Labours in China

China is one of the countries that have the largest population in the world. She has a population of 1.3 billion, thrice the amount of Singapore’s. Being known as a backward country in the past, she has transformed and upgraded herself significantly to a manufacturing country. With the effort that was put in, she is now one of the most preferred countries where companies would like to establish their businesses.

China is perceived as one of the competitive country that offers low labor cost due to its abundance of supply and cost of living, by countries such as Vietnam and India.

Research indicates that it is unlikely that China will lose it competitive advantage (low labour cost) in the near future as China has a reserve of 0.8 billion farmers. Each year, farmers who are dissatisfy with the amount that they earn, would go out to the city to look for jobs. And majority of them, are willing to accept low pay jobs as the job still pay them more than what they earn as being a farmer. To add on, research has shown that the Chinese are also more willing to take on several roles as compared to other the employees in other country.

From all the company visits, I have also observed that majority of the workers, especially those who are working in the manufacturing sector, are in their young adulthood or still in their teens.

catch them in action!

Younger worker --> more efficient --> cost savings = more profit, main reason why company would want to set up their businesses in China

Apart from the cost that the company manage to save and the supply of the labour in the market, it also the appealing attitudes that attracts the investor to invest in China. One of the most attractive attitudes that they possess is their willingness to learn attitude. In addition, the Chinese are highly mobile and have strong and discipline work ethic.

Furthermore, a large portion of the labour force in China are not unionized. Therefore, the company has more say and has more advantage. This is also one of the key advantage that attracts the investors to invest in China as no unionization might mean hassle-free to them. For instance, in Singapore, if a lady is sack just because she is pregnant, she can turn to her trade union for help and in majority of the cases, the trade union would win and the lady would be able to get her job back. However, in China, the labours would not have someone to support them, giving the company more freedom to fight for their belief.