【英语科技】后富士康时代即将来临？

People like to divide time into before and after. There’s before and after the birth of Christ, before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and – my personal favourite – before and after the invention of Cup Noodle. We may just have crossed a new threshold: before and after Foxconn.

It is six months since Foxconn, a huge electronics contract manufacturer, made international headlines after a series of suicides at its sprawling factory complex in southern China. Although the company pointed out that suicide rates were actually lower inside its walled city-cum-factory – which has shops, restaurants and dormitories in addition to mind-numbing production lines – the Taiwanese company could not shake off the implication that it was exploiting a cheap and alienated labour force.

Foxconn, which employs 800,000 Chinese workers, offered a 30 per cent wage increase. That helped ease the bad publicity on itself as well as on some of its more famous customers: the likes of Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, whose electronic gadgetry is churned out by Foxconn workers. The 30 per cent rise coincided with 20 per cent-plus pay increases for factory workers at other companies in several Chinese provinces.

Victor Fung, chairman of Li & Fung, a supplier of Walmart and the world’s biggest sourcing company, argues that the controversy around Foxconn was an epoch-making event. Not only will it mark the end of an era of dirt-cheap labour, he predicts, but it will also trigger a rethink of the entire factory-town system on which 30 years of Chinese economic growth has been built. “One can talk about a world pre- and post- Foxconn,” he says. “Foxconn is as important as that.”

One post-Foxconn trend tentatively surfacing is a greater tolerance for unions by Chinese authorities that have long been nervous about organised labour. Guangdong province has proposed legislation to allow collective bargaining and worker representation on company boards. The reforms have stalled after vigorous lobbying from Hong Kong businesses with Guangdong investments. But Chinese authorities, which have used the province as a test-bed for change before, seem to want more worker rights.

That, plus demographic changes, should mean a sustained period of higher wage inflation. Chinese wages, contrary to common belief, have been rising for some time, although they have fallen as a share of national output. But in manufacturing, according to Morgan Stanley, over the past 10 years, real wage growth per hour has been running at 12.7 per cent annually. That compares with an annual fall of 0.5 per cent in the US. Chinese wage rises could now accelerate. Output per hour is 21 per cent of the US level, but Chinese workers earn only 11 per cent of the American wage, calculates Morgan Stanley. That gap could begin to close.

These changes have important implications. First, some factories in Guangdong, and other coastal provinces where labour is relatively costly, are migrating to China’s interior. Factories making car parts or sophisticated electronics, in which labour is a small part of the input cost, are likely to stay put. Regions such as the Pearl River delta benefit from a clustering effect that makes it hard for individual factories to up sticks. But production of lower-end goods, such as clothes, shoes, and some gadgets, can move more easily.

Poorer interior provinces, including Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei, that have traditionally supplied migrant workers are becoming home to the factories themselves. Anhui, some 300 miles inland from Shanghai, is now a hub for the manufacture of air-conditioners.

More remarkable still, some Chinese companies are even beginning to look outside China for goods to sell domestically. “I’ve never heard, until the past few months, of Chinese companies asking to source from outside China,” says Mr Fung. In recent weeks, a number of clients have asked if he can supply garments and footwear from Bangladesh, Vietnam or elsewhere. “This is the Foxconn effect.”

A secondary consequence could thus be a spillover of higher wages into neighbouring countries. Again, there are signs this may already be happening. Bangladesh’s garment industry is in turmoil as its 2m workers – many of them women – push for higher wages. In July, the government agreed to double, to $43, the monthly minimum wage of workers producing clothes for companies such as Marks & Spencer, H&M and Walmart.

A third post-Foxconn effect could be the most profound of all. If wages in China – and elsewhere in Asia – continue to rise, so will the prices of finished goods. Hong Kong traders are predicting a 10-20 per cent increase in the cost of some Chinese products next year. That would both reduce the purchasing power of American and European consumers and increase the buying power of Chinese workers. In short, it would set the scene for the rebalancing that everyone has been screaming for – only it would come via higher wages rather than a higher exchange rate.

Of course, it would be silly to put this all down to Foxconn. These are long-term trends of which events at the Taiwanese company are but one, well-publicised, manifestation. But if wage and demand patterns really are shifting in China, and elsewhere in Asia, then Foxconn will deserve more than a footnote in history.

