Exploited

Why do you think foreign companies set up factories here in China? The scenery or the weather, perhaps?

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"I can't get no respect.............. no respect at all!"

Doesn't that piss you off a tiny bit though? C'mon, they do all the work while the boss is out buying another Benz..or getting drunk and whoring in Munich.

I'm here for a good time..not a long time!

What about the Chinese company that lies and exploits the foreign staff ??

"I have many chinese friends that work for/with "expats" but only receive a third of the salary that the foreigners earn."
As an Expat I feel obliged to respond to this.

These people making a third of what the Expats are making are also most likely earning more than they would've elsewhere say, on the farm or otherwise in the countryside.

These people are also living in "THEIR OWN COUNTRY"

These people also get to see their loved ones and extended family members often as they want because they most likely live right nearby.

These people do not have to deal with culture shock.

These people do not have to deal with a society completely foreign to their own.

These people do not have to get used to not being able to eat the things they are used to and love.

These people also do not have to worry if a relative gets sick halfway accross the planet, how will they get back to see them.

These people did not leave friends and family so far away to come to work. If they did they are not so far as those the expats have.

Expats get paid for these and other hardships they endure to come here to work.

Companies have to pay higher to expats in order to lure them here to work.

If the local populace were competent enough to do the job or trained at all in the job, some of which are highly specialized like my own profession as a Pilot, then the companies would not need to pay to bring expats here to work.

The locals are NOT exploited by being paid lower salaries than the gweilos. They are being paid at the going rate for a local. Expats are being paid more because they are just what they are, NON-LOCALS who, if they were not paid more would NOT come here. And if they did not come here then companies could NOT find the staff required with the skills necessary to run their operation. And if they can not find skilled staff they can not operate their business here. And if they can not do this then all of those other benefits to the community that come with that foreign investment dry up too.
The community is beniffiting not just in wages paid to local staff but in other ways that may not been seen quite so directly.

One other thing is a sense of job security that many expats do not have. I have personal experience with a company who, while I came here in good faith to work long term, brought in local staff and started training them up to eventually be my replacements. When this kind of thing happens how does an expat feel? When the clock is ticking and the ax could fall any day? While at the same time, a local is learning a new trade and in a specialized one may find himself employed for life.
And in the case of our company, once the locals reached the standard, they were paid at the same rates as the expat minus only repatriatiion payments, etc.

The only reason I myself am still employed is because the Locals, once they realized what they could do, became expats themselves and instead of replacing me as a foreign worker on their soil, they went to other countries to work!!

Bottom line is: Their is no exploitation except perhaps that of the expats who in many cases are STILL underpaid but come anyway.

I for one am a Pilot. I came here for experience and the fact that the local company was paying better than what was going rate back home. I've been here for ten years. In that time the going rate home has surpassed that which I get here. To the locals' eyes I am still highly paid. To my own I am underpaid, living in a foreign land.

However having bought property and settled in, as the company knows, I am reluctant to move home. Plus I like it here. The company knows this and therefore has leveridge against me and this makes them think they do not need to give me a pay raise. In this situation, who is being exploited now?

It is easy to look at two peoples different pay scales and say that since one is lower than the other that person is being exploited. In reality though it is not true. There are other issues to be considered besides the dollar figure paid at the end of the month.

Sorry if I seem like I am venting....

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Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday... So get on with it and have some fun!

Nicely put bobc. As a pilot you are quite different to most Chinese who have much lesser eduction and skill levels. I would presume that most Chinese pilots are coming from fairly well off families anyway. Yes / No ?

The vast majority of factory level Chinese workers are undereducated and unmotivated and not even worth 1/3rd of an expats wage. In my experience it takes 4 or 5 Chinese labourers to match one good Western worker (in a factory environment where decision making is needed). That doesn't make them dumb, bad or unhappy people - it's just a fact of life, and more relates to their education and many other cultural differences.

Indeed I would suggest to you that the average Chinese factory worker on RMB1200 is happier with their life than the average western factory worker earning RMB16,000

Foreign companies are here because the wages are low. If the wages were not low, these companies would not be here and therefore less work and even lower wages. Half of Zhuhai would have to go back to the farm.

It's supply and demand. One day, in about one generations time the West will loose a lot of it's skill (because it's being exported to China) and China will become a much more powerful nation and with much higher wages.

