某人一直在莫名其妙的問我一個問題：就是他該不該把現有的那點錢【30w支幣】投入股市。
鄙人的回答非常非常的簡短，這也是是我對很多事情的態度：
虧不過百分之百，賺不限天空海闊。
小伙子，你的收入是死數，如果沒有富婆瞎了眼，這是唯一的機會。少了這筆錢，你不過一樣開不起名車買不起地產泡不到好妞，而某種的豪賭可能使你從此不一樣，所以——去吧。
——————————————
史上最短一篇日志誕生了。
認沽的時代已經結束，股市再無趣味，是你們無膽之輩的天下了。
2009年4月28日 星期二
2009年3月19日 星期四
從買缶看中國輿論引導的水平
「對歷史器物的胡亂開發，常常會製造出新的文化笑柄。奧運開幕式上『擊缶而歌』，是一個典型的禮制錯誤…莊周死了妻子，『鼓盆而歌』，敲的就是缶。」
而該國官方專家出來導引與論時，反而越描越黑，「莊子是個很浪漫的人，擊缶而歌是為妻子得到解脫、走向自由而高興。」
若依據這個推論，中國網民應該也是很浪漫的，他們可能是因為該國官方在北京奧運開幕式上，動員千人公開狂鳴自國喪鐘，象徵即將「得到解脫、走向自由而高興」吧。
套用中國網民草泥馬哲學，這張藝謀還真是不厚道，老愛擺中國領導的道。更加暴露了中國自「文化大革命」之後，就完全沒啥文化底蘊；而前陣子胡錦濤又上井岡山高談紅軍傳統，眼看著他似乎想效法老毛，對上海江澤民幫集團發起「文革」的意圖也越來越明顯。喔喔，台灣人要小心了，尤其是那些滯留於中國的台商、台幹，千萬要懂得明哲保身遠離是非，否則選錯邊亂亂站，到時可就會很難看。不曉得連爺爺、好將軍們他們到時會選哪邊靠著站？
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以上轉自年糕館
當然，鄙人在前文《分享兩本書》中提到了，中國的五毛水平，比之《我們唾棄那樣的中國人》的年成，水平下降了太多，他們人是多了，嘴炮是更集中也更響亮了，但是自胡正日大規模的正規軍化五毛之后，五毛的隊伍充滿了考場失意者和前五毛的各種裙帶人物。其質量下降的速度，快得可怕，以前的各種社區，五毛等等擁匪志愿軍的跟貼，至少能抓抓文章的語法錯漏和常識問題。講點似是而非的道理還是都比較順手的，那時鄙人等年紀也小，不時也有辯論不過的時候。尤其集中于歷史和軍事的見解，更是經常被其有選擇的真相所逼得啞口，甚至而有落荒而逃的光景。
而今日的擁共諸君，在海外是齊心協力讓人避之不及的“殺得好”和“loser”,自然還有讓人想寫《重新認識希姆萊》的傻到極點的扶共滅洋聚會散步，其成果有圖為證，明顯是又取得了社會主義的痿大勝利
但是凱迪網上的標準輿論引導員又是什么水平？其中的丁明，圍棋一，等等好幾個既然蠢到用同一個郵箱，工作的素質不堪一說。壞蛋蛋等更是從不討論，一個勁的copy和reply。即使他們選取的材料，也多是《震驚，……》《憤怒，……》這種明顯強奸視覺和知覺的標題。至于放壞水和白癡年年笑（以前叫做叔叔天天來猥褻）系列，水平怎么樣，自是不存疑問。成人社區的水平，說實在話已經遠不如校內。至少大家在自己真實的頭像和姓名面前，滿口的污言穢語不怎么出得來。偏執和極端的思維，也不那么敢和一個半真實的身份聯系在一起。
先前在牛博網看到一個癡漢系列的馬甲，基本上是每貼必露臉，他是先自由后民主派的代表，還根本不是維穩性息員，當時沒怎么回復他的怪論，如今想起來，有個那樣的對手玩玩鬧鬧倒也就還行了。
輿論引導員水平下降的最可怕后果倒還不在于此，乃是由之而使反對體制派的新進青年的水平也不斷下降。當這個社會的草根輿論區域（主要就是bbs）不斷的蛻化為口水戰而非觀念戰的戰場。那么中國的社會潛藏的暴虐化傾向將不可遏制。而在民主轉型之初期能起到最大作用的日常聊天觀念交流中，為民主啟蒙而推出的一大堆讀物尤其辛灝年等的選擇性視角非常嚴重，派系之間觀點的極端化不斷加劇，尤有將怨氣和分派引入生活的趨勢。
網路這個觀點賣場上，不斷出現劣幣驅逐良幣的傾向。中國現在的語言環境，雖然不存在溫和派的土壤，但是更嚴重者在于立場之混亂。一個人從反專制爭個人自由的立場出發，很快會被中國的混亂思潮攪做一團，進而反馬克思主義，乃至反到每一個體制的基礎工作人員（為楊佳叫好者甚多此類），或也反計生又嘆國人素質，反失土又反圖博東土的鎮壓，由是亂七八糟無所適言，最后唯有緊抱自己的那并不明晰的觀念到處開罵，如此這般下去，除了變得極端和偏執，任何認知都不會有什么實質的長進。
其典型就是法輪功的網站，鄙人在同一個版面上可以看到有：西藏維權，反對割讓海島（或者蒙古），因果報應，上帝精神，武裝革命，六四學潮，零八憲章等等齊聚一堂。只要敵人反對，便拿來己用，不得不說是政治擴大化以后的中文界絕癥。兩派中涵養不夠（實在很難夠）的成員，往往不看主貼，從標題估量立場，點進去就是直接的回復痛罵，導致05年起的c&k精神幾乎喪失，凱迪玩無間的帖子和反諷的帖子竟然能招來“戰友”的炮火，這是多么悲哀的一種事情。
有上兩段的來看，支共現在大量的劣品五毛其實起到了一種意想不到的效果，這個世界沒有對手就沒有提高。各大反對派的網站上，以前嚴密然則幽默的大師多半封筆，空間都讓位于半通不通的腎上腺書寫就的東西。網友們的才華雖然還在，卻失掉了表達的意愿，這個世界首先在意的是男女之間那點事，即使在支國，政治和變革在生活中也是第二位之后。一個很口水化的話題吸引不了高人。是以我迫切希望支共對輿論引導員自上而下的來個大洗牌，鄙人用腳指頭想了想，提出了幾條具有戰略高度的偉大構想，支共若是有好學之心，鄙人也不吝賜教。
現提供五毛優化大戰略縮水版，完整版售價待定，有意國請與鄙人聯系
- 趕緊辭退五毛中的“從良派”，這批人除了會講點“丁子霖貪墨天安門善款”“王丹和××搞gay”啦之類的，因為其畏首畏尾自知留有把柄和出身問題，是做不好事的，還會引起民眾對其所講事件的真相大探密
- 對于五毛中的留學派，要嚴密考察出身，凡是家里經濟比較困難的，一律辭退，父母不當處級以上干部的，一概辭退。為何？這群人“殺得好”是會叫，但是不定是真心的，使館20歐的游行自會去，flg的游行有錢也會去的。又沒有為己保家護院的那門心情，工作八九成幫倒忙
- 公開化五毛這一行業，這項偉大舉措的優點多了，比如可以大幅降低社會的廉恥觀，從小培養更多五毛人才等等
- 學習公務員招考，廣泛招考五毛，支國接下來會不斷徘徊在崩潰的邊緣和崩潰的中心，有一份鐵的工作是廣大支奴的無尚向往，只要能達到數百比一的錄取率，一定可以獲得優質的輿論引導人才。
- 不時搞演習，在重大舉措和人為事故之前，重大群體性事件得到強烈反應之前，不僅要組織筆桿子作文扼殺一小撮別有用心分子的言論，先期搶占輿論高點。更要在文章發布之前，搞模擬演練，以熟悉反革命右派的語言和應對策略。使輿論引導工作更有針對性
- 整個維穩性息員行業，不時要搞行業大練兵，由辭退的“從良派”擔任藍軍。在內部論壇和凱迪天涯各大軍區的“紅軍”展開實彈演習。這是提高行業素質的關鍵之關鍵，定期評定“辯才之星”“引導楷模”鼓勵士氣。不斷掀起“忠黨愛國”的大練兵熱潮
- 培訓右五毛，專門以低素質展示其觀點，引起民眾對他們口中的那些詞匯的極度厭倦，得出：共黨雖然不怎樣，但是mz分子更不是好東西的愛國觀點。
- ……
2009年2月19日 星期四
"The China Price"
"The China Price"
Commentary: How To Level The Playing Field
Shaking Up Trade Theory
Commentary: Does It Matter If China Catches Up To The U.S.?
SPECIAL REPORT -- THE CHINA PRICE
"The China Price"
They are the three scariest words in U.S. industry. Cut your price at least 30% or lose your customers. Nearly every manufacturer is vulnerable -- from furniture to networking gear. The result: A massive shift in economic power is under way
