> Believe me, you don't want to hire the people left there in villages, even if they are young, and moderately educated. But in its majority, the labour that still drips from inland China is of lower quality kind.
To knock China off, a country needs quantity, not quality. But even then, once again, Vietnam doesn't have an advantage here. Skilled labor is still very much in short supply in Vietnam.
> Vietnam makes quite a lot of food, more than China by acreage by far. China is surprisingly agriculturally unproductive country.
But that's the point. Vietnam is agriculturally rich and farming is part of the fabric of the Vietnamese culture. The country will not give the Mekong Delta to industry in anywhere near the same way China was able to sacrifice large swaths of historically agricultural land to industry. See again the Pearl River Delta.
I'd personally love to see China replaced but post-COVID, spend some time in Vietnam or Bangladesh and it won't take you long to see that these countries are nowhere near close to mounting a serious challenge. Like I said, Vietnam has a very bright future and will gain, but it's not going to supplant China.
Vietnam is tiny, it's entire industries are said to be less than a single district of Dongguan... but
The lion share of China's light industry sits in the Guandong, and Shenzhen once famously had 50%+ of world's electronics output singlehandedly.
Everything else up north was economically inconsequential until GD became too expensive.
Guandong's population at the time was <100M. So it's well doable for both countries. A giant, giant influence here is where the winds of global capital will blow.
As it's said, Samsung is now 1/3 of Vietnam's GDP, and singlehandedly runs the whole supply chain for all what it makes there, and that is without Samsung group giving any special commitment to Vietnam. Imagine what will it be if Samsung decides to up the states, and move it's heavy industry, and Semi there.
If Foxconn, will decide on moving the "Foxconn city" into Vietnam, and other OEMs of the same size too, just every opportunity opens.
To knock China off, a country needs quantity, not quality. But even then, once again, Vietnam doesn't have an advantage here. Skilled labor is still very much in short supply in Vietnam.
> Vietnam makes quite a lot of food, more than China by acreage by far. China is surprisingly agriculturally unproductive country.
But that's the point. Vietnam is agriculturally rich and farming is part of the fabric of the Vietnamese culture. The country will not give the Mekong Delta to industry in anywhere near the same way China was able to sacrifice large swaths of historically agricultural land to industry. See again the Pearl River Delta.
I'd personally love to see China replaced but post-COVID, spend some time in Vietnam or Bangladesh and it won't take you long to see that these countries are nowhere near close to mounting a serious challenge. Like I said, Vietnam has a very bright future and will gain, but it's not going to supplant China.