China's Advanced Automated Production

There's a common US talking point falsely claiming that China's manufactured goods are so affordable because workers supposedly aren't paid well.

That's not true. It's simply cope. Wages in China are much higher than in neighboring countries in South and Southeast Asia.

China produces goods so cheaply because:

1. A lot of the production in advanced manufacturing is now automated, using robots. (This video shows a car plant in China today.)

2. China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) significantly reduce the costs of production by providing important services (like energy, mining, metalworking, transportation, telecommunications, etc.) as cheaply as possible, because they are publicly owned companies whose mission is to serve the real economy, not to maximize profits and returns to shareholders.

3. The Chinese government invests heavily in high-quality infrastructure, as well as public education to train technical workers, engineers, and scientists.

4. State-owned banks provide very favorable loans at low interest rates to manufacturers, prioritizing growth in the real economy over financial speculation.

5. Through careful planning, China developed a complex supply chain that is largely local, inside the country. China can produce pretty much anything, and no longer relies much on importing many parts and capital goods from abroad.

6. In the private sector (which China officially calls the "non-public sector"), the government cracks down on monopolies, in order to ensure competition leads to lower costs for consumers.

In short, the Chinese government minimizes overhead by using public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy (ie, socialism) to significantly reduce production costs, making manufacturing very efficient.

This is the opposite of the US capitalist model, which privatizes natural monopolies, maximizes overhead (see: its insanely inefficient healthcare and insurance industries), and allows for-profit companies to charge exorbitant monopoly rents that make the costs of production prohibitively expensive. But, this system maximizes shareholder value, which is all that matters to the US government and ruling class at the end of the day.