From the rich walnut paneling and carved arches to the molded Italian Renaissance patterns on the ceiling, the circa 1925 council chamber room of Akron's municipal hall evokes a time when the America's manufacturing heartland was at the peak of its power. But when the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission, a congressionally appointed panel, convened there on Sept. 23, it was not to discuss power but decline. One after another, economists, union officials, and small manufacturers took the microphone to describe the devastation Chinese competitors are inflicting on U.S. industries, from kitchenware and car tires to electronic circuit boards.
These aren't stories of mundane sunset industries equipped with antiquated technology. David W. Johnson, CEO of 92-year-old Summitville Tiles Inc. in Summitville, Ohio, described how imports forced him to shut a state-of-the-art, $120 million tilemaking plant four football fields long, sending Summitville into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now, a tenfold surge in high-quality Chinese imports at "below our manufacturing costs" threatens to polish Summitville off. Makers of precision machine tools and plastic molds -- essential supports of America's industrial architecture -- told how their business has shrunk as home-appliance makers have shifted manufacturing from Ohio to China. Despite buying the best computer-controlled gear, Douglas S. Bartlett reported that at his Cary (Ill.)-based Bartlett Manufacturing Co., a maker of high-end circuit boards for aerospace and automotive customers, sales are half the late-1990s level and the workforce is one-third smaller. He waved a board Bartlett makes for a U.S. Navy submarine-detection device. His buyer says he can get the same board overseas for 40% less. "From experience I can only assume this is the Chinese price," Bartlett said. "We have faced competition in the past. What is dramatically different about China is that they are about half the price."
China Price Photo Essay
SLIDE SHOW: CHINA PRICES
Where the Jobs Went
"The China price." They are the three scariest words in U.S. industry. In general, it means 30% to 50% less than what you can possibly make something for in the U.S. In the worst cases, it means below your cost of materials. Makers of apparel, footware, electric appliances, and plastics products, which have been shutting U.S. factories for decades, know well the futility of trying to match the China price. It has been a big factor in the loss of 2.7 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. Meanwhile, America's deficit with China keeps soaring to new records. It is likely to pass $150 billion this year.
Now, manufacturers and workers who never thought they had to worry about the China price are confronting the new math of the mainland. These companies had once held their own against imports mostly because their businesses required advanced skills, heavy investment, and proximity to customers. Many of these companies are in the small-to-midsize sector, which makes up 37% of U.S. manufacturing. The China price is even being felt in high tech. Chinese exports of advanced networking gear, still at a low level, are already affecting prices. And there's talk by some that China could eventually become a major car exporter.
Multinationals have accelerated the mainland's industrialization by shifting production there, and midsize companies that can are following suit. The alternative is to stay at home and fight -- and probably lose. Ohio State University business professor Oded Shenkar, author of the new book The Chinese Century, hears many war stories from local companies. He gives it to them straight: "If you still make anything labor intensive, get out now rather than bleed to death. Shaving 5% here and there won't work." Chinese producers can make the same adjustments. "You need an entirely new business model to compete."
