The requirements for mining are always rising and will rise as long as the difficulty keeps climbing... So yeah, if you want to stay competitive you must have ASIC's and quite a few of them.
A Chinese mining farm would help, but you can profit with much less if you have cheap electricity
A Chinese mining farm would help, but you can profit with much less if you have cheap electricity
This is a good point. Mining is centralizing. Input costs are not more important than ever if you want a real ROI.
The electricity price is most important of all. If you have free/low cost electricity, your miner is still profitable while others are out of money. You can also buy the very cheap old generation miners and still make money.