Unique today. But what about tomorrow? It's not like another country can't do the same thing. There's nothing inherently Chinese about opening a factory quickly. Another country or two will learn how to do it, just as the Chinese did.
I'd say there is one, the available population to work. India is really the only country that could come close just based on pure population and I don't see there being a drive to do that.
Rather anything that came close would have to be a combination of Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. all working to grow their manufacturing bases to come anywhere close to what China can do when it comes to setting up factories in the near future. Longer term maybe some African countries will industrialize that way, but I don't see a place meeting the scale of Shenzhen/Dongguan manufacturing ever again.
I recently got back from visiting a factory in SEA, and spoke quite a bit with the people there about how the area is growing from a manufacturing standpoint. They have definitely taken notice of what is going on with China at the moment and are trying their best to take advantage of it, but it isn't even close to what I've seen in China.
[1] https://piie.com/blogs/china-economic-watch/manufacturing-em...
There's also the infrastructure. In china it's very easy, fast and cheap to get anything you need for a factory, and get it quickly, be it specialized CNC machines, parts for a mechanical crane, a truckload of leds, - or really anything in the whole chain of running and operating a factory - including expertise people at every level.
My understanding—dated—is that the amount of red tape to deal with is enormous.
They're not a replacement for China, obviously, but they don't have to be. A large part of China's role in global high-tech manufacturing is final assembly, which can and increasingly is being done everywhere.
The climb up the value ladder is very real, and it's only partially being driven by the political climate in China.
It requires the willingness to throw public money at it and depreciate the currency, decades of patience and favourable trade conditions. Technically other countries could do it but most have neither the patience, capital, time or goodwill. This may well include the US.
>There's nothing inherently Chinese about opening a factory quickly.
It's the ecosystem of factories in close quarters that creates their non-replicable competitive advantage. That includes soft capital (lots of people with experience) with hard (container shipping).
For the time being (and at least for the next decade), that is uniquely Chinese, and only the US or EU are even capable of duplicating that (and it's unclear whether they have the will).