America has survived import waves before, from Japan, South Korea, and Mexico. And it has lived with China for two decades. But something very different is happening. The assumption has long been that the U.S. and other industrialized nations will keep leading in knowledge-intensive industries while developing nations focus on lower-skill sectors. That's now open to debate. "What is stunning about China is that for the first time we have a huge, poor country that can compete both with very low wages and in high tech," says Harvard University economist Richard B. Freeman. "Combine the two, and America has a problem."
How much of a problem? That's in fierce dispute. On one side, the benefits of the relationship with China are enormous. After years of struggling to crack the mainland market, U.S. multinationals from General Motors (GM ) to Procter & Gamble (PG ) and Motorola (MOT ) are finally reaping rich profits. They're making cell phones, shampoo, autos, and PCs in China and selling them to its middle class of some 100 million people, a group that should more than double in size by 2010. "Our commercial success in China is important to our competitiveness worldwide," says Motorola China Chairman Gene Delaney.
By outsourcing components and hardware from China, U.S. companies have sharply boosted their return on capital. China's trade barriers continue to come down, part of its agreement to enter the World Trade Organization in 2001. Big new opportunities will emerge for U.S. insurers, banks, and retailers. China's surging demand for raw materials and commodities has driven prices up worldwide, creating a windfall for U.S. steelmakers, miners, and lumber companies. The cheap cost of Chinese goods has kept inflation low in the U.S. and fueled a consumer boom that helped America weather a recession and kept global growth on track.
But there's a huge cost to the China relationship, too. Foremost is the question of America's huge trade deficit, of which China is the largest and fastest-growing part. While U.S. consumers binge on Chinese-made goods, the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit is nearing a record 6% of gross domestic product. The trade shortfall -- coupled with the U.S. budget deficit -- is driving the dollar ever downward, raising fears that cracks will appear in the global financial system. And by keeping its currency pegged to the greenback at a level analysts see as undervalued, China amplifies the problem.
America's Eroding Base
The deficit with China will keep widening under most projections. That raises the issue: Will America's industrial base erode to a dangerous level? So far the hardest-hit industries have been those that were destined to migrate to low-cost nations anyway. But China is ramping up rapidly in more advanced industries where America remains competitive, adding state-of-the-art capacity in cars, specialty steel, petrochemicals, and microchips. These plants are aimed at meeting insatiable demand in China. But the danger is that if China's growth stalls, the resulting glut will turn into another export wave and disrupt whole new strata of American industry. "As producers in China end up with significant unused capacity, they will try to be much more creative in how they deploy it," says Jim Hemerling, a senior vice-president at Boston Consulting Group's Shanghai office.
That's why China is an even thornier trade issue for the U.S. than Japan was in the 1980s. It's clear some Chinese exporters cheat, from intellectual-property theft and dumping to securing unfair subsidies. Washington can get much more aggressive in fighting violations of trade law. But broader protectionism is a nonstarter. On a practical level the U.S. is now so dependent on Chinese suppliers that resurrecting trade barriers would just raise costs and diminish the real benefits that China trade confers. Also, unlike Japan 20 years ago, China is a much more open economy. It continues to lower tariffs and even runs a slight trade deficit with the whole world -- which makes the U.S.'s deficit with China all the more glaring. Hiking the value of the yuan 30% might help. But that's unlikely. For one thing, Beijing fears what such a shift would do to jobs -- and the value of its $515 billion in foreign reserves. The real solution is for the U.S. to reduce its twin deficits on its own -- but that's more America's issue than China's.
Meanwhile, U.S. companies are no longer investing in much new capacity at home, and the ranks of U.S. engineers are thinning. In contrast, China is emerging as the most competitive manufacturing platform ever. Chief among its formidable assets is its cheap labor, from $120-a-month production workers to $2,000-a-month chip designers. Even in sophisticated electronics industries, where direct labor is less than 10% of costs, China's low wages are reflected in the entire supply chain -- components, office workers, cargo handling -- you name it.
China is also propelled by an enormous domestic market that brings economies of scale, feverish local rivalry that keeps prices low, an army of engineers that is growing by 350,000 annually, young workers and managers willing to put in 12-hour days and work weekends, an unparalleled component and material base in electronics and light industry, and an entrepreneurial zeal to do whatever it takes to please big retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ), Target (TGT ), Best Buy (BBY ), and J.C. Penney (JCP ). "The reason practically all home furnishings are now made in China factories is that they simply are better suppliers," says Janet E. Fox, vice-president for international procurement at J.C. Penny Co. "American manufacturers aren't even in the same game."
Fox's point is important. China's competitive advantages are built on much more than unfair trade practices. Some 70% of exports now come from private companies and foreign ventures mainly owned by Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Japanese, and U.S. companies that have brought access to foreign markets, advanced technology, and managerial knowhow. Aside from cheap land and tax breaks in some areas, private Chinese manufacturers get minimal government help. "The Chinese government cannot afford to offer financial support to the export economy," says business professor Gu Kejian of People's University in Beijing. And as capital floods in and modern plants are built in China, efficiencies improve dramatically. The productivity of private industry in China has grown an astounding 17% annually for five years, according to the U.S. Conference Board.
China needs U.S. imports, though not as much as imagined when Beijing agreed to join the WTO. U.S. exports to China have risen 25% to 35% annually in the past two years. But China's exports still outstrip its imports from the U.S. by 5 to 1. The U.S. sells about $2.4 billion worth of aircraft a year, and its semiconductor exports tripled in three years. Otherwise the U.S. looks like a developing nation. It runs surpluses in commodities such as oil seeds, grains, iron, wood pulp, and raw animal hides.
Meanwhile, the Chinese keep expanding their export base. Chinese competition arrives so fast that it's nearly impossible to adjust through the usual strategies, such as automating or squeezing suppliers. The Japanese, South Koreans, and Europeans often took "four or five years to develop their place in the market," says Robert B. Cassidy, a former U.S. Trade Representative official who helped negotiate China's entry into the WTO and now works for Washington law firm Collier Shannon Scott, which wages dumping cases on behalf of U.S. clients. "China overwhelms a market so quickly you don't see it coming."
