"Spehro Pefhany" wrote in message
...


I asked the owner of a company with head office in HK (costs 10x that
of China, more expensive than most of the US) how the productivity of
his China workers (factory near Shanghai) compared with HK workers. He
said it was *higher*-- in terms of parts per hour, not dollars per
hour. That's the equation for a business owner looking to outsource,
not the macroeconomic numbers.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

I don't know anything about workers in Hong Kong, but I've been led to
believe they're hard-working. If that's his experience, then that's his
experience. It doesn't agree with the two dozen or so I've spoken to, mostly
a few years ago. And our old friend Hamei, who managed an aluminum
wheel-making plant in China and who I used to talk to regularly by phone,
often said that Chinese workers weren't very good.

But the degree to which workers work hard has little to do with
productivity, in any case. That's mostly a matter of the productivity of the
tools and machinery they work with. Assuming there's no conscious
over-employment of labor, of course, with which China is still hampered.

The companies operating in China with Western (or maybe Hong Kong)
management do much better. Like people in most of the world, Chinese workers
no doubt adapt to the environment they're working in.

--
Ed Huntress