Xpeng builds it's cars for the EU market in Austria.

Sooo many economists on Lemmy.

Soylent Green!

This article doesn't refute that Chinese labor is cheaper than the rough equivalent western worker. China has been upskilling its workforce, and has invested in a lot of manufacturing-specific infrastructure and ecosystem, but the individual workers for any given skill level and education level still gets paid significantly less than a similarly situated worker in North America or Europe.

The workers assembling iPhones in China are both high productivity and low pay (on Western standards). Despite rapidly increasing pay, starting pay was still less than $4 USD/hour for the peak season last year.

And much of that is just the reality of exchange rates, but from the perspective of a multinational company, the exchange rates feed right into their bottom line. They'd prefer to pay Chinese wages over Canadian wages, especially if the Chinese labor is more productive/efficient.