罗斯追问道：“中国工人比美国工人或德国工人技术更娴熟？”库克解释称：“随着时间推移，美国的许多职业技能已经中断。你可以将美国所有工具和模具制造商请到我们当前所在的房间中。可是在中国，你需要很多足球场大小的空间才能安置下他们的所有制造商。”

另有外媒指出，长期以来，“中国制造”一直是数量而非品质、低价而非高端产品的代名词。但这种状况正开始改变。

事实证明，从服装到电器再到手机，如今中国的产品不仅在耐用性上可媲美日本，还在精密程度上堪比台湾等高科技中心。生产闪存和数据存储卡的台商约翰·严表示，与中国大陆比拼产品质量时轻松胜出的日子已一去不返。

析人士表示，促进质量提高的最常见因素就是向外界学习。中国企业已经通过逆向工程和模仿外国机器改善自身实力。这种现象通常发生在中外合资企业内，且技术转让往往是强制性的。中国的各级工人也在持续提高技能。

附对话的原文：

most Americans would be surprised to know that nearly all Apple products are manufactured by one million Chinese workers in the factories of Apple contractors, including its largest: Foxconn. Yet Tim Cook insists that China's vast and cheap labor force is not the primary reason for manufacturing there.

Charlie Rose: So if it's not wages, what is it?

Tim Cook: It's skill.

Charlie Rose: Skill?

Tim Cook: It's skill. It's that Chi--

Charlie Rose: They have more skills than American workers? They have more skills than--

Tim Cook: Now-- now, hold on.

Charlie Rose: --German workers?

Tim Cook: Yeah, let me-- let me-- let me clear, China put an enormous focus on manufacturing. In what we would call, you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The US, over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we're currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.

Charlie Rose: Because they've taught those skills in their schools?

Tim Cook: It's because it was a focus of them-- it's a focus of their educational system. And so that is the reality.