BRIC+ News & comments

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Billy T, Aug 10, 2008.

  1. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    "... HP CEO Meg Whitman is telling the company's India workers that they won't be hit by HP's plans to cuts its global workforce. Earlier this year, HP announced plans to cut its workforce by 27,000 employees by 2014, or about 8% of its approximately 350,000 employees. One report said that about 9,000 of those workers would be in the U.S.

    In India, Whitman was interviewed by the Economic Times, and said this: "We are not reducing our workforce in India. We have announced a global workforce reduction, but India will stay largely intact, because we not only have all our business units here, but also our R&D and back office." ..." From: http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...man_says?source=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2012-08-14
     
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  3. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    China may essentially keep the one child per woman on average, by dramatic cultural change, not law:
    It ain´t the prudish China of a decade ago anymore. As article also notes, these well-off single women are a large growing market for personal items - part of why China is world´s leading market for top-of-the-line, brand-name, luxury goods.

    From another source: Half of all the world´s female billionaires are Chinese women!
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Single digit GDP growth only along the cost where labor costs are higher. Roughly speaking the sum of GDP growth plus annual salaries increase is about 30% through out China. In the US, this sum is about zero or slightly negative in some depressed areas.
    A small part of the shift westward of manufacturing is also due to fact domestic consumption of factory products (cell phones, TVs, clothes, motor bikes, etc.) is increasing faster than exports so being near a port is now less important, especially as the internal rail network is rapidly improving.
     
  8. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Billy T comment:Even in this depressed area, China´s growth is five times higher than the US average. Fortunately, for China the CCP foresaw that Europe, their largest trading partner, was slowly economically in 1999 and decided to make major investments in the development of the interior and western regions (The "go west" program) more details in my last post, 664. If map of China is still showing in 664, Zhejiang province is the pink eastern bulge of China and Guangdong, which Chairman Wen visited last weekend, is also light pink, both with only 7.4% GDP growth. For more on Wen´s visits and plans see: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-26/wen-says-china-need-measures-to-promote-export-growth.html
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 27, 2012
  9. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Billy T notes There are 300,000 Chinese working in Angola and 12 billion dollars has been invested there by China in the last 5 years. Most Chinese workers have contracts for a year or two and many stay after their contract is over. China now can operated as police in Angola, at least in cooperation with local police. Slowly oil and mineral rich Angola is becoming a Chinese colony.
     
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Drug testing is yet another billion dollar industry where out-sourcing of jobs is growing:

    I noted in post long ago that large organization that take many routine X-rays often send them thru the internet to an English speaking Indian doctor to read / interpretate during the US night for less than half the cost and patient never knows who read his X-ray and wrote the report. (Emergency case X-rays are read by a local doctor as a 12 hour delay is too much but of no importance if just checking all entering college students, etc. for TB etc.)*

    It is not just low skill level jobs that are being lost - many high skill jobs, especially in IT (software design) are too. US has no longer has an advantage in most levels of scientific knowledge - Its average math/science educational levels are poor compared to many other nations now but US students do throw the best parties.

    * I was very poor had dozens of short term jobs at Cornell. One was to help with entering freshmen´s chest X-rays. When a pretty girl was only a few people back in the line, I started asking everyone for their name and phone number, "In case we needed to call them back." In two or three days, I had more than 100 pretty girl´s names and phone numbers.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 28, 2012
  11. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Its nice to be rapidly growing richer:
    And clever to not keep your wealth in dollars, but buy real, not paper, assets especially farms.
     
  12. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    As is generally the trend in offshoring, those are jobs that will no longer exist at all in another ten years. Instead, this stuff will simply be done by automated machine vision systems. Offshoring is the last link down the value chain before outright automation - the fact that the USA has advanced to the point where it is offshoring x-ray analysis is evidence of how huge America's lead in development is.

    The fact of some offshoring does not necessarily imply that any jobs are "lost" in the home country (or anywhere else). In many cases, the ability to use cheap foreign workers for certain tasks enables companies to grow faster, sell more products, and so support even more local jobs than they would have otherwise. This is exactly the case in every high-tech job I've ever had - without the cheap foreign labor doing the grunt-work, we wouldn't have been any work for the high-end local labor.