"Shock and Awe"
Georgetown Steel Co. is a case in point. The Georgetown (S.C.) maker of wire rods used in everything from bridge cables to ball bearings had battled Asian and Mexican imports for years. But last year it shut its 600-worker plant, citing a tenfold leap in Chinese imports, to 252,000 tons, from 2001 to 2003. International Steel Group Inc. (ISG ) has since bought the facility after U.S. anti-dumping duties on imports and a rise in global demand helped hike domestic prices. The Gardiner (Mass.) plant of Seaman Paper Co., a maker of crepe and decorative paper, is highly automated. Yet Chinese imports have grabbed a third of the market. It sells 81-foot streamers to big retailers for as little as 9 cents each. That's below Seaman's cost of materials. "We thought we could offset Chinese labor cost by automating, but we just couldn't," says Seaman President George Jones III.
In bedroom furniture, 59 U.S. plants employing 15,500 workers have closed since January, 2001, as Chinese imports have rocketed 221%, to $1.4 billion -- half of the U.S. market. Prices have plunged 30%. Dumping certainly seems to be one factor: At its Galax (Va.) factory, Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co. displays a Chinese knockoff of one of its dressers that wholesales for $105 -- below the world market cost for the wood. But the main competition comes from Chinese megaplants that sell directly to U.S. retailers and can get a new design into mass production in two months. The new Chinese factories of suppliers such as Lacquer Craft Furniture, Markor, and Shing Mark, some of them Taiwanese-owned, employ thousands and are so big they seem meant to build Boeing 747s, making most U.S. factories look like cottage industries. "The first wave is shock and awe," says John D. Bassett III, CEO of Vaughan-Bassett, whose sales and workforce have shrunk even though it has boosted productivity fivefold at its 600-worker Galax plant since 1995 by investing in computer-controlled wood drying, cutting, and carving gear. "American industry has never encountered [such] competition."
As component industries and design work follow assembly lines to China, key elements of the U.S. industrial base are beginning to erode. American plastic-molding and machine-tool industries have shrunk dramatically in the past five years. Take Incoe Corp. in Troy, Mich., a maker of steel components for plastic-injection machines. "When the economy turned soft, we anticipated the business would come back," says Incoe CFO Robert Hoff. "But it didn't. We saw our customer base either close or migrate to China." The U.S. printed-circuit-board industry has seen sales go from $11 billion to under $5 billion since 2001. In that time, PCB exports from China have more than doubled, to a projected $3.4 billion this year, says market researcher Global Sources Ltd. (GSOL ) Most U.S. production of key electronics materials, such as copper-clad laminates, has fled, too. "The whole industry is hollowing out," says Joseph C. Fehsenfeld, CEO of Midwest Printed Circuit Services Inc. in Round Lake Beach, Ill.
The migration of electronics to China began when the Taiwanese shifted plants and suppliers across the Taiwan Strait in the late 1990s. As recently as four years ago, though, the U.S. exported $45 billion in computer hardware. Since the tech crash, that number has slid to $28 billion as the industry headed en masse for China, which is even more competitive than Taiwan. "All electronics hardware manufacturing is going to China," says Michael E. Marks, CEO of Flextronics Corp (FLEX )., a contract manufacturer that employs 41,000 in China. Flextronics and other companies are hiring Chinese engineers to design the products assembled there. "There is a myth that the U.S. would remain the knowledge economy and China the sweatshop," says BCG's Hemerling. "Increasingly, this is no longer the case."
A visit to Flextronics' campus in the Pearl River Delta town of Doumen vividly illustrates Marks's point. The site employs 18,000 workers making cell phones, X-box game consoles, PCs, and other hardware in 13 factories sprawled over 149 acres. The bamboo scaffolding is about to come down on an additional 720,000-square-foot factory nearing completion. Almost every chemical, component, plastic, machine tool, and packing material Flextronics needs is available from thousands of suppliers within a two-hour drive of the site. That alone makes most components 20% cheaper in China than in the U.S., says campus General Manager Tim Dinwiddie. Plus, China will soon eliminate remaining tariffs on imported chips. In the past five years, electronic manufacturing-services companies such as Flextronics have cut their U.S. production from $37 billion to $27 billion while doubling their China output, to $31 billion. That's likely to double again by 2007.
"Gravitational Pull"
China is even making its presence felt in the U.S. market for networking gear, a bastion of American comparative advantage. On Nov. 15, struggling 3Com Corp. (COMS ) in Marlborough, Mass., launched a data-communications switching system for corporate networks of 10,000 users or more. It claims twice the performance of Cisco Systems Inc.'s (CSCO ) comparable switch. At $183,000, 3Com's list price is 25% less. Its secret? 3Com is settling for lower margins and taking advantage of a 1,200-engineer joint venture with China telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. This is the first high-end piece of networking gear sold by a U.S. company that is designed and manufactured in China. For the price of one U.S. engineer, the joint venture can throw four engineers into the task of making customized products for a client. Even if 3Com does not succeed, similar tie-ups are expected, which could drive down prices of high-end gear sold in the U.S. Says 3Com President Bruce Claflin: "We want to change the pricing structure of this industry." 3Com hopes this is the start of a whole line of networking gear designed and made in China for the global market. Without referring to China, Cisco CEO John T. Chambers says "we are starting to see a stream of good, very price-competitive competitors, particular from Asia."
The next step for China is critical mass in core industries. Outside Beijing, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMI ) has just opened a chip plant fabricating 12-inch silicon wafers that experts say is just two generations behind Intel Corp. (INTC ) A foundry that makes chips on a contract basis, this plant won't compete directly with U.S. chipmakers. But with four more 12-inch wafer plants due by 2006 and many more fabs in the pipeline, the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Assn. warns that a "gravitational pull" could suck capital, people, and leading-edge research-and-development and design functions from the U.S.
