– how a Japanese businessman views China
From 在华6年多的日本商人对中国世界工厂的评价
Translated by EPIN and Jacky
I am a typical Japanese businessman called “the economic animal”. I have been in china for more than 6 years. During these years, I have successively worked and lived in five cities. I can understand Chinese but cannot speak fluently. I can also get general meaning of Chinese words but cannot write. China is called “Factory of the World.” I have my understanding to this. As far as I know, China’s productivity has been improved a lot. However, there is still a long way for China to go to be factory of the world.
First, factory of the world does not mean the sweatshop. Some people once compared Japanese to ants, but compared with the hardworking Chinese, Japanese are far behind. There are innumerable household factories in Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. These factories are running on backward technologies, similar products, and slack management. They have low technology and poor efficiency. Their only advantage is that they have employees as tough breed as ants, as submissive as cattle and horses. These workers support the survival of these factories. The workers work more than 10 hours a day, staying in shabby rooms and living the lowest life, without basic social security. They are working on the lowest wages all around the world based on hourly rate. In some piece worker factories, the workers’ average working hours are more than 12 hours a day. They won’t stop unless the supervisor forces them to take a break. In my company, there were some Chinese female cleaners. They worked over 10 hours daily quietly with no grumble and never took a day off. They did not have direct supervisor. Not a single person pushed them to do so. They cherished their jobs greatly, just because they earned a bit higher than those in other factories. We were very surprised when hearing that they sent 80% of the earnings back home. To Japanese perspective, the remained money was insufficient to cover their basic living expense, not to mention the rental and the water bill. I had worked in many Southeast Asian countries. It was very difficult to get the workers work overtime even if in an underdeveloped country, such as Burma. Workers would ask for many extra things. In Philippines, workers would never do such hard works. The Filipinos would take one month break after one month’s working, and would not go to work until they used up the money. In Indonesia, there was no one would engage in such hard work. Therefore, in my opinion, these so-called international manufacturers in China are supported by the tough breed Chinese. They cannot survive elsewhere in the world without Chinese.
Second, factories without skilled workers cannot meet the standard of factory of the world. In the big cities of Southern and Northern China, large quantity of labor force is waiting for the employment. However, there are very few skillful workers. That’s because most Chinese factories are lack of long-term plans and technology support. Many migrant workers keep changing job year after year. They make shoes this year but sewing clothing the other year. The personnel turnover is huge. There is neither efficient management nor basic profession training. Meanwhile, the factories do not have long-term plans, and often rush to manufacture the same best-selling products. So workers have to learn new skills as the production line shifted. Most of the time, factories would fire the existing workers, and then recruit some new from the market. As a result, most workers do not have chances of working in the same field for a long time; therefore they cannot improve their industrial skills. Japan does not dominant in technology development, but it has an unrivaled highly skilled labor force. They have been engaged in the same jobs for tens of years. Their skillful hands produce the most sophisticated products in the world. Higher learning institutes cannot produce such workers, and it is not possible to train one over short time. It takes years to sharpen their skills. Chinese were more skillful. They have produced superb handicrafts. However, the Chinese factories’ employment pattern does not help train the workers. The Chinese workers have been floating like quicksand year by year. They don’t have the conditions to acquire higher skills. Continue reading “China is not the Factory of the World”