    If you want to analyze "job losses," then you need to do an analysis of the entire sector and show that there is a corresponding reduction in employment in the buyer country. This stuff is not, in general, a zero-sum game. That being exactly why mercantilism doesn't work so good in the long run.

    That's not true.

    Science and technology competitiveness is not driven by the average math/science educational levels of the populace as a whole. The "competitive advantage" that India has is an oversupply of educated workers (relative to the local industry capable of employing them) and general poverty - these guys will work for pennies on the dollar, which makes it advantageous to offshore stuff despite the costs (uneven worker skills, high turnover, concerns about IP protection). Somehow, I doubt that you'd recommend widespread poverty and lack of local companies willing to employ educated workers as a sensible strategy for American competitiveness, so it's strange that you trumpet such as evidence of India surpassing the USA. A situation in which India was surpassing the USA would be one in which Indian companies were outsourcing work to America, not the other way around.

    That is really creepy and unethical. I can only assume that you never tried to actually pursue these women via the contact info that you defrauded them of, or you would have been told as much by them and probably also your erstwhile employer (as you were given your final paycheck and sent to find work elsewhere). Or are you old enough that that sort of sexist impropriety was still considered acceptable at the time?
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2012
  13. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Please explain this twisted logic. How does replacing a US doctor with an Indian doctor to read X-rays show anything but that they are cheaper to use?

    LoL !!! Perhaps you do not know that nearly half of new drugs tested fail because of liver toxicity? Or that > 90% fail because of problems that are not even visible. Your "automated machine vision systems" could detect rash, but in quite a few recently developed and now marketed drugs, that is an acceptable side effect and a sign the drug is working!

    Tarceva is a very important solid (tumor) cancer drug (one of the top 10 cancer drugs in the global market). It works by preventing the tumor from growing new blood vessels it needs to expand. Although FDA has officially approved it for three major cancer types it is widely used "off label" for most solid tumors as cheaper than Avastin.

    Avastin works the same way and main side effect is hypertension. It is FDA approved for 6 different major cancers, and your "automated machine vision systems" will not detect hypertension. Avastin has ANNUAL global sales in excess of 6 billion dollars! - http://www.evaluatepharma.com/Unive...oduct&lType=modData&id=12174&componentID=1002

    I think total Tarceva sales are > 3 billion dollars now:
    Tarceva is a "block buster" drug in the industry slang but Avastin is huge "block buster" drug.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 29, 2012
  14. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    ? That is just a rephrasing of my exact point in different terms. US doctors have better things to do than read X-rays, so they outsource that grunt work to technicians (typically not doctors themselves) elsewhere. That represents American doctors moving up the value chain. That is exactly why they are more expensive than Indian technicians further down the value chain.

    My comments on machine vision were addressing the x-ray outsourcing issue specifically. It was a typo on my part that I included your sentence on drug trials in that quote, which I have now fixed. For your part, you need to go and remove your edit to your quote of me to assert that I was referring to clinical trials specifically there. Even in light of my error in including that sentence in the quote, it is not a defensible reading of my output that I was referring to clinical trials specifically - and not x-ray analysis - with the phrase "those jobs." In either case, my meaning should now be crystal clear and I expect you to edit your response accordingly.

    As to outsourcing of clinical trials: again, the fact that Indians are willing to take unknown risks with their health for less compensation than Americans are - to serve as literal guinea pigs - is exactly a sign that America has moved farther up the value chain than India.

    Moreover, I note that you have - typically - declined to respond to the major substance of my response to you, and instead siezed onto a minor tangent to run with. That is your prerogative, of course, but it also amounts to conceding all of the unanswered points in question. More to the point, I expect you to refrain from attempting to reiterate those same assertions at a later date without answering the substance of my responses. To do so would be a dishonorable evasive tactic.
     
