I wonder how many counterfeit parts and parts made from ripped off patents were being sold there.. I also wonder if they saw any of Chip's Metamaterials and Fractal Antennas there? American Corporations are fools for taking their factories there and letting the Chinese rip off their IP. Next up - India. That will be the next country ripping U.S. off. The rich capitalists will do anything for the next Billion... Most of them would sell their mother into slavery, if it meant another Billion for themselves, and then complain about the income taxes. Back in the day it was truth, justice, and the American way... Now it's just lie, cheat, and steal. Dan KI4AX
Yep they are amazing. I was in Shenzhen about 10 years ago on business and visited a couple of these markets, though I’m positive they are much larger and more numerous now. There is also a similar market in Singapore which dwarfs anything in the US but still nothing like in China. Business in China is extremely dynamic and entrepreneurial and there are hordes of very small companies providing all kinds of services and parts at wholesale and retail. We tend to hear about the large state owned enterprises and the large foreign managed factories but that’s only a part of it. The brand name electronic items made in big fabs or big name factories like Foxconn are available but many of them are seconds that don’t meet all the primary customer’s specs or maybe even pilfered off the line, or even counterfeit. It’s possible though that some are legitimate “firsts” and allowed by contract at low quantities as a way of stimulating Chinese industry and entrepreneurs, though I’m just speculating on this. Whereas we put so much emphasis on things like sports, celebrities and consumption, they are busy trying to make a business successful or learn about technology. That’s how these big technology markets stay in business while here there isn’t enough demand for Radio Shack.
re: "The brand name electronic items made in big fabs or big name factories like Foxconn are available but many of them are seconds that don’t meet all the primary customer’s specs" Example - the "Class E" products (watches, calculators in the day) that TI sold to their own employees ...
N0TZU, Chinese students routinely build AM transistor radios as part of their schooling. The kits are available on Ebay for a few bucks. In the 60s American kids did the same, Sputnik put the fear of Lenin into the guys at the top of the govt, with the result that millions of teens built kit radios from suppliers like Graymark as part of mandatory electronics classes in high schools. That culminated in the hacker clubs of 1970s Silicon Valley, where young guys voluntarily came together to outdo each other pushing the envelope of computing, which at the time was dominated by IBM mainframes that took up entire rooms. Jobs and Wozniak were members of one such club, and then decided to sell completed motherboards at a chain of Valley electronics supply stores called Byte Shop. Without all that, this laptop on my desk would not exist, and therefore the internet would not either, except maybe as a research lab somewhere on the Stanford campus. But now? Everybody worries whether Kim Kardashian-who has absolutely zero skills unless you count spending her trust fund-is too fat or too thin, or how Meghan Markle gets along with the Queen. Young women get handed jobs by their rich folks, then spend most of their time in office social games or reading sex advice in Cosmo. Young men spend all their time playing video games or snorting dope.
There is some truth in that, though the “space race” with the USSR was a unique time. Now perhaps we’ve just reverted to a more normal cultural situation. Also don’t forget that the software, AI, and many other technical advancements of recent years have been made by generations that were never exposed to the Cold War times.
For the past 100 years or so in this country, kids (for the most part) had better job opportunities than their parents. Had the opportunity to make more, and live a better life. Not so much for this generation. Before you beat up the "kids today", you might want to look at the opportunities you had growing up. I got out of college and landed myself a good job in a growing industry - and it wasn't all that hard. My kids are 24 & 25, and have it harder than I did, and they are lucky to have the jobs they do.