I support the CPC.
Heard this accusation recently:
China takes part in imperialist plunder by outsourcing all labour intensive tasks to poorer countries to exploit cheap labour, and only the final assembly is done in China anymore.
What is our party line on that?
Edit: thank you all for the answers! I’m far from being an economist and don’t feel confident enough to immediately demand sources something might well be a common knowledge.
I was now given this source: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/74902/1/dp205.pdf
In particular:
more than half of China’s export value in 2005 corresponds to that of imported inputs that are merely assembled in China.
only thirty four percent of the value of China’s processing exports in 2005 was domestic content, while the other two thirds corresponded to the value of the imported inputs.
in the high-tech category, it consistently amounts to approximately 90 percent of total high-tech exports
You should think about this claim a bit more.
First of all, is it Chinese or non-Chinese corporations doing this? China and Chinese companies don’t have the hegemonic advantage where just the fact of them being Chinese implies superiority. (EDIT: The implication of this is that there isn’t the demand for goods that are Chinese-assembled that lets them get away with this.)
If non-Chinese corporations are using China for “just” assembling the components, then this implies that it is an easy process with a low value add and these corporations can just move this process to these poorer countries where labour is cheaper and take this exploitative money-grubbing China out of the equation.
My point is that China does not have the hegemonic advantage where it can impose its will upon the rest of the world. Western economies are beholden to China. This is for the reason that China provides them with some things that no other economy can.