Digital technologies aren't the only areas where the Chinese have huge ambitions. In the past decade, U.S. petrochemical makers have invested in little new capacity. But at a three-mile-long site in Nanjing, 12,000 workers are erecting a $2.7 billion network of pipes and towers for China's Sinopec (SNP ) and Germany's BASF (BF ) that by next year will be among the world's biggest, most modern complexes for ethylene, the basic ingredient in plastics. An even bigger complex is going up in Shanghai. "The Chinese understand everything that scale means," says Fluor Corp. (FLR ) Group President Robert McNamara, who lives part-time in Shanghai and whose company has design contracts at both complexes. "When they target an industry to dominate, they don't mitigate."
Can China dominate everything? Of course not. America remains the world's biggest manufacturer, producing 75% of what it consumes, though that's down from 90% in the mid-'90s. Industries requiring huge R&D budgets and capital investment, such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and cars, still have strong bases in the U.S. "I don't see China becoming a major car exporter in the foreseeable future," says GM China (GM ) Chairman Philip F. Murtaugh. "There is no economic rationale." Murtaugh cites high production costs and quality issues at Chinese car plants, as well as just-in-time delivery needs in the West, as impediments.
Burning Rubber
Don't tell that to Miao Wei, president of Dongfeng Motor Corp. On Nov. 7, Dongfeng and Honda Motor Co. (HMC ) announced that their joint venture will invest $340 million to boost output of Honda CR-Vs and Civics fivefold, to 120,000, by early 2006. The plant aims to achieve world standards by employing Honda's flexible manufacturing system. "Honda will sell some of the Chinese-built cars in Europe," says Miao. Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY ) is also talking about exporting with Dongfeng.
China's carmakers are developing the suppliers that one day could sustain exports. Auto-parts maker Wanxiang Group in Hangzhou started as a tiny township-owned farm-machinery shop in 1969. Now it's a $2.4 billion conglomerate that supplies the Chinese assembly plants of GM, Ford Motor (F ), Volkswagen, and others and also exports 30% of its output. In two years, China will drop the rule that its auto plants buy at least 40% of parts locally. Wanxiang is getting ready: It is opening a $42 million plant loaded with U.S. and European testing gear. And since 1995, Wanxiang has bought 10 U.S. auto-parts makers. "Our goal is to acquire technology, management, and most important, to get access to overseas markets," says Chairman Lu Guanqiu.
Some U.S manufacturers hope China will run out of steam. This year, factories in Guangdong and Fujian faced serious labor shortages for the first time. Red-hot demand has meant skyrocketing costs for China's producers, most of which rely on imported goods such as steel, plastics, and components. Energy shortages have forced manufacturers to shut factories several times a week. In almost any industry one can think of, vicious price wars are biting into already razor-sharp margins. "There are so many small companies competing that they crowd out all profit," says Beijing University economist Zhang Weiying. Indeed, given the low emphasis on profits and the unsophisticated accounting of many Chinese companies, often their pricing isn't based on a full understanding of costs. Having gotten as far as they can on cheap production costs, Chinese manufacturers must develop their own technologies and innovative products to move ahead -- areas in which they've made slow progress so far.
The juggernaut will slow, but only slightly. While salaries for top Chinese designers are rising fast, they are still a fifth to a tenth of those in Silicon Valley. If China's wages rise 8% annually for the next five years, says a Boston Consulting Group study, the average factory hand will still earn just $1.30 an hour by then. If China allowed the yuan to appreciate by around 10% in the next year, productivity gains would more than offset the higher costs, figures China expert Nicholas R. Lardy of the Institute for International Economics. "I don't think revaluation will have a significant impact," he says.
And Chinese producers are hardly standing still. In a recent survey of Chinese and U.S. manufacturers by IndustryWeek and Cleveland-based Manufacturing Performance Institute, 54% of Chinese companies cited innovation as one of their top objectives, while only 26% of U.S. respondents did. Chinese companies spend more on worker training and enterprise-management software. And 91% of U.S. plants are more than a decade old, vs. 54% in China. Shanghai-based TV maker SVA Group, for example, has opened China's first plant to make flat panels, a venture with Japan's NEC (NIPNY ) Corp. That is enabling SVA to secure a U.S. beachhead by selling liquid-crystal display and plasma TV sets through channels such as the online sites of Costco Wholesale (COST ) and Target. Starting price: $1,600 -- 30% below similar models by Royal Philips Electronics (PHG ) and Panasonic (MC ).
More innovation. Better goods. Lower prices. Newer plants. America will surely continue to benefit from China's expansion. But unless it can deal with the industrial challenge, it will suffer a loss of economic power and influence. Can America afford the China price? It's the question U.S. workers, execs, and policymakers urgently need to ask.
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"The China Price"
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SPECIAL REPORT -- THE CHINA PRICE
"The China Price"
They are the three scariest words in U.S. industry. Cut your price at least 30% or lose your customers. Nearly every manufacturer is vulnerable -- from furniture to networking gear. The result: A massive shift in economic power is under way
From the rich walnut paneling and carved arches to the molded Italian Renaissance patterns on the ceiling, the circa 1925 council chamber room of Akron's municipal hall evokes a time when the America's manufacturing heartland was at the peak of its power. But when the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission, a congressionally appointed panel, convened there on Sept. 23, it was not to discuss power but decline. One after another, economists, union officials, and small manufacturers took the microphone to describe the devastation Chinese competitors are inflicting on U.S. industries, from kitchenware and car tires to electronic circuit boards.
These aren't stories of mundane sunset industries equipped with antiquated technology. David W. Johnson, CEO of 92-year-old Summitville Tiles Inc. in Summitville, Ohio, described how imports forced him to shut a state-of-the-art, $120 million tilemaking plant four football fields long, sending Summitville into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now, a tenfold surge in high-quality Chinese imports at "below our manufacturing costs" threatens to polish Summitville off. Makers of precision machine tools and plastic molds -- essential supports of America's industrial architecture -- told how their business has shrunk as home-appliance makers have shifted manufacturing from Ohio to China. Despite buying the best computer-controlled gear, Douglas S. Bartlett reported that at his Cary (Ill.)-based Bartlett Manufacturing Co., a maker of high-end circuit boards for aerospace and automotive customers, sales are half the late-1990s level and the workforce is one-third smaller. He waved a board Bartlett makes for a U.S. Navy submarine-detection device. His buyer says he can get the same board overseas for 40% less. "From experience I can only assume this is the Chinese price," Bartlett said. "We have faced competition in the past. What is dramatically different about China is that they are about half the price."
