Weekend Long Read: Can Anyone Replace China as the World’s Factory?

Over the past decade, economic and geopolitical factors have challenged China’s status as the world’s factory.

From the mid-2000s to around 2017, economic factors were the dominant ones behind this change. These included rising labor costs, an appreciating yuan, growing land and environmental costs and excess production capacity in certain industries. It can be argued that these factors caused some key domestic industries to go overseas.