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But for hundreds of Chinese companies like Yuncheng, the U.S. has become a better, less expensive place to set up shop. It could be the biggest role reversal since, well ... when Nixon went to China. "The gap between manufacturing costs in the U.S. and China is shrinking," explains John Ling, a naturalized American from China who runs the South Carolina Department of Commerce's business recruitment office in Shanghai. Ling recruited Yuncheng to Spartanburg, and others too: Chinese companies have invested $280 million and created more than 1,200 jobs in South Carolina alone.

Today some 33 American states, ports, and municipalities have sent representatives like Ling to China to lure jobs once lost to China back to the U.S.: Besides affordable land and reliable power, states and cities are offering tax credits and other incentives to woo Chinese manufacturers. Beijing, meanwhile, which has mandated that Chinese companies globalize by expanding to key markets around the world, is chipping in by offering to finance up to 30% of the initial investment costs, according to Chinese business sources.

So far there's little sign of anti-Chinese sentiment among South Carolinians, who watched their state lose its cotton-based textile-manufacturing industry to low-cost countries like China. Fortune asked Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican torchbearer for conservative causes, what he thinks of communists creating work in his home state. "South Carolina is one of the best places in the world to do business, and that's why so many international companies are moving jobs into our state" is his only reply.

Brenda Missouri, a 43-year-old leaks tester who works for appliance maker Haier, speaks about her employer in glowing terms. Haier was the first Chinese company to build a factory in the U.S. -- a refrigerator plant in Camden, S.C., in 2000. "They're good business folks; they get the job done," she says. As for communism? "Doesn't matter," she shrugs. "It's money that makes the difference."

Never mind the hiccups Chinese companies experienced when they tried to enter the U.S. before. In 2005, Washington famously blocked China's National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOO C) from buying Unocal, and Chinese appliance maker Haier failed to acquire Maytag. Now, like the Japanese in the 1980s -- when U.S. trade frictions combined with Japan's boom blossomed into Honda and Toyota manufacturing plants -- the Chinese are here to stay. Their presence initially made some folks uneasy. A few years ago a caller to The Rush Limbaugh Show complained that as he was driving past the Haier plant in Camden, the Chinese flag was flying higher than the American flag and the South Carolina state flag out front. It was an easy mistake to make by anyone looking at the three equal-height flagpoles from an angle.

Conservative media joined in and called for protests, and the public rang the factory to complain. The Chinese executives at Haier had no idea flags were such a big deal, and it became their bugaboo. The complaints continued until about a year and a half ago when Haier America factory president Joseph Sexton, who was new to the job, decided to fix it. He had two of the poles lowered so that the U.S. flag looks highest from all angles.

houndawg wrote: LMFFAO at the picture of Jim DeMint kowtowing to his Communist masters.

Now the only way to know you're in a Chinese factory is by looking up at the large Chinese flag hanging from the rafters -- alongside an American one, of course -- and by the very Chinese motivational slogans on the walls: "Spirit of entrepreneurship -- strive for a clearly defined objective and make the impossible possible without an excuse" reads the banner over the refrigerator testing line.

Ivytalk wrote:My kingdom for an American-made small appliance!

Ursus A. Horribilis wrote:

Chizzang wrote:no comment from the free market capitalists on this fascinating development..?

Col Hogan wrote:

Chizzang wrote:no comment from the free market capitalists on this fascinating development..?

How is this different than in the 80s & 90s when Japanese businesses started coming here for the same reasons...

How did that turn out???

Chizzang wrote:

Col Hogan wrote:
How is this different than in the 80s & 90s when Japanese businesses started coming here for the same reasons...

How did that turn out???

Considering we didn't owe Japan trillions in debt and Japan has no natural resources and only 30 million people
It turned out about as expected

We owe China a terrifying amount of money
They have unlimited natural resources
They have billions of low wage workers

They ain't no Japan...

I might be full of sh!t on this but I'm just spit-ballin'

Chizzang wrote:Considering we didn't owe Japan trillions in debt and Japan has no natural resources and only 30 million people

houndawg wrote:

Chizzang wrote:

Considering we didn't owe Japan trillions in debt and Japan has no natural resources and only 30 million people
It turned out about as expected

We owe China a terrifying amount of money
They have unlimited natural resources
They have billions of low wage workers

They ain't no Japan...

I might be full of sh!t on this but I'm just spit-ballin'

The quicker we get those factories the less chance there is of China bombing us when they inevitably supercede us militarily.

Chizzang wrote:
We owe China a terrifying amount of money
They have unlimited natural resources
They have billions of low wage workers

Chizzang wrote:

Col Hogan wrote:
How is this different than in the 80s & 90s when Japanese businesses started coming here for the same reasons...

How did that turn out???

Considering we didn't owe Japan trillions in debt and Japan has no natural resources and only 30 million people
It turned out about as expected

We owe China a terrifying amount of money
They have unlimited natural resources
They have billions of low wage workers

They ain't no Japan...

I might be full of sh!t on this but I'm just spit-ballin'

travelinman67 wrote:

Chizzang wrote:

Considering we didn't owe Japan trillions in debt and Japan has no natural resources and only 30 million people
It turned out about as expected

We owe China a terrifying amount of money
They have unlimited natural resources
They have billions of low wage workers

They ain't no Japan...

I might be full of sh!t on this but I'm just spit-ballin'

Agreed for the most part, but the fundamental difference is not industrial volume or capital, but entrepreneurial creativity. Asian/Indian CULTURES do not "nurture" business creativity, and hence, R&D. They will always look to the U.S. for ideas. For this reason, they invest in U.S. markets.

uofmman1122 wrote:

Chizzang wrote:Considering we didn't owe Japan trillions in debt and Japan has no natural resources and only 30 million people

Not that it really makes your argument less valid, since China still has *cough* quite a few more people than Japan, but Tokyo has 30 million people. Japan as a whole has about 130 million.

CitadelGrad wrote:

houndawg wrote:

The quicker we get those factories the less chance there is of China bombing us when they inevitably supercede us militarily.

Now houndawg is a military genius. Is there anything he can't do?

Chizzang wrote:no comment from the free market capitalists on this fascinating development..?

travelinman67 wrote:

Chizzang wrote:

Considering we didn't owe Japan trillions in debt and Japan has no natural resources and only 30 million people
It turned out about as expected

We owe China a terrifying amount of money
They have unlimited natural resources
They have billions of low wage workers

They ain't no Japan...

I might be full of sh!t on this but I'm just spit-ballin'

Agreed for the most part, but the fundamental difference is not industrial volume or capital, but entrepreneurial creativity. Asian/Indian CULTURES do not "nurture" business creativity, and hence, R&D. They will always look to the U.S. for ideas. For this reason, they invest in U.S. markets.

kalm wrote:

travelinman67 wrote:
Agreed for the most part, but the fundamental difference is not industrial volume or capital, but entrepreneurial creativity. Asian/Indian CULTURES do not "nurture" business creativity, and hence, R&D. They will always look to the U.S. for ideas. For this reason, they invest in U.S. markets.

Taking advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental laws to sell manufactured goods to a market that can't afford them is not entreprenurial?

This isn't creative?

Chizzang wrote:Too funny...
Love him or hate him Noam Chomsky predicted this in the late 1990's

CitadelGrad wrote:

kalm wrote:
Taking advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental laws to sell manufactured goods to a market that can't afford them is not entreprenurial?

This isn't creative?

Creative? No. It has been done before. Entrepreneurial? No. I think you need to look up the definition of entrepreneurial.