My Reflections on the Chinese Games
I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the Olympic Games in Beijing, China. It was a once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget. I was able to attend several events, also including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. During my extended time in China, I was able to pinpoint several strengths of the Chinese people that has contributed to their economic successes.
1) Strong work ethic - I was staying at an extremely nice hotel, and I swear that some of the workers were there 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. I would often ask workers in retail stores what there work hours were like, and they often told me that they worked from 10AM to 10PM, seven days a week without a day off. For you math majors out there, that is 96 hours a week. Chinese manufacturing is not just advantageous because of the exchange rate, but also because of the amount of time that they are hard at work.
2) Strength in numbers - I would often be eating in a restaurant and realize that I had more than one server assigned to my table. They would often stand a few feet away from the table and just watch me eat. It seemed as if they had no other table that they were assigned to. Everywhere you went, it felt like there were as many workers as there were customers. This is one of the most important strengths of Chinese trade and manufacturing. More hands make light the work, and more hands means more production.
3) Payment based performance - If the person was a street sweeper, bellman at the hotel, server at the restaurant, or volunteer at an Olympic Venue, their work ethic was always extremely comparable. For those of you that have been to China, you know that tipping is not accepted by almost all trades. They do not work harder because they are going to get paid more. Some often question the quality of Chinese products because they are made at such a “cheap” price, but I can tell you right now, the person on the floor is working just as hard (if not harder) as the manager that is probably making more money.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Buying from China is becoming more and more challenging with the many changes that the government has started to impose. They are just starting to enforce laws that make it so the Chinese companies can’t over work their employees, something that they have done for years. In my opinion that is not what gave people buying from China the advantage. The advantage is the cost of labor. The companies will just have to learn to manage more employees and their time. We are already seeing them make the necessary changes to accommodate this new law. The Chinese have enough people to work around the clock. This is also an advantage as to the turn around time for manufacturing in China.