It's not just about low-cost foreign labor. Chinese staionary energy is dirt cheap (burning dirty subsidized coal doesn't cost a lot) which might be 20% of the cost. And the land might have been free, if the investor had good connections. Oh, and they might have cheap loans. The costs are raw materials, energy, capital, and labor. Labor isn't the only factor. But people accept the $1/hour = 20X cheaper myth, and buy stuff that's 1/10th the quality.
Well, most of the USA will be using coal powered energy as well, as most USA energy is coal powered. Same goes for Australia, which is even higher percentage coal power.
As for free land - many large plants have been setup in the USA with essentially free land, and essentially free capital. Not all, mind you, and not all in China would be the same. But then business in China has high costs in other areas, such as bribery and corruption.
In the end, it mostly comes down to labour costs (and availability) when you're doing a labour intensive manufacturing process. The other thing that is being lost is even the ability to compete based on knowledge. Running factories takes time, expertise and experience. New factories aren't opening, people aren't learning how to run them. It's the trend that worries me, over the raw numbers.
Well, it's actually closer to 20x cheaper for 1/2 the quality - hence why so much is made there. Being I manufacturing, we see both the move back to the US due to rising wages, shipping and materials costs, but many things (toy painting) are very much still an outsourcing game.
