Global firms are eyeing Asian alternatives to Chinese manufacturing

IN 1987 Panasonic made an adventurous bet on China. At the time the electronics giant’s home country, Japan, was a global manufacturing powerhouse and the Chinese economy was no larger than Canada’s. So when the company entered a Chinese joint venture to make cathode-ray tubes for its televisions in Beijing, eyebrows were raised. Before long other titans of consumer electronics, from Japan and elsewhere, were also piling into China to take advantage of its abundant and cheap labour. Three-and-a-half decades on, China is the linchpin of the multitrillion-dollar consumer-electronics industry. Its exports of electronic goods and components amounted to US$1trn in 2021, out of a global total of US$3.3trn. These days, it takes a brave firm to avoid China.

Increasingly, however, under a weighty combination of commercial and political pressure, foreign companies are beginning to pluck up the courage if not to leave China entirely, then at least to look beyond it for growth. Chinese labour is no longer that cheap: between 2013 and 2022 manufacturing wages doubled, to an average of US$8.27 per hour. More important, the deepening techno-decoupling between Beijing and Washington is forcing manufacturers of high-tech products, especially those involving advanced semiconductors, to reconsider their reliance on China.

Between 2020 and 2022 the number of Japanese companies operating in China fell from around 13,600 to 12,700, according to Teikoku Databank, a research firm. On January 29 it was reported that Sony plans to move production of cameras sold in Japan and the West from China to Thailand. Samsung, a South Korean firm, has slashed its Chinese workforce by more than two-thirds since a peak in 2013. Dell, an American computer-maker, is reportedly aiming to stop using Chinese-made chips by 2024.