Author | Cat Brother
Source | Big Cat Finance
A few days ago, GoTo, a Southeast Asian technology unicorn, was successfully listed. Little Superman Li Zekai's net worth immediately soared by tens of billions. followed closely, Li Ka-shing 's growth Shi also discussed investment matters in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with Wanshengfa Group, a star enterprise of and in Vietnam.
Li Ka-shing, who is retreating from the UK, is interested in as his next stop: Vietnam.
Although many people criticize Li Ka-shing, from a businessman's perspective, Li Ka-shing's sense of smell is indeed superhuman.
Why Vietnam?
Let’s take a look at Vietnam’s export data first. It was US$72.2 billion in 2010 and reached US$264.3 billion in 2019, an increase of 265.8%. In the past ten years, China's exports have increased by 58.4%.
What is Vietnam’s export volume in 2021? html reached US$6.3362 billion, with an annual growth rate of 13%. This was during the epidemic, and the growth rate was quite fast.
Exports drive economic development, which is also clearly reflected in Vietnam's stock market.
In the past ten years, the Ho Chi Minh Index has nearly tripled from around 400 points in 2012 to a high of over 1,500 points. Especially in 2020, as soon as the epidemic in Vietnam eased and the epidemic was relaxed, the index ushered in a new wave of accelerated growth, and outperformed 90% of the world's market indexes.
Everyone knows that the troika of economic growth is investment, export, and consumption. Our economic development also starts from export. With this template in front, Vietnam can follow suit. The fastest growing industry in recent years is manufacturing OEM.
You can already see the words "made in vietnam" on the labels of many clothes and shoes.
Clothing brand GAP has more than 30% of its products made in Vietnam. When Vietnam was hit by the epidemic in November last year, was so frightened that GAP spent US$500 million to fly goods from Vietnam to the United States for fear of missing out on the Christmas shopping season.
Adidas and Nike both closed their direct-operated factories in China ten years ago and moved a lot of their production capacity to Vietnam.
In addition, zara and Uniqlo also rely heavily on Vietnamese OEMs.
At present, Vietnam has developed into the second largest clothing and footwear supplier in the United States after China.
Are the only industries that will be transferred to Southeast Asia include clothing and shoes? Most of is still in electronic products.
The electronics industry is one of Vietnam's fastest-growing industries, with exports increasing from US$47.3 billion in 2015 to US$96 billion in 2020, accounting for one-third of the country's exports.
In the ranking of global electronics exporters, Vietnam has improved from 47th in 2001 to 12th in 2019.
This is not without reason. In recent years, many companies have been transferring production lines from China to Vietnam.
In September 2019, Samsung’s Huizhou mobile phone manufacturing plant ceased operations, Samsung ’s processing industry in China completely bid farewell to manufacturing in China. You know, 2 years ago, 17% of global Samsung mobile phones were produced in Huizhou .
Samsung began its layout in Vietnam before retreating from China:
In 2008, Samsung established its first smartphone factory - SEV in Bac Ninh Province, Vietnam;
In 2013, Samsung established another smartphone factory - SEVT in Taiyuan Province, Vietnam. .
Samsung also opened a factory SEHC in Ho Chi Minh City to produce Samsung TVs.
Currently, half of Samsung's mobile phone production capacity is in Vietnam, followed by India, and the third is South Korea, with a production capacity of about 10%.
Not only Samsung, but also giants such as intel and LG have established their presence in Vietnam. Even our domestic companies, Luxshare Precision and Goertek , have also opened factories in Vietnam.
These companies have large-scale factories in Vietnam and have invested heavily in worker training and logistics preparation. They are definitely not just trying to make quick money.
includes Foxconn , and the factories in Vietnam are also well established. Do these companies just leave without any nostalgia for China?
In fact, they have nothing to do. They are all ant in the industry chain, and they are all suppliers of and apple . They are only responsible for processing and have no say.
Apple calculates that it is not cost-effective to open a factory in China. I want to leave, will you leave? For the sake of orders, can only go along.
