109
China’s rising industrial strength leaves EU fretting about its manufacturing future
(www.irishtimes.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
109 points (94.3% liked)
Europe
8482 readers
710 users here now
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
When Japan entered the Western car market in the 60's and 70's, it was disruptive too. Especially in USA where it was made worse by the oil crisis, because American cars were giant gas guzzlers, and Japanese cars were the most fuel efficient.
Now China is entering the market, but compared to Japan, China has a 10 times bigger home market to draw from, which is a huge benefit for Chinese manufacturers in several ways.
First it helps manufacturers build large scale production for higher efficiency. Second it helps pay development of new models as cost is distributed on more cars, making it cheaper per car.
Third it allows China to experiment more, as new models that would be minor niche cars in other countries, can sell at scale.
Combined this has resulted in a development pace in China which is about three times faster than what we see in the rest of the world!
So it is no wonder that Chinese cars are gaining market share in the world outside China too. And we can expect the disruption to be bigger than when the Japanese cars arrived in the west.
But there are also a factor of diminishing returns, where scale and development speed will not yield as much benefits beyond a certain threshold.
So the Chinese advantage is probably at its peak right now, and manufacturers that can keep up with the Chinese competition for the next few years will have a good chance of making it in the future.
There's another important factor complicating things for Chinese companies:
China has copied every peace of technology they could get a hold of in the last 40 years (a smart move to close the gap between the leading nations and yourself in every sector). However, as Chinese industries now have reached the current state of the art and plan on overtaking the competition by making new innovations this leads to a problem: You hardly can dominate global markets while gatekeeping your technology. So China is now faced with the ironic problem of either protecting its innovations or exporting them to the world because it's not likely that any Western authority will give two shits about protecting Chinese intellectual property and/or patents when China itself didn't care for the last decades.
Same as every other country since farming was invented.
Yes and no... there used to be something like patent protection and copyrights which, in my eyes, promoted innovation since you were ensured to be able to make use of your ideas.
There is no evidence of that.
There is for developed economies.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400306
Bullshit.
There is nothing in that link that shows that patents increase innovation, are you claiming beer is better because of patents?
If you are, that would be like claiming cookies you buy are better than home baked, because bought cookies make use of many patents.
I hope you can see the idiocy of the claim.
No "innovations" happened because they were patentable. But patents happen because they can prevent competition.
And on the other hand evidence that patents stifle competition is pretty clear, and stifled competition decreases innovation.
Steve Balmer expressed it very well IMO, when he claimed Microsoft was a very innovative company because they had created several new types of licenses!
Patents are a disease not a solution.
Point 13 explains this to some degree:
Clearly showing the authors are aware that patents harm competition, and if patents had been introduced earlier, a few companies could have taken over the market and kept competition out.
They are however completely wrong about the "timing" of patents, there is no good timing of patents. Patents will always be harmful after the fact.
I think I get the point and when thinking about it I guess you're right. Thank you.