Even in China the rent is too damn high
Submitted by Values Equal Profits on 8 March, 2011 - 14:47
Foxconn, the electronics maker everyone buys from but loves to hate, can't seem to escape the prying eyes of a concerned nor a falsely outraged press. Worse for them, Chinese labor in the big port cities has gotten too expensive. So, while fish don't fry in the kitchen, beans don't burn on the grill, Foxconn is packing their bags and moving deeper into the Chinese mainland. From Financial Times:
Foxconn Technology will transform its south China manufacturing hub into an engineering base and move 200,000 jobs to cheaper inland provinces in a further sign that the region’s days as a low-end production centre are numbered.
The world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer employs 1m people in China. About half its workforce is based at two huge factory complexes in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.
“Shenzhen will probably be our largest site in China for quite some time to come,” Louis Woo, special assistant to group chairman Terry Gou, told the Financial Times. “But the goal is to eventually move all of the actual mass manufacturing to other sites. We will make Shenzhen an engineering campus where we do pilot production only.”
Foxconn, a unit of Taiwan-listed Hon Hai, began its move to less developed regions of China last year, after a series of suicides among its Shenzhen workforce. The company responded to the crisis by raising wages – a trend that was reinforced last year after pay-focused strikes at a number of Honda factories in south China.
Yes, boys and girls. Even Chinese labor is too damn high.