Comment on Tesla's European car sales nosedive for fifth month as customers switch to Chinese EVs
Pirate@feddit.org 2 weeks agoIf you think Xi Jinping is dictating what BYD does then you don’t understand the fundamentals as to why China managed to attract so much foreign investment in the first place.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Foreign investment was because of cheap labor and companies being subsidized by the communist government…
BYD might make a better car than Tesla, but saying that a Chinese company isn’t “under the control of Xi Jingping”, the guy who crushed Hong Kong for having too much independence and wants to do the same with Taiwan, is laughable.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
That’s actually a bit of a myth you know. Labour in China used to be dirt cheap 30 years ago but that’s not the case now. You need experts to build cars and they demand an appropriate salary. They probably don’t get paid as much as they would in the west but they’re not being paid pennies an hour either. However the idea that China is cheap has persisted.
There’s a reason that Apple doesn’t make the iPhone there anymore. It was getting too expensive ie they were being asked to pay for a decent wage, and they weren’t prepared to.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I was more saying cheap “when companies moved in”. Now it just has the workforce and supply chain knowledge/infrastructure because of those investments.
Corporate fucktard assholes are running out of cheap labor around the world. They keep moving it around, but eventually there won’t be any place to go.
Pirate@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Just take that sentence at face value and consider the ridiculousness of actually believing the guy alone has that amount of crushing power.
You’re just regurgitating unfounded US propaganda which, being on Lemmy, is very unfortunate to see.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“Unfounded US propaganda”.
Are you saying China DIDN’T aggressively take over Hong Kong and all of the businesses that operated there?
Xi is the head of the government in a totalitarian, communist regime. Just because he might be “leaving BYD alone” or whatever today does not mean that couldn’t change in an instant.
The United States is its own form of screwed up and is an absolute mess. I’m not sitting over here going 'US good. China bad". I’m making the point they’re both bad in different ways.
Pirate@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Uh, i kinda am, yeah.
Last time I checked, Hong Kong is still a tax haven in the middle of Asia. Western companies are still opening offshore subsidiaries and bank accounts there to engage in tax evasion, and the welfare system is still as pitiful as it was before China took over.
Retirees living in literal cages or under bridges is still common, and the same 3-4 families that ran the local economy/housing market still control the city-state as they’ve always done.
By any metrics, China took control of Hong Kong on paper only. In practice, everything stayed the same.
iii@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Nobody of right mind takes this at face value. This isn’t a pro wrestling heavyweight championship belt, with Jinping suplexing the Hong Kong protestors.
It’s obviously as head of an autoritarian communist regime, using corona measures and a militarized police, suppressing people for political reasons.
Pirate@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
But even that is incorrect.
Yes, Xi Jinping is powerful, but the communist party of China is not the military, and there is a fair amount of decentralization in decision making.
Further, the guy above goes “look at how Xi is suplexing Taiwan?!?!” even though he isn’t because guess what, he doesn’t actually have the power to do so.
Also, none of that garbage has anything to do with the topic of EV production, which is in the hands of a private company which largely operates independently of the government.
Which is why I said the dude is just spewing brainless propaganda and Red Herring.