I was a bit preoccupied with L’affaire McKay yesterday so I didn’t get to this. Readers here know that I’ve spent a lot of time writing about the China challenge, and pointing out that no one has a good solution about to deal with China, short of just joining a drum-beat that I fear will simply fan some general anti-Asian campaign. It’s particularly worrisome that the labor movement has no real plan–not that a plan is simple to come up with but there has to be serious time and money put into focusing on the number one challenge to workers.

To wit: yesterday, I hope you caught the front-page New York Times article by Keith Bradsher who tells the tale of General Motors producing minivans in an “obscure corner of Southern China” that cost $5,000 (registration required). GM may be losing market share here but it now leads the market in China.

But, the particular paragraph that has got to make you sit up is this one: “The assembly process has only one robot, for sealing windshields, relying mostly on workers earning $60 a month, above average for this impoverished region.” That’s my emphasis.

That’s right, my friends: $60 per month. And that is high for that region. That sentence in a nutshell tells you why politicians and academics who tell you just to go to school and get smarter so you can compete in the global economy are full of shit. The global economy does not function on competition over skills–it’s about wages. Period.

And, listen up, China is not going to just be the industrial factory of the world for low-end stuff. Within a few years, it will romp in high-end, high-value products like aircraft.