Back to the overview
Wolfgang Clement, Adecco Institute Chairman
The word "globalization" sometimes seems to just roll off our tongues whether we're in Europe, the USA or China. Yet the consequences of this globalization are serious in every respect.
In past years, those of us in Europe have repeatedly seen traditional companies close their production facilities overnight, lay off their employees and invest in new sites - mostly in Asia. For the most part, such moves have been driven by lower costs of labor, better production conditions as well as greater proximity to the major sales markets of the future - all factors which are a manifestation of this globalization.
The People's Republic of China has long been targeted by investors primarily looking for cheap labor who could be hired for industrial mass production facilities without any major preparation or additional training. Much has changed in China since then. For some time now, executives in Peking, Shanghai and other economic centers have focused on value creation through high-tech products produced or even developed in China and which are then exported to industrial nations of the Western world or sold on their own huge domestic market. Local manufacturers of cheap mass-produced goods are taking a lesson from their Western partners and moving to neighboring countries with lower wages such as Vietnam. Labor has also been a major factor in relocations within Asia for some time now. Yet this does not necessarily have to remain a one-way street to cheapjack sites or, in other words, the places with the lowest wages.
This past spring I had a remarkable encounter at a joint event hosted by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the Adecco Institute (London). There we met one of your fellow countrymen who was apparently unwilling to run the risk of being laid off some day simply because his employer wanted to produce in Vietnam.
Currently 44, Jiansheng Duan completed his degree in engineering at the Xiàn University of Engineering Science & Technology 23 years ago but thought it best to improve his qualifications. A scholarship awarded by the Carl Duisberg Association in Germany made this possible and gave him the opportunity to become a quality management specialist. The young man then met Anton Haering, a German businessman and manufacturer of precision parts for the international auto industry who had decided to invest in China.
This was a task which could only be managed with highly-trained employees. Yet since these were a scarce commodity in China, Haering decided to take a different route and brought Mr. Duan to Germany. There he spent around four years training Mr. Duan and 40 of his fellow countrymen in the special high-tech production requirements of complicated braking systems and fuel injection pumps for global brands such as Bosch, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo.
Mr. Duan has served as Director of Haering Precision Co. Ltd. in Taicang since 2005. There he has been heading up the construction work and will be handing over the finished facility to his boss this year. More importantly, he and the 40 colleagues who underwent training in Germany will continue to manage the facility in the future, as well. And if the business does well, another 60 Chinese employees will be sent to Germany for a multi-year training program, after which they will reinforce the current team.
My colleague Klaus Wirtgen just recently asked Mr. Duan about his experiences in Germany and the impact these have had on the work he is currently doing in China. Of course the years of training abroad were "painful at times." To the Chinese, the German attitude toward life and work sometimes seemed "a bit over-the-top. You really have to have nerves of steel." But it paid off: "We could really feel the progress we were making every day, both on a technical level as well as linguistically." He underwent intense training in "cost and performance-oriented work as well as quality and brand awareness." He and his fellow countrymen, with some assistance from their German colleagues, worked hard within this high-tech company to gain an edge which will help them perform their future duties in Taicang in the areas of quality, precision and systematics. Production is now in full swing in Taicang: 'We are extremely proud of that."
These highly-trained employees are Haering Precision's "most important asset." Each of his compatriots fully understands the need for lifelong learning and they are making use of the wide range of training opportunities on offer. During his day-to-day work with his Chinese coworkers, he himself values virtues such as loyalty, a sense of responsibility, self-initiative and hard work above all else.
We wanted to find out how a company like Haering could benefit by offering its Far Eastern managers such lengthy, costly training as opposed to flying in their own German employees. Jiansheng Duan is very clear on this point and maintains that there is no alienation or even a conflict of culture: "China is my home country. This is where I grew up and its tradition and customs are a part of me." Unlike a German manager, he is fluent in both countries' languages and is intimately familiar with Chinese customs regarding family and communication. It is "extremely difficult" for Germans to understand the Chinese psyche and psychology. And in Asia it takes "years of patience and diligence" to establish vital relationships to local authorities.
To his fellow Chinese, he can only recommend that they take advantage of opportunities to gain experience abroad if they are striving for a qualified job in China. Despite the fact that millions of graduates leave his country's many public institutions and universities every year to enter the job market, "we are only able to find very few suitable candidates," Duan sums up. The education offered by universities is therefore in desperate need of improvement in order to allow them to "meet the expectations of industry." Unfortunately, in the race to hire the brightest minds, the majority of his countrymen have been taking a very pragmatic approach and focusing on top salaries while nearly forgetting to about opportunities to earn qualifications.
I was quite impressed by this Chinese manager. His statements impressively substantiate the analyses of the Chinese business leaders and scientists attending the SASS and Adecco Institute conference who not only made a powerful plea to improve the Chinese university system but also urged these to make use of practical experience gained in Western industrial nations. The lack of young qualified people around the world is a driving force behind high youth unemployment rates which, in turn, influences the innovation and growth opportunities of the world's economies. As a result, educational and professional training exchange programs cannot stop at national nor continental borders. These two men, a Chinese manager and a German businessman, have set a good example.
Incidentally, Jiansheng Duan can picture that Chinese businessmen investing in Europe might someday first send their German or French employees to China to prepare them for the "Asian way of doing business": "Yes, that could happen." Now that's what I call a good understanding of the term globalization - to the benefit of people around the world.
Back to the overview