Blog Archive

Friday, November 17, 2006

How China dominates Manufacturing - The Labour Facet

China supposedly has the lowest wages in the world but it gets worse when the underpaid & overworked are considered in the equation.

China has an aging population that produced more boys than girls after the implementation of One-child Policy. Nevertheless, China's current population still stands at a massive 1.3 Billion people - Kenya has 33 Million.

List of most populous countries

Other countries stand to gain after 30 years when the population ages & there aren't enough "replacements" for the current generation of workers.

An interesting observation made by a very smart gentleman I know was that many Chinese will have to move back to the rural areas to take care of their parents thus depleting the ranks of factory workers even further.

The beneficiaries will be the countries surrounding China and perhaps the African nations.

Nevertheless, the juggernaut is almost unstoppable for now & Africa needs to become more competitive.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agreed,in fact India will outpace china in the long run because of its favourable demographics.unlike india,china has an aging population due to one-child policy and will go the way of western europe and japan.that's why africa and idia are well positioned to take over the mantle of manufacturing.and that's why i have my bet on india and africa in the long run.

Baltic Amber said...

you've left out vietnam. it's the second fastest growing economy in the world today and it's labour costs are cheaper than china's. American companies are flocking there.

Africa will not become a manufacturing center anytime soon.

coldtusker said...

The beneficiaries will be the countries surrounding China and perhaps the African nations.

Vietnam is covered under the "neigbours". I would also include Cambodia.

pesa tu said...

I read somehere that the Chinese Factory workers r paid less than US$200 per month.
In Kenya for semi-skilled labour to produce first rate export goods they would demand US$500+benefits.

We can't compete.

Baltic Amber said...

how can an unemployed person "demand" a salary? - it would not be hard to find someone to work for $200 a month in kenya - many women would do it to feed their children.

cambodia? i'm not sure about that