« Three Variations on Offshoring | Main | JSB on NPR »

Comments

Business Process Outsourcing

This was a great news about India and China. For the most part, China, India, and Russia are not following the Western liberal model for self-development but instead are using a different model, state capitalism.China and India are expected in 10 years to achieve near parity with the US in two different areas. The relationship between achievements in science and technology and economic growth has been long established, but the path is not always predictable. Thanks for sharing.

Business process outsourcing

Thanks for giving news about china and india business.The patterns of improvement among Indian companies is interesting. These commercial Chinese are focused on challenging in global markets in product categories like electronics hardware, textiles etc. where product lives are compacted and claim is highly unsure. keep up it.

Juno888

The head of the new University is quite clear about his mission. It is to provide the talent to power China’s information age revolution and to help China extend its reach and influence in Asia.

krishn

if u like to innovate the business in india also so please let me know ilike to do business . i will give u my total detail

Mike Nevens

“It’s different this time.”

“China’s terrible working conditions, low labor costs, artificially low currency value and huge population will simply drive wages down all around the world, make it harder to maintain labor and environmental standards and move too many jobs to China from the West.”

“The economics of free trade no longer work. We need to protect our jobs and incomes from Chinese competition.”

Much of the debate over China’s evolving role in the global economy misses the real threat. It is not about a race to the bottom. It is about a race to the top.

Yes there are sweat shops and factories with appalling working conditions. There are commodities and low value manufactured goods flowing out of China. The Chinese’s government’s still large role in the economy distorts the market and gives “unfair” advantage to local firms. China’s protection of intellectual property is still insufficient.

However, a recent trip to China has confirmed a belief I’ve had for some time. The real competition with China will be for leadership in design, innovation and the high end of services. This won’t emerge full blown tomorrow, but it is coming rapidly and surely.

China’s rising prosperity is the only way that China can head off the economic catastrophe it will face if it indeed is the first country to grow old before it grows rich. Chinese business and government leaders truly seem to understand that the only way to grow rich fast enough is to increase productivity. A variety of conversations also reinforce that they understand the way to increase productivity is through intense competition to drive innovation supported by investments in world class facilities and technology and talent.

Both western and Chinese company’s factories increasingly reflect this understanding. The equipment, layout and work flow are first rate. The yields, up time and quality are often the best in the world for the company and the product category.

However, the most impressive part is not the hardware and software but the people.

The employees at these world class plants were invariably quite young. When I had a chance to talk with some of them, they are also very ambitious (and speak very good English). They have stories of losing parents in the Cultural Revolution or migrating from the rural interior and leaving family behind. But their orientation is the future and the aspirations they have. They are so much better off than the prior generation they have a hard time explaining the transition. Some of them are being dispatched by their employers to travel abroad to teach best practices to plants elsewhere.

Some of the western companies (e.g., Nokia and Emerson) are also starting to move more than just manufacturing to China. They are beginning to do development and design—and not just for the Chinese market. The top engineers there are part of global teams and seem as sharp as counterparts I’ve met in other places around the world.

The government officials and educators I met talk about their people strategy in terms most would understand. They are backing up the talk with actions at a scale that is harder to understand. For example in the massive industrial park in Suzhou a new University has opened and is still under construction. They are targeting an enrollment of 250,000 students within 4 years. Their curriculum and faculty are being developed in collaboration with two US and one UK university. They are attracting students from all over Asia as well as China.

The head of the new University is quite clear about his mission. It is to provide the talent to power China’s information age revolution and to help China extend its reach and influence in Asia.

As the US sees its universities decline as funding is being squeezed at all levels of government and as we attract fewer foreign students China is heading the other direction. They are investing aggressively and reaching out to the other fast growing economies in the world.

For an industry that depends as much on talent as software, our companies need to both fight to change US policies and to tap the growing talent pool in China.

Let me offer one last anecdote. One evening, I had drinks with a Chinese diplomat who has served in the West for a number of years. He observed that around the time of the renaissance the West began a several hundred year ascendance in intellectual and cultural leadership. He further observed that leadership was mistake that has not served the world well. “We will correct that within a generation”, he said.

The comments to this entry are closed.