  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I don´t have time to correct all your false statements, so usually just comment on the first false one. I´ll do one more, since you asked me to comment more on your post. I had said:
    But you cut off (an intentional dishonest distortion?) the continuation explaining what I meant by “most levels” and only quoted the first half (part now bold) and said:
    But it is true and very well documented in many studies. Here is an exceptionally complete recent one:
    At the Ph.D. and above level the US may have more students at higher achievement level than most other countries, but a disproportional percentage of their students are orientals. Furthermore, most Chinese students in the US´s best school (Ivy league, Stanford, MIT, etc.) had them as their third or fouth choice and only came as they could not get into their preferred schools. More details on this here:
    It takes me more effort to refute your claims as I give supporting documentation - don´t just make assertions as you often do. I just don´t have time to do this for everything false in your posts. For example, your false three word assertion only ("That´s not true") forced this long post showing that it is true.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 30, 2012
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks to PM from Workaholic, I learned of this article, called: "China´s rise, America´s fall" which includes these two paragraphs:

    I have also noted in several prior posts that in last decade alone, China has made the greatest and fastest urbanization in human history - now slightly more than half of all Chinese live in urban areas. Doing that for much smaller migration in the USA took more than half a century. Allowing the peasants to lease their inefficient tiny family farms to giant agri-corporations was completely against Communist doctrine, but done as more efficient food production was essential with China´s limited fertile land. Part of why rural incomes are up so dramatically is that the former "pig farmers" * now have salaries from jobs in the city PLUS their farm lease rents.

    Article also notes that: "... over the last 30 years, real per capita income in China has grown by more than 1,300 percent. " and during the 30 years of the US´s rapid urbanization (1870 to 1900) real, per capita, incomes rose only 100%. Currently real incomes in US have declined 7.2% since 2007. As source quoted in post 645 noted: "China produced 600,000 graduates with engineering degrees last year. The U.S.? Only 70,000." (and they seem at least as well educated as those of the US). The dragon is awaking and the world is shaking as Napoleon predicted it would. With the recent upward revision of 2Q12 US GDP growth, (from 1.5 to 1.7%) China in its current "slump" is growing slightly less than five times faster than the US is.

    Article also notes that: "... some high-tech China exports are indeed fully Chinese, notably those of Huawei, which now ranks alongside Sweden’s Ericsson as one of the world’s two leading telecommunications manufacturers, while once powerful North American competitors such Lucent-Alcatel and Nortel have fallen into steep decline or even bankruptcy. And although America originally pioneered the Human Genome Project, the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) today probably stands as the world leader in that enormously important emerging scientific field. ..." I´ll also note despite having lost the reference, that Bill Gate´s large health efforts in Africa, gets all their vaccines from China as they are both cheaper and more effective. China also developed the most effective vaccine against "swine flue" in record time - less than one month! The article´s claim that China is leading the world in this important new scientific field has lots of support.

    * No insult here as the 700,000 Chinese peasant farmers were raising more pigs than the rest of the world was. - Pork is the favorite meat of the Chinese. With the rapid increase in typical Chinese incomes and associated increase in pork consumption, China will need to have nearly twice as many pigs as the rest of the world does and import much more corn, etc. to feed them. This year 1,340,000,000 Chinese are expected to eat 104,000,000,000 pounds of pork or 77.6 pounds for every man, woman and child. That is 0.21lbs per day so probably will not double for about a decade.

    SUMMARY: It is a very long, well documented, fact filled, article all who don´t mind having their "US is the greatest" myth destroyed should read.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 30, 2012
  17. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    I can assure you that the "fully Chinese" Huawei in fact employs a great number of Westerners, located in the West, to handle the high-end R&D work. What "fully Chinese" seems to imply here is that they are incorporated in China and the top-level management and manufacturing is Chinese. I can also assure that Huawei is a firmly second-rate company that produces second-rate technology and second-rate products.

    And meanwhile, other North American competitors such as Qualcomm, Broadcomm, Apple, etc. are flourishing. This article looks like so much more of the one-sided, half-truth material written to cater to the China obsession in the West. The fact that if you ignore all of the problems in China and ignore all of the successes in the West, that China looks great, is just that.

