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However, after many years of economic reform to produce goods for export, official accession to the WTO has helped Chinese production skyrocket.
China then offered itself to the world for a long time as a low-cost factory that produced labor-intensive products such as textiles, toys, clothing, footwear and furniture for companies around the world and therefore for consumers.
These industries have been a stepping stone for China to develop economically and move towards more advanced products like electronics, an economy like Hong Kong and South Korea.
As education and wages rise, production in China becomes less cheap and the country now wants to focus on producing more expensive and complex products and relying on domestic consumption to boost its economy. The hard work of producing cheap, labor-intensive goods is left to others.
But if China’s plan succeeds, who will take its place and become the world’s new workshop?
This is a topic that Gordon Hanson, a professor of economics at Harvard’s Kennedy School, is addressing in his latest research paper for the US National Bureau of Economic Research.
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