'' More than 500 foreign-owned assembly-line factories in Mexico, called maquiladoras, have closed in the past two years, in part because wages have doubled in the past 10 years and are no longer considered low in the world economy. An entry-level factory worker in Tijuana earns $1.50 to $2 an hour, compared with 25 cents an hour in parts of China.

International companies once wary of China are increasingly inclined to invest there. Those include a golf-club manufacturer that laid off 1,500 employees in Tijuana and an electronics factory in Guadalajara that left 4,000 workers jobless when it moved. Suddenly Mexican workers feel that China is their fiercest competitor, sucking their jobs east.

"It's a reality of globalization," said a Mexican economist, Rogelio Ramirez de la O. As he surveys companies in Mexico, he said, they increasingly talk of moving to China. "This is not going to turn around automatically. It's a structural adjustment in the world economy." ''

- Washington Post (link via Cursor.org)