Vietnam has not only attracted many international big names, but has also benefited from neighboring countries. LG, the world's second largest battery manufacturer, has opened a factory in Indonesia, and Changhong Meiling has also opened a factory in Indonesia to produce refrigerators and air conditioners.
We definitely don’t want the industry to be transferred to Southeast Asia, but people also have to settle accounts. In the face of hard costs, cannot retain people based on sentiment alone.
We have worked on an alternative theory before, for example, we want to transfer the "low-end industries" in the southeastern coast, such as clothing, to the central and western regions, so that the provinces here can also earn more foreign exchange.
later discovered that this was all just talk on paper. Although labor is cheap in the central and western regions, inland transportation costs are much higher than sea transportation. Why else would 85% of national trade transportation be completed by sea transportation? Even if the price increased several times during the epidemic, sea transportation would still be chosen. .
And now many central and western regions have their own methods of doing things. Some are engaged in big data, some are engaged in artificial intelligence , and at worst they can sell land, so this alternative theory is basically bankrupt.
But these manufacturing companies can no longer stay in the southeastern coast because various costs have risen too high.
For example, environmental protection used to be under extensive management, and pollutants were very serious. Jeans factories, electronic waste recycling, printing and dyeing, etc., caused great harm to workers' health and serious pollution to the environment. However, capital relies on this to make profit. Now environmental protection If it becomes strict, the cost will go up directly. The most unbearable thing about
is the labor cost of .
Nowadays, the new young people in China are all only children, and their average academic qualifications have also increased significantly. The proportion of those born in the 1990s with a bachelor's degree has reached 18%:
When these people go to school, their education investment will not be low. After graduation, they will work as low-level workers in factories. With a salary of four to five thousand, they would not be able to do it themselves, and their parents would not agree.
Even young people who have not gone to college are not willing to work on the assembly line. After all, the wages and freedom of these manufacturing companies are incomparable to those of food delivery riders.
Therefore, factories with low wages cannot recruit people, which is an irreversible trend.
The demographic dividend of the past 30 years has disappeared, but what about Vietnam?
1500-2000 RMB per month, which is so cheap.
More than ten years ago, when people talked about the relocation of manufacturing, they thought it was alarmist. When they talked about Vietnam, it had "poor infrastructure, poor labor quality, and backward industrial structure." They felt that the workers there did not know how to do delicate work such as assembling electronic products. They can't.
But people will also make progress. After more than ten years, the advantages are extremely obvious.
There is nothing we can do about this process. It is a bit like Japan a few decades ago. Transferring low-end manufacturing out of the country is not entirely a bad thing.
In fact, whether it is in China or Southeast Asia, the manufacturing industry is very complex. It only attracts the lowest-end workers. Even if it is not environmentally friendly, the profit is meager. It is a "dirty work". We have experienced this process.
This is called the smile curve in theory. The innovative R&D brands on the back end and the sales market on the front end all make money, but the manufacturing profits in the middle are the lowest.
And it has to be said that many domestic factories have passed the era of cheap labor and have used robotic arms, becoming "lights-out factories" that operate 24 hours a day.
This also shows that the industry is adjusting. There is no need for so many simple and boring screw tightening workers. What will be needed in the future are senior technicians with knowledge and skills, who are responsible for equipment maintenance, controlling CNC machine tool operations, and even handing over modeling to 3D printers for completion. The production tasks...
were moved with the factory, but there was actually a lot of money left. Over the past decade or so, China’s investment in Vietnam has continued to grow at a high rate.
Of course, we are not the only ones eyeing Vietnam.
In 2021, a total of 106 countries and regions invested in Vietnam. Among them, Singapore ranked first with US$10.7 billion, accounting for 34.4% of Vietnam’s total foreign investment, followed by South Korea second and Japan third.
The current global investment circle is relatively optimistic about the entire Southeast Asia. Li Zekai’s GoTo mentioned at the beginning is the merger of Indonesia’s e-commerce + ride-hailing software, Google , Temasek , Softbank, Alibaba , Tencent Jingdong has also invested in :
is a company where everyone can make money together. In the future, we may have more funds to invest overseas in , and more factories will move away. The reason behind it is also very simple. Just tell me an account and accept it calmly.
