Or demand for new stuff made cheaply by people on crap wages is the reason why China got to its position as a manufacturing juggernaut. Who in the UK or America or any western style country will work in poor conditions for subsistence wages? Many western economies are based on "service" or value add economise they make very little because it's expensive to do so. Anyone that plays with Honda small engines knows that Chinese copy parts often cost less than the postage does for genuine parts.
If manufacturing is outsourced to China in their bizarre economic system only a very few get wealthy and the vast majority stay poor. It would take huge change in every country to change this. Starting with making things that can be repaired, removing built in obsolescence, and most of all reduce the desire of big western based companies to make more profit over and over selling the same things repeatedly to the same people. Razor blades I can understand but phones, televisions, cars furniture every blood thing has to be replaced or upgraded regularly and done on the cheap. We pay or have better quality long lasting stuff made locally.
The factories that are closed and the cars driving people to them were often making stuff that's not needed. That has really reduced emissions. Maybe this virus will act as a wake up call? We think we are in control but the control tenuous at best. Lifestyles have to change. Most of the people on this site seem to reuse recycle and restore stuff but it's all OLD stuff. We need to go back to that quality.
Anyone who thinks a politician has the answers is sadly mistaken.
There have been legal arguments, I believe, in America, which have forced car manufacturers (kicking & screaming) to allow vehicles to be serviced by their owners rather than obliging owners to take them to the dealer? Also, I think, legislation around making some classes of appliances "repairable"
It used to be that you had to buy a $40 battery for your phone every couple years - now it's a new $1500 phone every couple years. Perhaps folks are beginning to have "had enough"
When I first heard of the Chinese virus I briefly harboured a hope it would reduce the population of China to, say, three or four hundred? Sure we'd have to pay more for our T-shirts, but we'd have to start making stuff for ourselves again. I'd be OK paying $20 for a T-shirt instead of $3 if the extra $17 was going to supporting a manufacturing industry in NZ rather than one in which Kiwis are paid to clean the floors & toilets in Chinese-owned tourist hotels and are told to call it "progress" and "good"