The American Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, was alarmed: he visited various Chinese automotive industries and concluded that they will eliminate the American ones (only?); if measures are not taken quickly… The production cost and quality of vehicles far exceeds what we know in the West, he confessed (or warned) to the British Telegraph.
The Englishman Greg Jackson, CEO of the energy company Octopus, was stunned. He visited a Chinese mobile phone production factory – he didn’t see a single person anywhere (he said). This automated factory produces an astronomical number of mobile phones, he told the same newspaper. I entered a factory where there were only a few technicians, just to oversee that the factory is operating. China’s competitiveness has moved beyond low wages and government subsidies, and is now in a phase of specialized, well-educated engineers who innovate like crazy.
The Australian Andrew Forrest, a mining magnate, canceled his plans for an electric motor manufacturing unit for vehicles, after visiting a Chinese truck factory. He was shocked. If you go to factories now in China, you’ll find yourself next to a large conveyor belt and you’ll see assembly robots emerging from the floor to work. And after walking 800 or 900 meters alongside this conveyor belt, you’ll see a ready-made truck coming out, he said.
Robots, robots, robots: Western executives are running around frantically trying to catch up with China’s devilish productive and technological power/capital; only to realize that the gap with it keeps growing wider. Chinese Unitree has already captured 60% of the global market for “quadruped” robots, leaving American Boston Dynamics—which was a pioneer—to run and not even come close.
And we’re only at 2025…