, there was news that China has taken strict measures on grain import orders from Vietnam and rejected a grain order of 9 million tons from Vietnam.
Why did China take such a tough attitude and measures?In recent years, Vietnam has consistently engaged in actions that harm China's interests. Moreover, the quality of Vietnamese products has been declining, yet the prices continue to rise.
As early as 2017, we had repeatedly returned Vietnamese fruit products due to excessive levels of agricultural residues, but Vietnam has not fundamentally addressed this issue since then.
However, in the current context of difficulties in exporting industrial products, Vietnam has no choice but to reconsider exporting agricultural products to China.
If as much as 9 million tons of grain cannot be exported, it would directly lead to losses and waste.
A significant amount of labor and resources have already been invested in the production and procurement of this batch of grain, and the grain will also become spoiled and wasted if stored for too long.
More importantly, this sends a clear signal that if one wants to rely on China's vast market to save its own economy, it must act according to the rules.
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Additionally, the situation in India is also far from ideal. In the past, India's economic development has been overly dependent on American funding and production orders.
Now that the United States is tightening its economic and monetary policies, India's economic bubble could burst at any time.
Wistron, one of Apple's contract manufacturers, has previously established operations in India, but there are recent rumors of a potential withdrawal from the country.This incident is merely a microcosm of India's current difficulties.
It has been proven that over-reliance on production orders from the United States is not a good thing.
Only now, looking back, do we realize that the so-called Chinese manufacturing orders being taken by India and Vietnam were just a necessary step in our proactive economic restructuring.