China Price Photo Essay
SLIDE SHOW: CHINA PRICES
Where the Jobs Went
"The China price." They are the three scariest words in U.S. industry. In general, it means 30% to 50% less than what you can possibly make something for in the U.S. In the worst cases, it means below your cost of materials. Makers of apparel, footware, electric appliances, and plastics products, which have been shutting U.S. factories for decades, know well the futility of trying to match the China price. It has been a big factor in the loss of 2.7 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. Meanwhile, America's deficit with China keeps soaring to new records. It is likely to pass $150 billion this year.
Now, manufacturers and workers who never thought they had to worry about the China price are confronting the new math of the mainland. These companies had once held their own against imports mostly because their businesses required advanced skills, heavy investment, and proximity to customers. Many of these companies are in the small-to-midsize sector, which makes up 37% of U.S. manufacturing. The China price is even being felt in high tech. Chinese exports of advanced networking gear, still at a low level, are already affecting prices. And there's talk by some that China could eventually become a major car exporter.
Multinationals have accelerated the mainland's industrialization by shifting production there, and midsize companies that can are following suit. The alternative is to stay at home and fight -- and probably lose. Ohio State University business professor Oded Shenkar, author of the new book The Chinese Century, hears many war stories from local companies. He gives it to them straight: "If you still make anything labor intensive, get out now rather than bleed to death. Shaving 5% here and there won't work." Chinese producers can make the same adjustments. "You need an entirely new business model to compete."
America has survived import waves before, from Japan, South Korea, and Mexico. And it has lived with China for two decades. But something very different is happening. The assumption has long been that the U.S. and other industrialized nations will keep leading in knowledge-intensive industries while developing nations focus on lower-skill sectors. That's now open to debate. "What is stunning about China is that for the first time we have a huge, poor country that can compete both with very low wages and in high tech," says Harvard University economist Richard B. Freeman. "Combine the two, and America has a problem."
How much of a problem? That's in fierce dispute. On one side, the benefits of the relationship with China are enormous. After years of struggling to crack the mainland market, U.S. multinationals from General Motors (GM ) to Procter & Gamble (PG ) and Motorola (MOT ) are finally reaping rich profits. They're making cell phones, shampoo, autos, and PCs in China and selling them to its middle class of some 100 million people, a group that should more than double in size by 2010. "Our commercial success in China is important to our competitiveness worldwide," says Motorola China Chairman Gene Delaney.
By outsourcing components and hardware from China, U.S. companies have sharply boosted their return on capital. China's trade barriers continue to come down, part of its agreement to enter the World Trade Organization in 2001. Big new opportunities will emerge for U.S. insurers, banks, and retailers. China's surging demand for raw materials and commodities has driven prices up worldwide, creating a windfall for U.S. steelmakers, miners, and lumber companies. The cheap cost of Chinese goods has kept inflation low in the U.S. and fueled a consumer boom that helped America weather a recession and kept global growth on track.
But there's a huge cost to the China relationship, too. Foremost is the question of America's huge trade deficit, of which China is the largest and fastest-growing part. While U.S. consumers binge on Chinese-made goods, the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit is nearing a record 6% of gross domestic product. The trade shortfall -- coupled with the U.S. budget deficit -- is driving the dollar ever downward, raising fears that cracks will appear in the global financial system. And by keeping its currency pegged to the greenback at a level analysts see as undervalued, China amplifies the problem.
America's Eroding Base
The deficit with China will keep widening under most projections. That raises the issue: Will America's industrial base erode to a dangerous level? So far the hardest-hit industries have been those that were destined to migrate to low-cost nations anyway. But China is ramping up rapidly in more advanced industries where America remains competitive, adding state-of-the-art capacity in cars, specialty steel, petrochemicals, and microchips. These plants are aimed at meeting insatiable demand in China. But the danger is that if China's growth stalls, the resulting glut will turn into another export wave and disrupt whole new strata of American industry. "As producers in China end up with significant unused capacity, they will try to be much more creative in how they deploy it," says Jim Hemerling, a senior vice-president at Boston Consulting Group's Shanghai office.
That's why China is an even thornier trade issue for the U.S. than Japan was in the 1980s. It's clear some Chinese exporters cheat, from intellectual-property theft and dumping to securing unfair subsidies. Washington can get much more aggressive in fighting violations of trade law. But broader protectionism is a nonstarter. On a practical level the U.S. is now so dependent on Chinese suppliers that resurrecting trade barriers would just raise costs and diminish the real benefits that China trade confers. Also, unlike Japan 20 years ago, China is a much more open economy. It continues to lower tariffs and even runs a slight trade deficit with the whole world -- which makes the U.S.'s deficit with China all the more glaring. Hiking the value of the yuan 30% might help. But that's unlikely. For one thing, Beijing fears what such a shift would do to jobs -- and the value of its $515 billion in foreign reserves. The real solution is for the U.S. to reduce its twin deficits on its own -- but that's more America's issue than China's.
Meanwhile, U.S. companies are no longer investing in much new capacity at home, and the ranks of U.S. engineers are thinning. In contrast, China is emerging as the most competitive manufacturing platform ever. Chief among its formidable assets is its cheap labor, from $120-a-month production workers to $2,000-a-month chip designers. Even in sophisticated electronics industries, where direct labor is less than 10% of costs, China's low wages are reflected in the entire supply chain -- components, office workers, cargo handling -- you name it.
China is also propelled by an enormous domestic market that brings economies of scale, feverish local rivalry that keeps prices low, an army of engineers that is growing by 350,000 annually, young workers and managers willing to put in 12-hour days and work weekends, an unparalleled component and material base in electronics and light industry, and an entrepreneurial zeal to do whatever it takes to please big retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ), Target (TGT ), Best Buy (BBY ), and J.C. Penney (JCP ). "The reason practically all home furnishings are now made in China factories is that they simply are better suppliers," says Janet E. Fox, vice-president for international procurement at J.C. Penny Co. "American manufacturers aren't even in the same game."