Then all the labour intensive industries, such as shoe making will go to Africa. It's happening now.

We all live in a global economy based on dollars. Get used to it because it will stay that way until economists and politicians start to put a value on the quality of living.

bobc, you have NOTHING to be sorry about. I agree with every statement you said and I couldn't have said it any better myself!
To Zurdo: I don't know about all the benz buying, I have yet to see an expat driving one around here, the only people I see driving around a benz are Chinese people (who are probably local too).

As for my first hand experience from the aviation industry and the local pilots, No they were not from well off families. The company just put an ad in the local paper in HK and interviewed gazillions of people and took who the HR dept. considered best for the job. Then sent them off to other countries to be trained up as our future replacements. They said this was a way of 'giving back' to the local populace. Training locals from the ground up in new feilds they didn't have access to before. Hardly exploitation.

The only point I was trying to make was that I do not feel the locals are exploited at all.

You also have to look at all this from the big picture perspective. Not just what is happening now.

Not that long ago Japan was the place where western companies set up shop because of cheap local labour, etc. After a while, things snowball, wages go up, economies get big and one day, low and behold, that place is no longer a cheap source of labour but a huge economic power house. HK went through its own phase like this as well. Now it is China's turn. Ok its a bigger fish and it will take a lot longer to fry, but it will happen. It is happening already. Some day China will be the biggest puppy on the block and will be farming work out to some other developing country because they need cheaper labour.

Today, these local workers are but a brick in Chinas great wall of future fortunes.

My humble opinion any
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Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday... So get on with it and have some fun!

it all boils down to supply and demand. If the company can source locally with qualified individuals, they WILL go that route. Otherwise without a choice, they'll have to lure expats in...at the right price.

In certain industries, I think the days of the "golden parachute" expat packages are numbered - chances are the locals will become more and more qualified for those positions. The IT industry, for example, no longer has a two pay scale system.

On the flip side, you don't associate Doctors in China with lucrative salary packages. You can call that exploitation when compared to International standards, however it's just due to the lack of demand (for now).

Thanks everybody for comments and opinions.

Cheers!

I'm here for a good time..not a long time!

Whilst having my hair washed this evening, I watched the boss roll up in a very expensive car. I couldn't help but think there are far more Chinese exploiting cheap Chinese labour that there are Foreigners doing any exploiting. I think whatup also alluded to this. There are possibly more US$ millionaires in China than the complete populations of some countries.

bobc wrote:
>Some day China will be the biggest puppy on the block and
>will be farming work out to some other developing country
>because they need cheaper labour.

It's already happening in the textiles industry. In the highly competitive area of Corporate promotional clothing, bottom line price is crucial to getting the deal. Where prices are similar, lead times then become an crucial factor.

With salary changes in China, the minimum wage has increased, the tax free threshold has been raised, and employers now have to pay employee insurances thus increasing operating costs, Employers are seeing their operating costs increasing to the extent that the increase has outstriped their margin of profit.

To stay competitive, they have to either decrease their profit (which is hard to do if it's in the 3-5% range) increase overtime hours without increases in pay to shorten lead times,or shift operations offshore, or in the rare (consider Haier),often unheard of cases, invest heavily in increasing factory automation and efficiencies whilst downsizing the workforce in order to stay competative. To some extent, one might consider such efforts a form of exploitation.

For every factory that closes its doors and moves elsewhere, the local economy suffers due to a reduction of expenditure within the localised community. Similarly, as many of the factory employees tend to be migrant workers, distan communities also suffer as the employee is no longer sending money 'back home' to parents and relatives, thus such communities also undergo negative economic consequences.

Now, in a recent Economist article, quoted to me by a friend in Shanghai, approx. 20% of Chinese textiles factories are closing down their local factories and are moving 'offshore' to place like Vietnam. Be prepared to see more of this happening.

China's factory bosses are going to at some point take stock of the inefficiencies within their factory system and carefully analyze where they can improve the system and the workforce. This may require them to place a true and quantifiable cost on the training, or lack of, as the case may be. This includes working out the cost due to inefficiencies and duplication of management systems at all levels, and the lack of up-to-date, real time business information being available to those decision makers that need it.

regards,
T. Tempest. DCA

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"I'd love a thousand words in a foreign language." Tang Yuchuan

Tsc Tempest Photography at http://www.kong-xi.com/doc.html