FOXCONN moving fabs?

[Bombastinator]

11 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

Yeah, US local infrastructure might be pretty terrible lately and passenger rail is a joke, but you can't deny that US trucking and industrial rail is still going strong.

US Passenger rail has been a joke since the 70’s.  Aircraft ate passenger rail a long while back.  It still exists in Europe because distances are smaller and population density is higher.  Favors rail.  If European countries were bigger it would be gone there too.  Rail has an advantage in that boarding is faster and seating is more comfortable. It’s slower though. As distances get greater the advantages of rail disappear.  
Government  kept it going on a shoestring in case it turned out that there was a problem with aircraft it would be a lot easier to bring back.  Lo and behold such has to a degree come to pass. Trains have gotten faster and airline boarding has gotten slower. 

[thechinchinsong]

Just now, Donut417 said:

Not really short sighted. China is vastly mountainous as a result most of the population lives in the small area. You can only cram so many people in that given area. The other issue is people are living longer, which has caused the issues. 

Maybe short-sighted is the wrong word, but too tunnel-visioned on one area of policy only to fall short in another. I agree with what you said, but I think the PRC could have planned better for this kind of inevitable outcome from such an intense policy of population control. If the PRC government are willingly to go so far as to control population growth, they should have gone equally as far in predicting and planning for the outcomes. Perhaps it's just that hindsight is 20/20 but for such an extreme measure, more caution should have been used.

Just now, Donut417 said:

Only accessible depending on the administration in charge. In recent years the US has become very anti immigration. Hell even the people sneaking in are not always staying. I hear some people cross the Southern border just to cross the Northern Boarder in to Canada. 

It's true that Trump has been very anti-immigration, but you have to note that US policy even in the most anti-immigration years pretty normal or tame compared to what is present in many Asian countries. It's not even about the immigration policies themselves. Can you honestly say that if the PRC suddenly made the most lax immigration laws in the world that there would be significant interest in immigrating to China? I can see people signing up to immigrate to Japan and Korea and the US, but China? I was born there and I have doubts about immigrating back ever.

[thechinchinsong]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

US Passenger rail has been a joke since the 70’s.  Aircraft ate passenger rail a long while back.  It still exists in Europe because distances are smaller and population density is higher.  Favors rail.  If European countries were bigger it would be gone there too.  Rail has an advantage in that boarding is faster and seating is more comfortable. It’s slower though. As distances get greater the advantages of rail disappear.  
Government  kept it going on a shoestring in case it turned out that there was a problem with aircraft it would be a lot easier to bring back.  Lo and behold such has to a degree come to pass. Trains have gotten faster and airline boarding has gotten slower. 

I mean I know Amtrak on the East Coast has at least passable service (although paling in comparison to similar length routes in Europe, China, and Japan) so thats at least something. One counterpoint is that China has similar size compared to the US, but has a pretty great national rail system. But its pretty obvious in China due to socio-political, economic, and technological reasons for the rail development there.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

Maybe short-sighted is the wrong word, but too tunnel-visioned on one area of policy only to fall short in another. I agree with what you said, but I think the PRC could have planned better for this kind of inevitable outcome from such an intense policy of population control. If the PRC government are willingly to go so far as to control population growth, they should have gone equally as far in predicting and planning for the outcomes. Perhaps it's just that hindsight is 20/20 but for such an extreme measure, more caution should have been used.

It's true that Trump has been very anti-immigration, but you have to note that US policy even in the most anti-immigration years pretty normal or tame compared to what is present in many Asian countries. It's not even about the immigration policies themselves. Can you honestly say that if the PRC suddenly made the most lax immigration laws in the world that there would be significant interest in immigrating to China? I can see people signing up to immigrate to Japan and Korea and the US, but China? I was born there and I have doubts about immigrating back ever.

You been to majimapoor province in India?  Or Ghana?  There are worse places than China. There are people in India who literally spend their entire lives in a mud pit making bricks for a dude that lives in a 400 year old mansion.  Even tier 4 China.  You immigrated to a nice place.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

I mean I know Amtrak on the East Coast has at least passable service (although paling in comparison to similar length routes in Europe, China, and Japan) so thats at least something. One counterpoint is that China has similar size compared to the US, but has a pretty great national rail system. But its pretty obvious in China due to socio-political, economic, and technological reasons for the rail development there.

They built rail instead of aircraft.  No money for fuel.  China has more feet of rail per capita than any country in the world.  Till 20 years ago it was all coal fired steam locomotives but the general rail track system is the same one standardized by the US army during the civil war.  It would be hard for aircraft to make inroads at this point. Give it 30 years though you may see changes. 

[thechinchinsong]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Till 20 years ago it was all coal fired steam locomotives but the general rail track system is the same one standardized by the US army during the civil war.  It would be hard for aircraft to make inroads at this point. Give it 30 years though you may see changes. 

Really? I thought diesel locomotives have been around since the 70's. Also, I thought you said before that the US has and still in an air-based passenger transport system, so why would aircraft need to make inroads?

