Monday, September 30, 2024


12:28  They burn down the factory to get insurance money.  That's the low-end guys.  Not the high-end, BYD, EV manufacturers.  So, yeah, there is deflation and there is restructuring going on and it's going to take time for China to move away from the lower-end to the high-end stuff up the value chain and for these traditional factories that work for the West to migrate to something else.  That's going to take time.  That's why I see and actually translates into the real estate market as well because the biggest buyers of Chinese real estate are the small factory owners in China.  They were making money for the last 20 years, right?  And now they have to scale back?  Well, they're not buying as many properties in China even when prices have gone down by 50%

13:35  So these small factories that are at the low end of the value chain that are losing market share over to Southeast Asia, some of them are already closing, how much of an impact is this transition going to have on the overall economy, or is it an impact, yes, but the overall Chinese economy can weather this storm and come out of this transition you're talking about in a more powerful way where they don't have as much low-end? 

14:06  So the low-end guys, what they've been doing is opening factories overseas.  Some of them even open factories in Mexico, right?  How do I know?  Because I'm in the industry; I mean these are the people I know.  But then some of the money comes back to China because their families are in China.  They're not really immigrating to Mexico.  I mean they're running a factory in Mexico.  They're running a factory in Vietnam, right?  But they're still living, their families are still living in China, so a lot of that money is still going back to China, right?  So that's part of it.  So that's how they contribute to the Chinese economy.  Another thing that is happening is that some of these low-end guys are trying to find the value chain themselves to make products that have high value, right, for the West.  So we that happening, but again it takes time.  So this transition right now is definitely a painful period for China, for sure, we can see that with the deflation that is happening but I expect it to change or transit out of it by probably the next 3 to 4 years.  That's what I see. 

15:42  Interesting.  It sounds like from what you're describing that the low-end which is being impacted the greatest over there, the low-end manufacturing, they're actually, many of them, not all of them, are adapting already or maybe got out in front of this by moving some of their operations to other countries. 

16:05  Yes, and also some of them are trying to manufacture for the domestic market in China.  Because of what's happening China also online shopping, like Alibaba has really picked up steam in the last couple of years, right, and a lot of factories have sales direct from factory to consumer, who in China we call it

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