The West says China makes too much. Its workers disagree

Ren Wenbing is reluctant to leave the hollowed-out brick shell which was once a thriving factory in China’s manufacturing hub of Dongguan.

“All the workers feel astonished,” says the 54-year-old as he points out where he once assembled furniture and where everyone would gather to eat lunch.

The owner of the company has moved production to South East Asia to cut costs. Mr Ren says he is owed more than 80,000 RMB ($11,000; £8,800) in redundancy pay, which could take him years to earn.

“We are disappointed, and we grieve,” he adds, as a machine takes a sledgehammer to the windows.

Mr Ren is not just mourning the loss of a furniture firm. He grieves for the passing of China’s once unstoppable economy, which is making it harder for millions of workers to find a job.

For people like him, not enough is now made in China.

But the West has been accusing China of making far too much – it was the dominant message during US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent visit. She chided Beijing for “unfair economic practices,” for producing more than it needs or the world could afford to absorb.

The “Made in China” brand that is etched, sewn or branded on t-shirts, tables and TVs in so many homes around the world is changing. It is now at the heart of the electric cars that are pouring into Germany, and the solar panels that are powering Europe’s renewable policies. And that is worrying the West.

Rising trade tensions with the United States, strict Covid lockdowns and a global downturn mean some manufacturers who once flocked to Chinese shores are looking elsewhere. Foreign investment in the country is at a 30-year low.

But now the old industrial pillars of furniture, clothing and electrical goods are struggling, Beijing is looking to its “new productive forces”: solar panels, lithium batteries and electric cars.

“We are exporting to the UK, Belgium, Germany, mostly European countries, but also to Africa, Australia, South America, North America and also South East Asia,” salesperson Yan Mu says as he shows off the company’s storage batteries.

His is one of the stalls at an exhibition held by hundreds of green energy storage companies in a refurbished and repurposed steel plant on the edge of Beijing.

“I think Chinese companies are leading the whole energy storage market. With innovation, with new technologies, battery sales, PCS [power conversion systems]… well, everything. Right now, I think 80% to 90% of the energy storage equipment are designed and manufactured in China.”

A few hours’ drive from Dongguan, there are more signs of the scale of this industry: there are solar panels as far as the eye can see.

China has installed more solar panels in the last year than the United States has managed to build in a decade, the mass manufacturing going on here driving the cost down to half of what it was last year.

Manufacturers across Europe are struggling to compete. In 2023, 97% of the solar panels installed across Europe came from China.

But China’s new industries are far less labour-intensive than the ones that once fuelled its spectacular growth – and they require specialised, high-skilled workers and, increasingly, robots. While China’s youth unemployment has made the bigger headlines, its overall urban unemployment rate is still over 5%.

The US and the European Union believe this is how China is trying to save its economy – producing cut-price and state-subsidised green technology to sell abroad. They say it’s a tactic that is driving down the cost of solar panels and other emerging technology and driving Western firms out of business.

China says its success is down to innovation, not state subsidies and there is a demand for their exports as countries transition from fossil fuels to more climate-friendly sources of energy.

But Mr Ren can’t find a job in China’s new success story.

He left his family farm in Henan as a teenager and moved to Dongguan, a city in the southern coastal Guangdong province with so many manufacturers it has become known as the “factory of the world”. On one occasion, he didn’t return home for 11 years.

He is one of nearly 300 million migrant workers who’ve moved from villages across China to major cities in search of work. Most leave their families behind: Mr Ren’s children are being raised by their grandparents while he and his wife live in Dongguan, where three-quarters of the city’s 10 million residents are thought to be migrants.

“My children of course miss me,” he says, adding he and his wife “had no choice”.

“We didn’t earn much. After the daily costs of living, the money we sent home for our parents, the money for our children’s education… we didn’t have much left.”

“All the migrant workers face this,” he continues. “If we want to provide for our elderly…