What about software or hardware. Lets take telephones, would you buy a Nokia or a Konka (local Chinese brand) if they were the same price? But wait, the Nokia phone is made in China. Everything is made in China.
So this means you have skilled people who are able to make good, high quality goods to Western standards. The problem is that these skilled Chinese people who make goods to Western standards expect a Western salary. Enter the Western company with "Chinese characteristics".
Rumor: ZTE Indirectly Fired 10% Of 2009 Workforce To Replace With Cheap Graduates
March 25 -- Telecom equipment supplier ZTE Corporation (000063) is rumored to have fired 6,000 staff or 10 percent of its total workforce last year and covered up this action in its annual performance appraisal, reports Times Weekly citing Mao Hai, a former ZTE staff who was fired. In 2009, ZTE fired five percent of each department’s staff every six months, perhaps illegally, stating that the fired staff were rated C in their unreleased performance reviews, according to several former ZTE workers who were laid-off. Certain enterprises fire a certain percentage of staff each year, aiming to cut high labor costs while recruiting more cheap fresh graduates, the report said, citing unnamed legal insiders. Even if all staff in a department performed very well, those workers whose ratings were the lowest would be chosen as part of the five percent ‘laid-offs’, explained Li Zhen, a former staff member of ZTE’s Beijing branch. Managers who did not submit the names of C workers (lowest five percent to be let go) on time would be fined or even fired themselves.
A ZTE Public Relations brand manager admitted the ZTE had implemented a worker elimination system, but that it did not strictly require a five percent firing of department members every six months. The ZTE human resources department staff members denied the existence of a rigid elimination system but were unwilling to release the specific numbers and departments of personnel phased out in 2009.
Labor rules state that employees who receive unsatisfactory marks like a C should be given training or transferred before they are fired. Tang Jie a ZTE employee from Guangzhou stated that she was not offered either a transfer or a training course. Legal scholars stated this behavior is covered up because simply wanting to cut labor costs does not fit the conditions for laying off workers. ZTE has technically had this elimination system since 1997, however it only started enforcing it strictly in 2009. The system is seen by management as a way to increase efficiency per capita. On October 20, 2009, ZTE started its 2010 campus recruitment, with a recruitment scale that reached 4,000 graduates.
Translated by Simon Laing
This is of course only a rumor. Or is it, having worked for Siemens in China for 3 years and always being given fresh graduates to assign to projects makes me think there is more behind these rumors. Siemens did not fire people in China, but did accept a 30% yearly natural attrition, encouraged by zero pay increases and poor performance reviews. Hewlett-Packard in China also had a pretty nasty level of attrition, and yearly reviews did require to give a percentage of "I" candidates the equivalent of a ZTE "C" hmm. Surely my new company is not going to backfill staff with fresh graduates ;-)
Oh yes the China price, simply put Western companies with Chinese characteristics = high attrition and backfill with graduates.
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( 2.9 / 508 )I am walking home from the station on a Monday. I have been working late as usual, since unpaid overtime is regarded as the norm. Its 10.30pm. The high powered drill on hammer action hits reinforced concrete and I physically leap with shock into the barrier at the side of the road. The worker 工人 gongren smiles at his assistant below who hands him the pneumatic nail gun. I did not know that you could use a pneumatic nail gun into concrete.
Oh it can't, but it does make an incredible noise and cause a flash of sparks. What makes people here behave with such a wanton disregard for others. I can already hear a baby crying as the din of the work pauses for the worker to look at the damage he has done to the concrete (none) and his tool (hopefully now beyond repair).
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( 2.7 / 340 )Living in Shanghai I and all my expats friends noticed the ratcheting up the Great Chinese Firewall金盾工程 (jindun gongcheng). It started with Facebook and Twitter getting blocked around the time of the problems in both Tibet and Xinjiang, however that was only the first phase (blocking sites outside China). Then a double pronged internal attack one using Chinese “legal” methods and the other illegal methods. The tightening up on ICP number备案bei an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license. Basically operating a website within China requires this license and it is impossible for a foreign company or foreigner to get one (it is always piggy backed through a Chinese company that pays the appropriate bribes). Without this number all routers within a licensed Chinese IDP automatically block any traffic to Port 80 on machines in their server room. Then came legislation for .cn domain names to be owned only by registered Chinese businesses (Go Daddy pulled out of China when this occurred).
The nine-page testimony details an apparent change in Chinese law that requires Go Daddy to now collect color headshot photos of all users trying to register new domains. In addition, the company must obtain business identification documents and physically signed registration forms from all of its Chinese customers. All that data has to be forwarded on to China's government-run Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) for "review."
Next the legally grey area, the 50 Cent Party (五毛党 Wumao Dang), basically the paid students working for the People's Republic of China, whose role is posting comments favorable towards the government policies to skew the public opinion on various Internet message boards. In fact if you operate a website with an ICP number, you must hire and pay the students 5 mao per such post, not the government. (That is part of doing business in China). Also blocking Tor access, which is not actually illegal in China, but obviously anything that allows people to circumvent the Great Chinese Firewall is taken down.
Opera Mobile browser folded to pressure from the Chinese government to force all traffic to go through a government run proxy.
Finally the illegal methods of hacking companies like Google, resulting in Google’s attempt to extract its business from China Mainland.
Anyway as a result most people in Shanghai opt to us a Proxy or VPN and this was when I stumbled across this very odd spat between two providers (one of which my friend was using and had recommended).
Anyway I finally opted for Strong VPN a company which appears to be run by a few Russian guys. It seems pretty good so far, but then you never know and it is only my first week with them.
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( 3 / 353 )Yes as a child going somewhere on a school trip I always wanted to sit at the back of the bus. It is far away from the teachers, and you can sit five abreast on the back seats (mischievous friends together).
So imagine my joy when I went travelling on Chinese Spring Festival to find myself, my girlfriend and her brother on the back seat of the bus. Great!
In fact I had forgotten where I was, and as a result ruefully mused in Chinese, what if there was a fire or accident on the bus. Now I know why so many people perish here. And just to remind me of my school days of mischief, I was properly cuffed by my girlfriend who said “Not in Chinese!”
Oh dear I had committed the heinous Chinese act of bringing bad luck to all on the bus by mentioning bus accidents and death. It is a well know fact that casualties and fatalities in China are not caused by crammed or overloaded buses, but the bad luck of discussing such disasters.
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( 2.9 / 413 )Chinese Spring Festival is here again. So it’s time to go shopping and stock up for this festive season. I have to admit that I am the equivalent of a Chinese Scrooge when it comes to Spring Festival, not because I am a miser, but because the whole of China becomes one gigantic obstacle course of people. However my local Carrefour does bring in the novelties. Dried fish, hung on hooks next to the checkout counter. A last minute chance to prove you really caught a big fish this year.
Perhaps like me you are not a fish person, and then the last minute purchase might be a pig’s head. Yes there are plenty of heads to choose from, though I am not sure if you eat these things or whether you wear them as a mask to scare small children.
Delicious!
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