Boom Times Transforming Chinese Province
Howard Shaffer left a comfortable job with the Nike company in 1985 to start a new business here in partnership with a sleepy Chinese concern called the Long March Leather Shoe Factory. What happened over the next few years illustrates why industrial output in this region in southern China is now soaring at more than 25 percent per year.</br></br>Shaffer said he began his joint venture here by insisting on modern, capitalist management techniques and "breaking bad habits" among the Chinese workers, such as sleeping on the job. After just three months, productivity had quadrupled, to about six pairs of shoes per day for each employee from Long March's old level of 1.5 pairs.</br></br>By the end of the decade, Shaffer had expanded his operations to three factories here, and was making up to 650,000 pairs of shoes a month for such U.S. companies as Timberland, Thom McAn and Stride Rite - and for his old employer, Nike. His sales in 1990 totaled $74 million. Asked about profits, Shaffer just smiled.</br></br>Welcome to Guangdong Province, the freewheeling, free-market area along China's southern coast that, by local estimates, is currently among the fastest-growing economic regions in the world. A banner in the center of its capital, Guangzhou - formerly known as Canton - proclaims in big characters: "Unity, Progress, Friendship." But a better slogan for the new Guangdong might be: "Money, Money, Money."</br></br>Guangdong's real industrial output grew during the 1980s at an average annual rate of 19.7 percent, which analysts here said was by far the fastest of any province in China. The growth rate jumped from that already high level during the past 12 months, to 27.7 percent. The province's savings rate last year was a stupendous 32.8 percent.