20% pay increases every year for the past 10 years in China.  At first glance, this looks like a great thing.  It would seem that china is trying to raise the standard of living for their people.  The real problem is that China, similar to the US, has not figured out how to pay for value.  It seems it’s just too hard for companies and countries to figure that out. Just too easy to set wages, roll the dice and hope something good happens.

China seems to be loosing their competitiveness by pricing themselves out of the market.  When I was in High School, people would come back from Korea and tell about the great deals they found.  I traveled to Korea in 1993 looking for manufacturing for jackets.  By that time, I discovered I could get the jackets made in the US for similar prices.  I am sure manufacturing was already moved to China by that time.

This was comment from a WSJ article from April 30, 2013 Not Made in China