Most of the time, I don't personally look at it as cheap labour because I am just ordering, e.g. 60,000 of something or 100,000 of something else.

It's cheap, yes. I can indeed buy 1,000 of something more locally or from other than China.

But when it comes to scale, needing vast shipments, then they are the ones who can actually ship it and do it reliably. It just also happens to be cheaper, too, which is more of a convenience or cherry on top, than the actual attractive part: vast scale.

And trust, probably the most valuable commodity.

Three or four decades of proven ability to deliver, trusted relationships.

Even despite all the political noise.

The industry basically treats any designs sent to China as a loss since they know it will be duplicated

I don't think trust has much to do with it

If you know it will happen, it is a part of price.

I believe Parent is talking about trust in the ability to deliver on promises, not in handling of IP.

Oh I agree. But I'd say trust is the wrong word

They're reliable, but would you really trust them?

I think there's a bit of nuance there to differentiate the 2 though.

Maybe I'm jaded from working with overseas factories though in ways others wouldn't be.

Are you saying you don’t reverse engineer your competitors, and friends, products?

I'm not contracted out to build a product for these companies or people like a factory would be

So not really a good comparison

When you have the design it takes away alot of the need to even reverse engineer in the first place

That's a good clarification.

Trust implies shared values/worldview and past experiences where outcomes match expectations. Also respect.

Trust is not possible when there are regularly incongruous outcomes, or where definition of respect / values are just aren't aligned.

Do you think your counterparts overseas believe themselves to be as trustable as you are, and it's just a cultural rift? Or is that too charitable?

China sent tiktok the the US, the gifted geniuses of silicon valley duplicated it and when their clones were garbage they just took it and said "we own this now"

It's not remotely cheap. A long time ago the cheap labor moved from places like China to places like Mexico, which is one of the reasons so many automotive manufacturing plants there - just a rail ride across the border.

Now that hasn't been the case for more than a decade. The cheap labor is in SE Asia and South America.

What China has is decades of process improvement, factories, infrastructure, experience, and a willingness to work. They haven't been the cheapest, by far, for a long while.