    And this is moreover, exactly what we'd expect from Ron Unz's American Conservative - this is a dedicated paleoconservative politician you are quoting here. He is looking to use China as a bogeyman to make hay for his pre-existing political agenda - and not pursuing objective, unbiased economic analysis. It is unsurprising that this would appeal to you, of course, since you seem to be on the same ideological page as Unz. But the fact remains that this is just so much of him telling you what the both of you want to hear, as a propaganda effort to bolster his own politics. Read his article if you like, but it is dishonest of you to present it as unbiased, factual analysis and not as politicized output. This article is the equivalent of quoting Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich - which you'd presumably know if you'd bothered to google the guy and his mouthpiece publication that you are quoting from.

    Not to shit on the BGI, which does lots of good work, but this again misrepresents the actual state of things in genomics.

    Not in the article, it doesn't. That article literally does not say anything about genomics other than the single sentence that you quoted.

    Also, you are lapsing into bad quoting style again, mixing quotes and comments without strong delineation.

    Meanwhile, here is an article by Minxin Pei, a leading expert on Chinese governance and development:

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/29/everything_you_think_you_know_about_china_is_wrong

    The latest news from Beijing is indicative of Chinese weakness: a persistent slowdown of economic growth, a glut of unsold goods, rising bad bank loans, a bursting real estate bubble, and a vicious power struggle at the top, coupled with unending political scandals. Many factors that have powered China's rise, such as the demographic dividend, disregard for the environment, supercheap labor, and virtually unlimited access to external markets, are either receding or disappearing.

    [...]

    The disconnect between the brewing troubles in China and the seemingly unshakable perception of Chinese strength persists even though the U.S. media accurately cover China, in particular the country's inner fragilities. One explanation for this disconnect is that elites and ordinary Americans remain poorly informed about China and the nature of its economic challenges in the coming decades. The current economic slowdown in Beijing is neither cyclical nor the result of weak external demand for Chinese goods. China's economic ills are far more deeply rooted: an overbearing state squandering capital and squeezing out the private sector, systemic inefficiency and lack of innovation, a rapacious ruling elite interested solely in self-enrichment and the perpetuation of its privileges, a woefully underdeveloped financial sector, and mounting ecological and demographic pressures. Yet even for those who follow China, the prevailing wisdom is that though China has entered a rough patch, its fundamentals remain strong.

    [...]

    It is of course premature to completely write off the Communist Party's capacity for adaptation and renewal. China could come roaring back in a few years, and the United States should not ignore this possibility. But the party's demise can't be ruled out, and the current signs of trouble in China have provided invaluable clues to such a highly probable seismic shift.​

    Similarly, here is Patrick Chovanec, a leading analyst of Chinese economics (and professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, the premier economics institution in China):

    http://chovanec.wordpress.com/

    1) China’s economy is not just slowing, it is entering a serious correction. The investment bubble that has been driving Chinese growth has popped, and there are no quick “stimulus” fixes left. There is the very real possibility of some form of financial crisis in China before year’s end.

    2) China is in the midst of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition that has not been going smoothly. The transition will take place, but it has paralyzed the Chinese leadership’s ability to respond to the country’s growing economic troubles. China’s leaders believe time is on their side; they do not “get” how serious and urgent the situation is, and that what has always “worked” is no longer working.

    3) China’s economic problems spell trouble for the U.S. on several fronts.

    First, China is flirting with devaluing its currency to boost exports—a move that will put it in direct conflict with Mitt Romney’s commitments on this issue.
    Second, China is already dumping excess capacity in steel and other products onto the export market, a tactic that is likely to inflame trade tensions and reinforce imbalances in the global economy.
    Third, in a worst case scenario, China may be tempted to provoke a conflict in the South China Sea to redirect popular discontent onto an external enemy.​

    My advice is not really partisan in nature. The points I outline are equally relevant for any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, to take into account. Nor are they meant to inflame China-bashing rhetoric. In fact, they reveal that fears of an unstoppable Chinese juggernaut are misplaced or outdated. What we really should be worried about is a China that is stumbling badly and doesn’t know what to do next.​
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2012
  18. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Your unsupported opinion is not worth much compared to:

    and hardly consistent with fact that Huawei recently over took Ericssion to become the world´s largest telecommunication company.
    But in keeping with my policy I only correct your first error. - don´t want to waste more time on you.

