Vietnam’s rise strikes a blow to central western China

WHILE it seems like China will remain the world’s factory for now, despite the relocation of some low-end manufacturing to Vietnam and other South-east Asian nations, industrial development in the central western regions of China has already been affected.

Li Mingjiang, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said that one objective of China’s Go West campaign is to move some industries from eastern coastal regions – once development there hits saturation point – to second and third tier cities in the less developed central western region.

But the pandemic and the China-United States trade war have led Western countries to step up efforts to diversify from China, leading to some low-end manufacturing operations being moved abroad. City and county-level economies in China’s central western region face severe challenges in industrialisation, said Li: “Even for basic or low-end industrialisation, there are very few opportunities.”