Más sobre el flying geese pattern

Ya no es tan barata la producción de indumentaria en China (parece mantenerse el flying geese paradigm del que habíamos hablado). Una inflación de 7% y los altos costos de la energía y las materias primas están erosionando la ventaja comparativa del gigante asiático:

With China´s reputation as the world´s cheapest garment production country floundering, European buyers are foraying into other parts of Asia, creating new opportunities for buyers in smaller countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and Bangladesh. “China´s garment industry is getting more expensive.

(...)

Ajústense los cinturores

Mal que les pese a los China bashers, parece que vamos a extrañar la época de productos baratos... ¡¿y ahora quién podrá contener la inflación?!

Producer prices in China on the rise

Chinese factory-gate inflation edged up to 8.1 percent in April, the fastest rate since late 2004, showing a sustained build-up in price pressures that could keep consumer inflation high.

The reading on the producer price index rose from 8 percent in March as food, energy and raw material costs all rose at double-digit paces.

"Usually it takes about six months for producer price pressure to be transmitted to consumer prices. But now the time lag is getting shorter," said Tang Jianwei, an analyst at Bank of Communications in Shanghai.

Consumer price inflation in the world's fastest-growing major economy is already at its highest level in more than 11 years at an annual rate of 8.3 percent.

Un trabajo para Moreno

Chinese inflation hits 6.5 percent, highest rate in nearly 11 years

Soaring food prices propelled the Chinese inflation rate to its highest point in nearly 11 years, cementing expectations that the central bank would defy a global trend and keep raising interest rates.

Consumer prices rose 6.5 percent in August from a year earlier after gaining 5.6 percent in July, the Chinese statistics bureau said Tuesday.

The central bank and economists fear that surging prices for food, particularly pork, will start rippling through the economy as people expect further price increases and demand higher wages.

El "milagro" se va normalizando

La escasez de mano de obra calificada está impulsando un aumento de sueldos en China:

Chinese wages are on the rise. No reliable figures for average wages exist; the government's economic data are notably unreliable. But factory owners and experts who monitor the nation's labor market say that businesses are having a hard time finding able-bodied workers and are having to pay the workers they can find more money.

And higher wages in China are likely to lead to higher prices in the United States — at the mall, at the grocery, even at the gas pump.

De todos modos, el escenario actual dista de ser el valhalla de los trabajadores:

This lack of laborers of desirable age is hardly making China a worker's paradise. Factory wages remain extremely low by Western standards: roughly $1 an hour for better-paid workers near the coast, compared with as little as 50 cents early this decade.

Por otro lado, como diría Keynes, in the long term we are dead.