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

Really? I thought diesel locomotives have been around since the 70's. Also, I thought you said before that the US has and still in an air-based passenger transport system, so why would aircraft need to make inroads?

Around yes. In China not as much. They probably have more of them than any other country but they’ve got even more trains. diesel would have to be imported.  Coal was the preferred fuel because China has a great deal of coal. I understand they did eventually disappear.  China had some of the last truly working steam locomotives in the world though. Made economic sense. Steam is more of a PITA but a fast steam locomotive is just as fast as a diesel one. The really fast trains are electric.

[williamcll]

While this thread has certainly gone off-topic. I do think the states is rather behind in terms of rail. If the french could build a train that could hit 400KPH across the country in the 70s I think the US can too.

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, williamcll said:

While this thread has certainly gone off-topic. I do think the states is rather behind in terms of rail. If the french could build a train that could hit 400KPH across the country in the 70s I think the US can too.

You make two good points:

1: this has gotten silly regarding a discussion of Foxconn 

2: the US passenger rail system has been on life support ever since transam was formed. (Rail companies were offered air travel stuff btw.  They didn’t want it because why would they?  New fangled aircraft couldn’t do a thing to passenger rail. Lol.) 

 

They might be able to do it across a state.  Would be about the same length.  The problem is the only places that would have value are more or less megalopolises so they basically can’t be built. 
 

Back to Foxconn and US movement though.  A multinational is by definition multi national.  I do not believe that opening a US group would even significantly reduce the size of the chinese presence.  If they were moving OUT of China they’d be moving to multiple places. They might eventually do that of course. The next country they expanded to might see a reduction in Chinese presence come with it. 

[thechinchinsong]

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Back to Foxconn and US movement though.  A multinational is by definition multi national.  I do not believe that opening a US group would even significantly reduce the size of the chinese presence.  If they were moving OUT of China they’d be moving to multiple places. They might eventually do that of course. The next country they expanded to might see a reduction in Chinese presence come with it. 

Yeah, don't really see Foxconn intentionally shut down Chinese manufacturing right now. Its less move out of China and more expand/diversify where it just so happens that first country Foxconn publicly announcing being the US. Although because of current events, there are a good variety of reasons for Foxconn to announce a US expansion.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, thechinchinsong said:

Yeah, don't really see Foxconn intentionally shut down Chinese manufacturing right now. Its less move out of China and more expand/diversify where it just so happens that first country Foxconn publicly announcing being the US. Although because of current events, there are a good variety of reasons for Foxconn to announce a US expansion.

Emphasis on “announce”.  Whether it actually happens is another question.

[StDragon]

15 hours ago, williamcll said:

While this thread has certainly gone off-topic. I do think the states is rather behind in terms of rail. If the french could build a train that could hit 400KPH across the country in the 70s I think the US can too.

Our rail hasn't advanced because the focus has been on industrial transportation, not civilian. Time = money. If people find it advantageous to drive or fly to other cities, they will continue to do so.

 

Travel time is more than just the distance while in motion. It's about walking/driving to the bus or trains station, waiting for it to arrive/depart, then finding alternate transportation to reach the final leg of the journey. Often the total amount of time is less to just drive as you're eliminating all of the other iterative steps in the process that flying, busing, or using a train would have been required to traverse through.

[thechinchinsong]

6 hours ago, StDragon said:

Our rail hasn't advanced because the focus has been on industrial transportation, not civilian. Time = money. If people find it advantageous to drive or fly to other cities, they will continue to do so.

 

Travel time is more than just the distance while in motion. It's about walking/driving to the bus or trains station, waiting for it to arrive/depart, then finding alternate transportation to reach the final leg of the journey. Often the total amount of time is less to just drive as you're eliminating all of the other iterative steps in the process that flying, busing, or using a train would have been required to traverse through.

At this point is the chicken egg problem in the US for rail. One can point out how good rail is in certain Asian countries and in Europe, but they've already had the passenger infrastructure and surrounding logistics in place for decades (for one reason or another), while the US would really need to rebuild/improve those key convenience points that you brought up.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, thechinchinsong said:

At this point is the chicken egg problem in the US for rail. One can point out how good rail is in certain Asian countries and in Europe, but they've already had the passenger infrastructure and surrounding logistics in place for decades (for one reason or another), while the US would really need to rebuild/improve those key convenience points that you brought up.

There’s another issue too: right of way. This is a gigantic problem with even road building.  The simplest description is chinese “nail houses”.which are in no way a solely chinese thing.  They’ve got some impressive photography though. 
 It can get al or more complicated than that.  There have been instances in my city alone where single trees have been named Native American sacred sites, exclusively for the purpose of redirecting roadways towards nail houses.  If the construction of something nag reduces a property value there is going to be complaint, and trains are notoriously noisy.  The majority of the cost of “the big dig” was paying damages to people who were going to be impacted.  There was large implication that much of this was to people who bought property with the express hope of being compensated.  I dont know how much of it was true, but it probably happened in at least some cases.  It can be done slowly or quickly, but one way or another it happens.