This would be true only if China, et al, just took the jobs and did them the same. But Asia is not just known for their cheap labour, they are really really good at running factories and manufacturing products.
If their only value prop was cheap labour then manufacturing could easily have flourished in plenty of other countries with cheap labour (eastern europe, latin america, africa?). And plenty are geographically closer and have more similar language/culture to the western markets than Asia. But there is more to it, Asian countries have a talent for it and have mastered manufacturing and related industries like steel production.
I doubt any American factories could legitimately compete with Asia, even if the wages were the same, without some heavy-duty automation. And Asia has many other advantages around vertical integration of factories, such as access to raw materials, from there and other countries they've developed relationships with.
Now it's possible these advantages are just a side-effect of the fact the industry residing in Asia in recent decades but I believe there's far more to it, even regardless of the wage advantages, they are very much deserving of that industry.
I highly doubt there is some hereditary trait that makes Asians better at running factories than those other countries. It's more likely that given the tremendous amount of manufacturing that's been pushed to those countries, they have had ample practice to become leaders at the process.
If you look holistically at what happened, you're more likely to find why so much moved to Asia. Geographically speaking there may have been closer low-wage countries, but distance alone does not determine where you can build appropriate facilities.
Geologically, China has access to large ports, allowing large amounts of tonnage to flow in and out. You have a generally easy path from China to California. Eastern Europe is out because you can't easily ship to and from. Similarly, jungles and mountains in Latin/South America and Africa keep large manufacturing bases from being built. Africa lacks sufficient ports - its largest ships 1/10 the tonnage that Shanghai does.
At a local political level, you have governments willing to subsidize manufacturing and tolerate certain working conditions that other governments wouldn't.
From an international perspective, you have incentives to bring capitalism to the borders of previous socialist countries as a destabilization measure (large increases in US-China trade in the 80s).
If their only value prop was cheap labour then manufacturing could easily have flourished in plenty of other countries with cheap labour (eastern europe, latin america, africa?). And plenty are geographically closer and have more similar language/culture to the western markets than Asia. But there is more to it, Asian countries have a talent for it and have mastered manufacturing and related industries like steel production.
I doubt any American factories could legitimately compete with Asia, even if the wages were the same, without some heavy-duty automation. And Asia has many other advantages around vertical integration of factories, such as access to raw materials, from there and other countries they've developed relationships with.
Now it's possible these advantages are just a side-effect of the fact the industry residing in Asia in recent decades but I believe there's far more to it, even regardless of the wage advantages, they are very much deserving of that industry.