Time to retire Rudolf: shopping trends in Asia

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Actually, I first started using Amazon in rural Minnesota, where the nearest Kmart was 40 miles away and the nearest decent book store was 100 miles away. (since most of my clothes were from LandsEnd, I had used catalogues to shop for clothing and other catalogues for Christmas gifts etc. for years, but the computer made it even easier). Actually, Sears (and JC Penney) had started catalogue/mail shopping decades ago, but seemed to stagnate and didn't move with the times...

And one of the under-covered stories is how Jack Ma of AliBaba copied Ebay/Amazon to revolutionize how rural China is shopping.

the latest report is that he is building a shopping mall now. 

the stories of China passing the US as the largest economy is only a problem if the US gets poorer (something Trumpie boy is trying to fix). The economic improvement in China is a good story, as is their selling stuff all over the place. The bad news: They use crooked ways to underprice local people. Trumpie boy will fight back here, but the homegrown industries here in the Philippines, not to mention African countries, have no way to do so.

But as China gets more affluent, and has fewer people of working age, will it mean that they will ship their factories to other countries, or import foreigners to work at their factories at lower wages? And what about the rural poor sent hhome because some Pinoy or Vietnamese took their job?

from the Economist:

China has long been able to satisfy its demand for labour by moving rural citizens to cities. Over the past 30 years around 150m Chinese have left the countryside to staff factories, cook in restaurants and clean homes. But with China’s population ageing, foreign workers have begun filling the gap: as many as 50,000 Vietnamese illegally cross the border into the southern province of Guangxi each spring to help harvest sugar cane.

In 2015 the provincial government started a programme to bring Vietnamese workers into local factories in one city. Off to a good start, it is being introduced in other parts of Guangxi. China remains a net exporter of labour, but the balance is shifting quickly. Over the next 30 years its working-age population will shrink by 180m.

so what does this mean to the Philippines?

more places for our OFW: Caregivers and nannies for affluent Chinese are already common in places like HongKong.

and factory workers recruited to China, as they are to Korea?

and maybe multinational companies moving their factories here.
Rappler article from 2015 describes why:

200 Japanese firms in China want to move to PH Labor strikes, wage increase, and historical issues are reasons many Japanese manufacturers want to exit China and enter the Philippines

our wage level is high, but our people often are skilled and speak English, which is why they work all over the world.

one problem is the shoddy infrastructure: in earlier posts I described the former mayor constructing covered drainage ditches right before the election, and now I have seen three collapses from cars parking or driving over the covered areas: probably shoddy concrete was the reason. Our reform mayor is cleaning up the place, and so far so good. But you see the problem: Funding for infrastructure gets diverted into people's pockets directly or indirectly by buying substandard or counterfeit stuff.

But if Duterte continues to destroy corruption and build the infrastructures, jobs will flow back to here.

as for E-commerce here: we have two companies doing this, using credit cards, and some will even deliver COD: Cash on delivery, something that they used to do in the US when I was a kid.

But most folks just don't trust it, especially those of us in rural areas. But I suspect things will change: The mall has done credit cards for years...