'China exploiting workers to gain advantage in manufacturing sector'

New Delhi, Jan 9 China's big advantage in the manufacturing sector vis-a-vis other countries is not so much due to economies of scale or the fact that the country has rapidly caught up with the technology of Western countries, but its exploitation of labour under a repressive system, according to a report.

An article in The Diplomat highlights that China's "advantage is not simply about efficiency or technology. It is embedded in a labour system that systematically lowers costs through lax enforcement, extended working hours, and wage suppression. The result is a structural cost gap that reflects not superior productivity, but a different set of rules governing how labour is treated and how much it is allowed to bear".

The article compared the car production figures of Tesla factories in the US and Shanghai to drive home this point.

In 2023, Tesla’s Fremont factory in California employed 20,000 workers and produced about 560,000 vehicles, or around 28 vehicles per worker per year. Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, with a similar workforce size, produced close to 1 million vehicles – nearly 50 vehicles per worker annually, the article stated.

Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai rolled out its 4 millionth vehicle on December 8, 2024, marking a new milestone as the US carmaker deepens its development in step with China's rapidly growing new energy sector, according to a report by Chinese news agency Xinhua.

The company's Shanghai plant, its first gigafactory outside the United States, began construction in January 2019 and produced its first vehicle in December of that year.

Now turning out a new car roughly every 30 seconds, the plant accounts for nearly half of Tesla's global electric vehicle deliveries.

It took more than 30 months for the plant to produce its first 1 million vehicles, while output rose from 3 million to 4 million in about 14 months, according to the company.

It serves both the Chinese mainland market and overseas customers, with vehicles exported to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. In October, the Shanghai plant shipped more than 35,000 vehicles abroad, the highest monthly export volume in two years, according to the company.

In February, Tesla's new Megafactory in Shanghai, dedicated to manufacturing energy-storage batteries, launched production, which is its second major facility in Shanghai and the first of its kind outside the United States, the Xinhua report added.

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