The Current Chinese Global Supply Chain Monopoly and the Covid-19 Pandemic

I wanted to share my formal peer reviewed publication on the Chinese supply chain Monopoly and how it is impacting our country.

Abstract

Because of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, supply chain management performance seems to be struggling. The purpose of this paper is to examine a variety of critical factors related to the application of contingency theory to determine its feasibility in preventing future supply chain bottlenecks. The study reviewed current online news reports, previous research on contingency theory, as well as strategic and structural contingency theories. This paper also systematically reviewed several global supply chain management and strategic decision-making studies in an effort to promote a new strategy. The findings indicated that the need for mass production of products within the United States, as well as within trading partners, is necessary to prevent additional Covid-19 related supply chain gaps. The paper noted that in many instances, the United States has become dependent on foreign products, where the prevention of future supply chain gaps requires the United States restore its manufacturing prowess.

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This country has lost it’s mind. How in the world did the government ever let China control so much of the products we need.

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Was this a rhetorical question? Simple Answer: The politicians of both parties in all levels of government (local to national) sold us out for 30 pieces of CCP Silver.

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It all started during the Clinton administration

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I liked Clinton before this happened. That was the end of that.

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Amazon is killing manufacturing within the United States due to outsourcing to China.

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This was always obvious to previous generations of our strategic decision-makers. Specialization of labor is all fine and good until it’s not. Over-specialization leads to a widespread and potentially catastrophic loss of resilience. De-centralized production and logistics nodes increase adaptability and reduce the impacts of geo-spatial specificity. But the computer programmers are going to try to argue with me about this again, because most geeks simply don’t understand (I am one of them, BTW) that the real world doesn’t play by the rules of binary logic.

I’ll read the article and get back to you. I have a brother and nephew who are high level logistical strategists. It may be good fodder for conversations.

Update: I just completed a first reading, only spot-checked a few sources for academic accuracy. The paper’s real value seems to be as a “book report” on what you’ve been studying – pedagogic. It contains some rhetorically unsupported assertions of fact (presumptive truth) that would not have been tolerated in my academic training or professional experience, but with which I do not disagree in the least. You simply omitted the process by which the assertion came to be an assumption. You actually addressed this in the introduction, saying that a few premises would be supported by academic literature (citations). This sort of shorthand seems academically “lazy” to me. I think you should at least make a brief presentation of the rational building blocks supporting the assertion in text, not just with references to the bibliography of your work (via end notes). But this is largely a stylistic critique.

Regarding the thesis, I think you are spot on. I have quite a bit of academic training and vocational experience in Org Behavior, some of it specifically in technology adoption models (in agriculture of developing countries and in US based MIS and e-commerce and e-socio-political adoption of the emerging Internet). I am not a huge fan of a couple of the dominant theories, because they aren’t universally applicable. Truth be told, my opinion is that not many behavioral theories will withstand rigorous scientific scrutiny. It’s pseudo-science. The best we can do is work from the high-probability models and attempt to prepare and control for the inevitable deviations. I do not believe in The Engineering Method (Ron Lasser, Electrical and Computer Engineering Design Handbook, Tufts University) when you cross into the realm of human behavior. Leading people is a whole lot more like whitewater canoeing than running robot trains on a rail network. We simply don’t know what’s ahead, the river changes, and what we can’t see is what is most perilous. So you build great capacities specific to the tasks, stay loose and alert, relish the challenges, and always keep one eye as far down stream as you can see while trying to enjoy the ride – because nobody wants to share a canoe with a jerk, a sluggard, a fool, or a coward.

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IMO, there are conflicting business models in larger, successful organizations, countries, political parties, etc. Things like greed, pride, value, corruption, governmental influence, resources, safety measures, logistics, pollution/environment, etc. can all be factors that pull on one side of the equation while pushing on the other, and often add together differently depending on the mix.

In the end, assuming reduced governmental influence (my preference for non-emergency/disaster issues), the problem is getting consumers to place local economic impact into their value judgement on purchases (value, not price). This is rare now-a-days. One look at some of the app reviews for your phone, where “this app should be free” is a common review should tell you there is a disconnect between consumers and the products they purchase, even though they all want higher pay for whatever job they have.

How to make the average consumer normalize more in-country production, assembly, and ownership into figuring what they are getting for their money I don’t know. I don’t think non-governmental action will add to more production within with the last 30 years of average consumer sentiment not caring and even looking for foreign owned/made brands… often based on overall price. In fact, I think for decades their has been a push for outsourcing fed to the citizens, even if it was an insinuated argument like “jobs don’t matter since everything is made by robots”… a sentiment that diminished after 2016, and further vanished during the pandemic.

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Thank you for the feedback and feed through