Fox's point is important. China's competitive advantages are built on much more than unfair trade practices. Some 70% of exports now come from private companies and foreign ventures mainly owned by Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Japanese, and U.S. companies that have brought access to foreign markets, advanced technology, and managerial knowhow. Aside from cheap land and tax breaks in some areas, private Chinese manufacturers get minimal government help. "The Chinese government cannot afford to offer financial support to the export economy," says business professor Gu Kejian of People's University in Beijing. And as capital floods in and modern plants are built in China, efficiencies improve dramatically. The productivity of private industry in China has grown an astounding 17% annually for five years, according to the U.S. Conference Board.
China needs U.S. imports, though not as much as imagined when Beijing agreed to join the WTO. U.S. exports to China have risen 25% to 35% annually in the past two years. But China's exports still outstrip its imports from the U.S. by 5 to 1. The U.S. sells about $2.4 billion worth of aircraft a year, and its semiconductor exports tripled in three years. Otherwise the U.S. looks like a developing nation. It runs surpluses in commodities such as oil seeds, grains, iron, wood pulp, and raw animal hides.
Meanwhile, the Chinese keep expanding their export base. Chinese competition arrives so fast that it's nearly impossible to adjust through the usual strategies, such as automating or squeezing suppliers. The Japanese, South Koreans, and Europeans often took "four or five years to develop their place in the market," says Robert B. Cassidy, a former U.S. Trade Representative official who helped negotiate China's entry into the WTO and now works for Washington law firm Collier Shannon Scott, which wages dumping cases on behalf of U.S. clients. "China overwhelms a market so quickly you don't see it coming."
"Shock and Awe"
Georgetown Steel Co. is a case in point. The Georgetown (S.C.) maker of wire rods used in everything from bridge cables to ball bearings had battled Asian and Mexican imports for years. But last year it shut its 600-worker plant, citing a tenfold leap in Chinese imports, to 252,000 tons, from 2001 to 2003. International Steel Group Inc. (ISG ) has since bought the facility after U.S. anti-dumping duties on imports and a rise in global demand helped hike domestic prices. The Gardiner (Mass.) plant of Seaman Paper Co., a maker of crepe and decorative paper, is highly automated. Yet Chinese imports have grabbed a third of the market. It sells 81-foot streamers to big retailers for as little as 9 cents each. That's below Seaman's cost of materials. "We thought we could offset Chinese labor cost by automating, but we just couldn't," says Seaman President George Jones III.
In bedroom furniture, 59 U.S. plants employing 15,500 workers have closed since January, 2001, as Chinese imports have rocketed 221%, to $1.4 billion -- half of the U.S. market. Prices have plunged 30%. Dumping certainly seems to be one factor: At its Galax (Va.) factory, Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co. displays a Chinese knockoff of one of its dressers that wholesales for $105 -- below the world market cost for the wood. But the main competition comes from Chinese megaplants that sell directly to U.S. retailers and can get a new design into mass production in two months. The new Chinese factories of suppliers such as Lacquer Craft Furniture, Markor, and Shing Mark, some of them Taiwanese-owned, employ thousands and are so big they seem meant to build Boeing 747s, making most U.S. factories look like cottage industries. "The first wave is shock and awe," says John D. Bassett III, CEO of Vaughan-Bassett, whose sales and workforce have shrunk even though it has boosted productivity fivefold at its 600-worker Galax plant since 1995 by investing in computer-controlled wood drying, cutting, and carving gear. "American industry has never encountered [such] competition."
As component industries and design work follow assembly lines to China, key elements of the U.S. industrial base are beginning to erode. American plastic-molding and machine-tool industries have shrunk dramatically in the past five years. Take Incoe Corp. in Troy, Mich., a maker of steel components for plastic-injection machines. "When the economy turned soft, we anticipated the business would come back," says Incoe CFO Robert Hoff. "But it didn't. We saw our customer base either close or migrate to China." The U.S. printed-circuit-board industry has seen sales go from $11 billion to under $5 billion since 2001. In that time, PCB exports from China have more than doubled, to a projected $3.4 billion this year, says market researcher Global Sources Ltd. (GSOL ) Most U.S. production of key electronics materials, such as copper-clad laminates, has fled, too. "The whole industry is hollowing out," says Joseph C. Fehsenfeld, CEO of Midwest Printed Circuit Services Inc. in Round Lake Beach, Ill.
The migration of electronics to China began when the Taiwanese shifted plants and suppliers across the Taiwan Strait in the late 1990s. As recently as four years ago, though, the U.S. exported $45 billion in computer hardware. Since the tech crash, that number has slid to $28 billion as the industry headed en masse for China, which is even more competitive than Taiwan. "All electronics hardware manufacturing is going to China," says Michael E. Marks, CEO of Flextronics Corp (FLEX )., a contract manufacturer that employs 41,000 in China. Flextronics and other companies are hiring Chinese engineers to design the products assembled there. "There is a myth that the U.S. would remain the knowledge economy and China the sweatshop," says BCG's Hemerling. "Increasingly, this is no longer the case."
A visit to Flextronics' campus in the Pearl River Delta town of Doumen vividly illustrates Marks's point. The site employs 18,000 workers making cell phones, X-box game consoles, PCs, and other hardware in 13 factories sprawled over 149 acres. The bamboo scaffolding is about to come down on an additional 720,000-square-foot factory nearing completion. Almost every chemical, component, plastic, machine tool, and packing material Flextronics needs is available from thousands of suppliers within a two-hour drive of the site. That alone makes most components 20% cheaper in China than in the U.S., says campus General Manager Tim Dinwiddie. Plus, China will soon eliminate remaining tariffs on imported chips. In the past five years, electronic manufacturing-services companies such as Flextronics have cut their U.S. production from $37 billion to $27 billion while doubling their China output, to $31 billion. That's likely to double again by 2007.
