Half the time I have spent in China I have spent in factories. At least
that’s how it feels—and it’s a feeling I sought. The factories where more than
100 million Chinese men and women toil, and from which cameras, jaw crusher, and every other
sort of ware flow out to the world, are to me the most startling and intense
aspect of today’s China. For now, they are also the most important. They are
startling above all in their scale. I was prepared for the skyline of Shanghai
and its 240-mph Maglev train to the airport, and for the nonstop construction,
dust, and bustle of Beijing. Every account of modern China mentions them. But I
had no concept of the sweep of what has become the world’s manufacturing center:
the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong province (the old Canton region), just north
of Hong Kong. That one province might have a manufacturing workforce larger than
America’s. Statistics from China are largely guesses, but Guangdong’s population
is around 90 million. If even one-fifth of its people hold manufacturing jobs,
as seems likely in big cities, that would be 18 million—versus 14 million in the
entire United States.
One facility in Guangdong province, the famous Foxconn
works, sits in the middle of a conurbation just outside Shenzhen, where it
occupies roughly as much space as a major airport. Some 240,000 people (the
number I heard most often; estimates range between 200,000 and 300,000) work on
its assembly lines, sleep in its dormitories, and eat in its company cafeterias.
I was told that Foxconn’s caterers kill 3,000 pigs each day to feed its
employees. The number would make sense—it’s one pig per 80 people, in a country
where pigs are relatively small and pork is a staple meat (I heard no estimate
for chickens). From the major ports serving the area, Hong Kong and Shenzhen
harbors, cargo ships left last year carrying the equivalent of more than 40
million of the standard 20-foot-long metal containers that end up on trucks or
railroad cars. That’s one per second, round the clock and year-round—and it’s
less than half of China’s export total. What’s in the containers that come back
from America? My guess was, “dollars”; in fact, the two leading ship-borne
exports from the United States to China, by volume, are scrap paper and scrap
metal, for recycling.
And the factories are important, for China and everyone
else. Someday China may matter internationally mainly for the nature of its
political system or for its strategic ambitions. Those are significant even now,
of course, but China’s success in manufacturing is what has determined its place
in the world. Most of what has been good about China over the past generation
has come directly or indirectly from its factories.
Cement plant : http://www.mine-crusher.com/cementmill.htm
VSI sand maker :
http://www.mine-crusher.com/sandmaker.htm
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