人们喜欢用“之前”和“之后”来划分时间。比如，耶稣(Christ)诞生前与诞生后，柏林墙(Berlin Wall)倒塌前与倒塌后，而我个人最喜欢的，是杯面(Cup Noodle)发明前与发明后。我们也许刚刚跨过了一个新分水岭：富士康(Foxconn)事件发生前与发生后。

6个月前，富士康位于中国南方的厂区发生一系列自杀事件，这家台湾大型电子代工企业一时间登上了国际新闻的头条。尽管富士康指出，其工业园区内的自杀率实际上较低，它却无法摆脱剥削内心孤独的廉价劳动力的印象。富士康工业园是一座四面都是围墙的城中城，除了令人精神麻木的生产线之外，里面还有商店、餐馆和宿舍。

富士康在中国雇佣了80万名工人。自杀事件发生后，该公司将工人工资上调了30%。这帮助缓解了对富士康自身及一些更著名的公司客户的负面报道，例如由富士康工人为其生产电子器件的苹果(Apple)、戴尔(Dell)和惠普(Hewlett-Packard)等。富士康给工人涨薪30%的同时，中国几个省份的其他一些公司也将工厂工人工资提高了逾20%。

沃尔玛(Walmart)供应商之一、全球最大采购公司利丰集团(Li & Fung)董事长冯国经(Victor Fung)认为，围绕富士康的争论是一次划时代的事件。他预测，这不仅标志着劳动力贱如粪土的时代的结束，而且还将引发对中国过去30年经济增长所依赖的整个工业园体系的反思。他表示：“我们可以说前富士康与后富士康时代。富士康的确有这么重要。”

后富士康时代一个若隐若现的趋势是，长期以来一直对劳工组织感到不安的中国政府对工会的容忍度提高了。广东省已提议通过立法，允许工人进行集体谈判和派代表进驻企业董事会。由于在粤投资的香港企业的大力游说，此项改革已陷入停滞。但此前曾将广东省作为改革试验基地的中国政府，似乎希望能够增加工人的权利。

再加上人口方面的变化，这应该意味着中国将迎来一段工资持续上涨的时期。与人们的普遍认识相反，在中国，尽管工资在国民产出中所占的比重出现下滑，但也已经上涨了一段时间了。据摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)数据，过去10年，制造业每小时实际工资的增幅达到每年12.7%。而美国是每年下降0.5%。中国的工资如今可能会加速上涨。根据摩根士丹利的计算，中国工人每小时的产出是美国的21%，但工资只有美国的11%。这一差距可能会开始缩小。

这些变化意义重大。首先，在广东及其它劳动力成本相对较高的沿海省份，一些工厂正逐渐迁往中国内陆地区。制造汽车零部件或精密电子器件的工厂可能会留在原地，因为劳动力仅占投入成本的很小一部分。珠江三角洲等地区受益于集群效应，单个工厂很难迁移。但服装、鞋和一些小机件等低端产品的生产，则比较容易迁徙。

安徽、江西和湖北等较为贫穷的内陆省份，传统上一直是民工输出省份，如今正在变成工厂的所在地。距上海约300英里的安徽，如今已成为空调制造中心。

更引人注目的是，一些中国公司甚至已开始从外国采购商品，拿到国内来卖。冯国经表示：“直到过去几个月，我才听说过有中国公司要求从国外进货。”近几周，已经有许多客户询问冯国经，是否可以供应来自孟加拉国、越南或其它地区的服饰与鞋。“这就是富士康效应。”

随之而来的第二个影响，可能是工资上涨将蔓延至邻国。有迹象表明，这种情况可能已经发生。孟加拉国的服装业正陷于混乱之中，该国的200万名工人（其中许多是女性）纷纷要求提高工资。孟加拉国政府今年7月同意，将为玛莎百货(Marks and Spencer)、H&M以及沃尔玛(Walmart)等公司生产服装的工人的最低月工资提高一倍，至43美元。

第三个后富士康效应可能意义最为深远。如果中国（及亚洲其它地区）的工资继续上涨，制成品价格也会随之上涨。香港的贸易商预测，部分中国产品明年的成本将会上涨10%至20%。这既会削弱欧美消费者的购买力，也会提高中国工人的购买力。简言之，它将推动所有人都在大声疾呼的再平衡——只不过它是通过提高工资、而不是提高汇率实现的。

当然，将这一切都归因于富士康是一件愚蠢的事。这些都是长期趋势，富士康事件只是一个得到了广泛报道的表现形式。但是，如果中国和亚洲其它地区的工资与需求模式确实正在发生转变，那么富士康就完全应该在历史上占据一定的位置。

译者/董琴