Last week’s Sunday New York Times ran a front-page article titled “How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work.” The piece focuses on why Apple makes its iPhone in China. While the article covers an important subject that’s rarely discussed, it erred in focusing so much on it being a decision Apple made, as if it had other options. In fact, the issue about why so many manufacturing jobs have gone to China has been with us for decades and is not company specific, but an issue this country has failed to understand and do anything about.

The decision Apple made, and that thousands of other companies have made before and after it, is the result of it being impossible to produce consumer technology products in the United States as quickly and as efficiently as in China. While China’s advantage once was its lower labor costs, that’s no longer the primary reason for high-tech products being made there.

China has parlayed its initial cost advantage into creating a huge infrastructure of skilled employees, a massive base of factories and an entrepreneurial environment like no place else on earth.

The real advantage of China is its ability to get a high-volume product developed, manufactured and ready for market quicker and more cost-effectively than any place else. That provides a real advantage in an industry where time to market can make the difference between success and failure.

U.S. companies can engage quickly with a Chinese partner and get a team in place in a few weeks. There’s a noticeable lack of bureaucracy and a willingness of these Asian companies to take risks. China-based companies are capable of scaling up production on short notice and scaling down equally fast, providing great flexibility. It’s not uncommon for a company to begin production of a complex new product in early November and ship a million of them in time for Christmas sales.

In China, there are many companies that already make products similar to those you want, so there’s no learning curve. The companies will engage without spending weeks of analysis, do it on a handshake, and not wait for months to create and negotiate a contract first.

China has a huge resource pool of middle-level manufacturing and production engineers as well as assembly workers who can take a design and bring it into production quickly and efficiently. Their work ethic is strong, and everyone typically works long hours when needed, much like workers do here in startups.

With so many Chinese companies building so many products for so many customers, suppliers of parts and services are all located within one to two hours of one another. That means competitive pricing, quick delivery, local expertise as well as a large pool of talented resources in the region. China’s distance from the United States in no longer a barrier; FedEx and UPS have huge hubs that can deliver a product to the customer two days after it rolls off of the assembly line.

Companies in Asia offer attractive costs by working on slim margins, often of just a few percent. They often offer their customers free or low-cost development services in order to keep their factories busy.

Another article in The New York Times on Thursday focused on worker mistreatment. It was a sensational piece written by reporters with little understanding of the real issues. In my 30 years of working in China, bringing technology products to factories of all kinds, rarely have I seen abuse. Workers flock to cities with factories from rural farm areas where jobs are scarce and pay little. The competition for these workers is intense, and companies compete with free housing, recreation centers and other benefits.

Still, it would be naive to think exploitation does not exist or that people are not abused; it’s just nowhere as prevalent as it’s made out to be. Remember the stories of suicides on the Foxconn campus? When Wired magazine examined the statistics, the suicide rate was well below that of the population at large.

It’s a story that plays well in the media as a simplistic reason why we are less competitive. But it diverts us from facing the real reasons for the loss of jobs, particularly when most of the cost of a technology product is not the labor, but the components that go into it. Labor costs, in fact, are typically about 5 percent of the total cost of a consumer electronic product.

Our country’s lack of understanding is what continues to cause us to fall further behind. The success of China as the world’s manufacturing hub is not only the result of the growth in Asia’s capabilities, but also in our country’s inability to compete. Our labor pool lacks sufficient midlevel workers and engineers. Corporate and government bureaucracies, a short-term financial focus, lack of risk-taking, and legal roadblocks also contribute.

The origins of this problem go back more than 30 years. Even then I found that it was difficult to find U.S. companies to work with me in developing consumer products. Many of them grew as suppliers to the military and defense industries and were ill-equipped to participate in the growth of the consumer electronics industry in the United States. They were trained to earn large profits and work to their own schedule. When requesting help from companies, I would hear back in hours from most Asian companies and in days or even weeks from U.S. companies. Asian companies always seemed much hungrier, and that’s still true today.

The movement to Asia has been led by design engineers wanting to get their product into production, rather than by accountants looking for lower costs.

These are the real reasons more and more companies flock to China to get their products made. What can we do to become more competitive? Next week I’ll offer some suggestions.