Has Google started something?

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, told the Indian press that Dell chairman Michael Dell assured him that Dell was moving $25 billion in factories from China to India. Dell is the second company to flee China this week, joining Google. Although it might appear that the two are leaving for different reasons, they may not be.

Dell has reportedly said that they were leaving China in search of a “safer environment with [a] climate conducive to enterprise.” Mr. Singh, in the same newspaper article where he revealed that Dell was moving $25 billion in parts and equipment to India, also said that Michael Dell was looking for a country “with security of a legal system.”

Dell joins Google, who shut down most of their Chinese operations this week after concerns over censorship as well as a security incident between China and Google. Google said that numerous other US companies, including tech companies, faced cyber-attacks from China – it’s possible Dell was among them (but completely conjecture on my part). Between the strict censorship on Google, and now Dell implying that China isn’t conductive for business, it seems that some western companies are getting fed up with the cost of doing business in China.

Dell currently has one factory in India. Michael Dell previously said publicly that “India is a great place to be in” and that “It is growing faster than China for us.” No word on when you can expect Dell to start closing Chinese factories or opening new Indian ones. Such a change probably won’t affect Dell’s product availability too much.

Read: Dell Moving Factories Out Of China [Dell Computers Moving $25 Billion In Labor, Equipment From China To India, Citing Environment Concerns, Western Companies Bailing On China?] » TFTS – Technology, Gadgets & Curiosities

http://nexus404.com/Blog/2010/03/24/dell-moving-factories-china-dell-computers-moving-25-billion-labor-equipment-china-india-citing-environment-concerns-western-companies-bailing-china/

The above article doesn't mention it, but GoDaddy also recently said they will stop doing business in China.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Serves them right...China that is.

[Calypso 464]

Serves them right...China that is.

Perhaps China thinks that way, too.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Perhaps China thinks that way, too.

When Wal Mart starts to source their products elsewhere, you'll see China nervous.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

When Wal Mart starts to source their products elsewhere, you'll see China nervous.

That's a nice dream...thinking that Walmart would act on principals and leave China. They are both so far into bed with on another, it's hard to tell who is screwing who.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

That's a nice dream...thinking that Walmart would act on principals and leave China.

Well, I read an interesting piece in the St. Pete Times the other day about how WalMart is starting to actually rebuild that which they helped tear down. It's in it's infacy but the retail giant appears to seriously consider and - where it makes good business sense (that's of course the core principle and should be) - pursue local sourcing strategies.

Will Walmart, not Whole Foods, save the small farm and make America healthy?

Walmart, savior of Hernando County's farms?

The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.

Ron McCormick, the senior director of local and sustainable sourcing for Walmart, told me that about three years ago he came upon pictures from the 1920s of thriving apple orchards in Rogers, Arkansas, eight miles from the company’s headquarters. Apples were once shipped from northwest Arkansas by railroad to St. Louis and Chicago. After Washington state and California took over the apple market, hardly any orchards remained. Cabbage, greens, and melons were also once staples of the local farming economy. But for decades, Arkansas’s cash crops have been tomatoes and grapes. A new initiative could diversify crops and give consumers fresher produce.

As with most Walmart programs, the clear impetus is to claim a share of consumer spending: first for organics, now for locally grown food. But buying local food is often harder than buying organic. The obstacles for both small farm and big store are many: how much a relatively small farmer can grow and how reliably, given short growing seasons; how to charge a competitive price when the farmer’s expenses are so much higher than those of industrial farms; and how to get produce from farm to warehouse.

Walmart knows all this, and knows that various nonprofit agricultural and university networks are trying to solve the same problems. In considering how to build on existing programs (and investments), Walmart talked with the local branch of the Environmental Defense Fund, which opened near the company’s Arkansas headquarters when Walmart started to look serious about green efforts, and with the Applied Sustainability Center at the University of Arkansas. The center (of which the Walmart Foundation is a chief funder) is part of a national partnership called Agile Agriculture, which includes universities such as Drake and the University of New Hampshire and nonprofits like the American Farmland Trust.* To get more locally grown produce into grocery stores and restaurants, the partnership is centralizing and streamlining distribution for farms with limited growing seasons, limited production, and limited transportation resources.

Walmart says it wants to revive local economies and communities that lost out when agriculture became centralized in large states. (The heirloom varieties beloved by foodies lost out at the same time, but so far they’re not a focus of Walmart’s program.) This would be something like bringing the once-flourishing silk and wool trades back to my hometown of Rockville, Connecticut. It’s not something you expect from Walmart, which is better known for destroying local economies than for rebuilding them.

As everyone who sells to or buys from (or, notoriously, works for) Walmart knows, price is where every consideration begins and ends. Even if the price Walmart pays for local produce is slightly higher than what it would pay large growers, savings in transport and the ability to order smaller quantities at a time can make up the difference. Contracting directly with farmers, which Walmart intends to do in the future as much as possible, can help eliminate middlemen, who sometimes misrepresent prices. Heritage produce currently accounts for only 4 to 6 percent of Walmart’s produce sales, McCormick told me (already more than a chain might spend on produce in a year, as Fishman would point out), adding that he hopes the figure will get closer to 20 percent, so the program will “go from experimental to being really viable.”

Michelle Harvey, who is in charge of working with Walmart on agriculture programs at the local Environmental Defense Fund office, summarized a long conversation with me on the sustainability efforts she thinks the company is serious about: “It’s getting harder and harder to hate Walmart.”

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Well, I read an interesting piece in the St. Pete Times the other day about how WalMart is starting to actually rebuild that which they helped tear down. It's in it's infacy but the retail giant appears to seriously consider and - where it makes good business sense (that's of course the core principle and should be) - pursue local sourcing strategies.

That's encouraging. I hope those who do shop at Walmart, encourage them by buying products that are made here in the good 'ol USA.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

That's encouraging. I hope those who do shop at Walmart, encourage them by buying products that are made here in the good 'ol USA.

You could be one of those signaling to Wal Mart that America prefers to buy American made products and locally grown produce.

[DEDixon 39]

highlighting what google has done as if it is going to change china in a major way is ridiculous. putting something as little as censorship ahead of much bigger issues in china is like flushing the toilet before you've taken a dump.... a$$ backwards.

[mawilson 2,133]

Serves them right...China that is.

highlighting what google has done as if it is going to change china in a major way is ridiculous. putting something as little as censorship ahead of much bigger issues in china is like flushing the toilet before you've taken a dump.... a$$ backwards.

The world is bigger than China. I'm glad that companies like Google are beginning to see that.

[Sc0tt28 26]

Dell has reportedly said that they were leaving China in search of a “safer environment with [a] climate conducive to enterprise.”

Dell was looking for a country “with security of a legal system.”

Heaven forbid they move to the US and employ US workers.