"Gravitational Pull"
China is even making its presence felt in the U.S. market for networking gear, a bastion of American comparative advantage. On Nov. 15, struggling 3Com Corp. (COMS ) in Marlborough, Mass., launched a data-communications switching system for corporate networks of 10,000 users or more. It claims twice the performance of Cisco Systems Inc.'s (CSCO ) comparable switch. At $183,000, 3Com's list price is 25% less. Its secret? 3Com is settling for lower margins and taking advantage of a 1,200-engineer joint venture with China telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. This is the first high-end piece of networking gear sold by a U.S. company that is designed and manufactured in China. For the price of one U.S. engineer, the joint venture can throw four engineers into the task of making customized products for a client. Even if 3Com does not succeed, similar tie-ups are expected, which could drive down prices of high-end gear sold in the U.S. Says 3Com President Bruce Claflin: "We want to change the pricing structure of this industry." 3Com hopes this is the start of a whole line of networking gear designed and made in China for the global market. Without referring to China, Cisco CEO John T. Chambers says "we are starting to see a stream of good, very price-competitive competitors, particular from Asia."
The next step for China is critical mass in core industries. Outside Beijing, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMI ) has just opened a chip plant fabricating 12-inch silicon wafers that experts say is just two generations behind Intel Corp. (INTC ) A foundry that makes chips on a contract basis, this plant won't compete directly with U.S. chipmakers. But with four more 12-inch wafer plants due by 2006 and many more fabs in the pipeline, the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Assn. warns that a "gravitational pull" could suck capital, people, and leading-edge research-and-development and design functions from the U.S.
Digital technologies aren't the only areas where the Chinese have huge ambitions. In the past decade, U.S. petrochemical makers have invested in little new capacity. But at a three-mile-long site in Nanjing, 12,000 workers are erecting a $2.7 billion network of pipes and towers for China's Sinopec (SNP ) and Germany's BASF (BF ) that by next year will be among the world's biggest, most modern complexes for ethylene, the basic ingredient in plastics. An even bigger complex is going up in Shanghai. "The Chinese understand everything that scale means," says Fluor Corp. (FLR ) Group President Robert McNamara, who lives part-time in Shanghai and whose company has design contracts at both complexes. "When they target an industry to dominate, they don't mitigate."
Can China dominate everything? Of course not. America remains the world's biggest manufacturer, producing 75% of what it consumes, though that's down from 90% in the mid-'90s. Industries requiring huge R&D budgets and capital investment, such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and cars, still have strong bases in the U.S. "I don't see China becoming a major car exporter in the foreseeable future," says GM China (GM ) Chairman Philip F. Murtaugh. "There is no economic rationale." Murtaugh cites high production costs and quality issues at Chinese car plants, as well as just-in-time delivery needs in the West, as impediments.
Burning Rubber
Don't tell that to Miao Wei, president of Dongfeng Motor Corp. On Nov. 7, Dongfeng and Honda Motor Co. (HMC ) announced that their joint venture will invest $340 million to boost output of Honda CR-Vs and Civics fivefold, to 120,000, by early 2006. The plant aims to achieve world standards by employing Honda's flexible manufacturing system. "Honda will sell some of the Chinese-built cars in Europe," says Miao. Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY ) is also talking about exporting with Dongfeng.
China's carmakers are developing the suppliers that one day could sustain exports. Auto-parts maker Wanxiang Group in Hangzhou started as a tiny township-owned farm-machinery shop in 1969. Now it's a $2.4 billion conglomerate that supplies the Chinese assembly plants of GM, Ford Motor (F ), Volkswagen, and others and also exports 30% of its output. In two years, China will drop the rule that its auto plants buy at least 40% of parts locally. Wanxiang is getting ready: It is opening a $42 million plant loaded with U.S. and European testing gear. And since 1995, Wanxiang has bought 10 U.S. auto-parts makers. "Our goal is to acquire technology, management, and most important, to get access to overseas markets," says Chairman Lu Guanqiu.
Some U.S manufacturers hope China will run out of steam. This year, factories in Guangdong and Fujian faced serious labor shortages for the first time. Red-hot demand has meant skyrocketing costs for China's producers, most of which rely on imported goods such as steel, plastics, and components. Energy shortages have forced manufacturers to shut factories several times a week. In almost any industry one can think of, vicious price wars are biting into already razor-sharp margins. "There are so many small companies competing that they crowd out all profit," says Beijing University economist Zhang Weiying. Indeed, given the low emphasis on profits and the unsophisticated accounting of many Chinese companies, often their pricing isn't based on a full understanding of costs. Having gotten as far as they can on cheap production costs, Chinese manufacturers must develop their own technologies and innovative products to move ahead -- areas in which they've made slow progress so far.
The juggernaut will slow, but only slightly. While salaries for top Chinese designers are rising fast, they are still a fifth to a tenth of those in Silicon Valley. If China's wages rise 8% annually for the next five years, says a Boston Consulting Group study, the average factory hand will still earn just $1.30 an hour by then. If China allowed the yuan to appreciate by around 10% in the next year, productivity gains would more than offset the higher costs, figures China expert Nicholas R. Lardy of the Institute for International Economics. "I don't think revaluation will have a significant impact," he says.
And Chinese producers are hardly standing still. In a recent survey of Chinese and U.S. manufacturers by IndustryWeek and Cleveland-based Manufacturing Performance Institute, 54% of Chinese companies cited innovation as one of their top objectives, while only 26% of U.S. respondents did. Chinese companies spend more on worker training and enterprise-management software. And 91% of U.S. plants are more than a decade old, vs. 54% in China. Shanghai-based TV maker SVA Group, for example, has opened China's first plant to make flat panels, a venture with Japan's NEC (NIPNY ) Corp. That is enabling SVA to secure a U.S. beachhead by selling liquid-crystal display and plasma TV sets through channels such as the online sites of Costco Wholesale (COST ) and Target. Starting price: $1,600 -- 30% below similar models by Royal Philips Electronics (PHG ) and Panasonic (MC ).
More innovation. Better goods. Lower prices. Newer plants. America will surely continue to benefit from China's expansion. But unless it can deal with the industrial challenge, it will suffer a loss of economic power and influence. Can America afford the China price? It's the question U.S. workers, execs, and policymakers urgently need to ask.
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