    Day later by edit:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 31, 2012
  19. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Can't say I care about any of that stuff. I am an expert on the technologies that Huawei produces and have worked closely with them before, seen what is under the hood, run competitive analyses on it, etc. They throw a lot of money around and burn through employees at a staggering rate, but have yet to really build up any impressive technological base. They have a lot of "good enough" technologies that are sufficient for them to sustain a product base, but are not technology leaders by any means.

    All that means is that they have a lot of cash. It doesn't imply that they produce the best technology. Nor does Ericsson, for that matter.

    You did not cite an "error," but a simple difference of opinion, in the first place.

    In the second place, your "policy" is nothing more than an obvious tactic to evade substantial engagement, downplay material that you have no good response to, and instead derail the interaction into some tangential quibble that you would prefer to beat your drum on. I regard this behavior as cheap and dishonorable in the first place, and moreover as a highly petty, dishonest method of conceding the points in question. I will furthermore thank you to refrain from your insulting troll tactic of responding simply to say that you are not going to respond and issue hollow dismissals of my output. You are acting like a child in grade school.
     
  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    There is really no point in replying to Quadraphonics with facts that dispute his unsupported personal opinions.
    He knows better

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    about the quality of Huawei products than:

    (1) British Telecom who recognized Huawei as Best in Class (for Maturity, Value, Service and Innovation)
    (2) LTE World Summit in May 2011, (for Best LTE Network Elements.)
    (3) The Economist which recognized Huawei with its Corporate Innovation Award.
    (4) Frost & Sullivan which recognized Huawei as SDM Equipment Vendor of Year 2010
    (5) Fast Company which ranked Huawei as the fifth most innovative company in the world in 2010.
    (6) Forbes magazine as one of six telecom industry companies World's Most Respected 200 Companies.
    (7) BusinessWeek magazine included Huawei in their inaugural list of "The World's Most Influential Companies".
    (8) Huawei received three honors at the 2010 Global Telecom Business Innovation Awards:
    "Green base station innovation",
    "Wholesale network innovation" and
    "Consumer voting innovation" awards.

    As Quadraphonics is:
    And can assure me that:
    Can there be any doubt? after Quadraphonics has looked inside: :geek: :roflmao:

    But it is strange how a "second rate" company became the world´s largest telecommunications supplier. See the fantastic specs on just released (in China, but soon the world) new tablet, using their own developed 1.4GHz quad-core processor, at end of prior post.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 31, 2012
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    The body language revels who has needs and who holds the strong hand.
    Figure´s original caption is: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao travel on a high-speed train from Beijing to Tianjin.

    She went there to tour an Airbus plant in Tianjin, but it must have been a little awkward if she knew that the Chinese bought their first moderate speed trains from Germany to get started and then nearly doubled their speed with Chinese technology and world´s most extensive high speed tracks.
     
  22. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    ANd yet, you are all set to do so anyway. Why, if there's no point? Just to vent your spite and contempt with a bunch of repetitive taunting and baiting smileys? Real impressive.

    There might actually be, if you had any. But all you are supplying is opinions:

    That's correct. You are citing the opinions of a bunch of puff-piece business writers, and not engineers with hands-on experience with Huawei technology or direct experience working with Huawei engineers.

    Also, note that almost none of those accolades you cite there say anything about the quality of Huawei's technology or products. It's mostly stuff about "influence" and "respect" and "maturity" and "value." Heck, a bunch of them don't even state that Huawei is particularly great - despite your attempts at bolding the reader to death - but just say stuff like "top 5" or "one of 6" or "on the list."

    Anyway, you can find such puffery for just about any reasonably successfully company out there. Such being exactly what the business puff press exists to produce.

    Not particularly. They mass-produce cheap products with feature sets that copy-cat the current leaders, and accept a lower margin to undercut them. Just like how pretty much every technology sector eventually becomes commodified and dominated by a lowest common denominator. We're all familiar with lots of famous examples of second-rate technology coming to dominate big sectors: VHS, Windows, etc.

    That stuff is again second-rate kit, living in the shadow of offerings by the likes of Apple and Samsung (the actual market leaders). It's the same in smartphones, etc.
     
  23. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    So you're just going to gossip about things you read into photos in this post? No serious attempt at data or analysis or actual relevance to anything serious?
     

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