All Hail the Year of Our Ford

On a lead from Rick Saenz’s blog, Dry Creek Chronicles, I found this slideshow from Wired: Endless Assembly Lines and Giant Cafeterias; Inside China’s Vast Factories.

Saenz appropriately pulled this quote as a summary of the situation:

“Taiwan said ‘we’re going to become the semi-conductor manufacturer for the world’ and now they ultimately produce 50 percent of the world’s semi-conductors; Japan said we’re going to make cars and electronics and they’ve become dominant in the world in those two fields.

“The difference with China is that they have no such strategy, they’re just saying ‘wherever there’s money, we’re going to do it.’ They produce 90 percent of the world’s Christmas ornaments and they’re not Christians, they don’t even know what they’re for or what they represent, but they make them because we buy them. They don’t care what they’re making as long as we buy it”

Check out the slideshow for a look into what we western consumers don’t often get to see.