Word: guangdong
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China's near-miraculous economic rise has been built on the smarts of men like Cheng Wei-lun and the sweat of the 800 workers he employs as chief executive of the Tianji Wooden Products Co. Based in Guangdong province in southern China, the company, which exports $10 million worth of toys and children's furniture annually, is like thousands of other small manufacturers that help form the backbone of the country's formidable export-manufacturing machine. But that frame is showing cracks, and all the brains and brawn in the world might not be enough rescue Tianji Wooden Products...
...South China Mall in Dongguan, a manufacturing hub in Guangdong province, is the world's largest shopping center. Opened in 2005, it's a gaudy monument to the breakneck ascent of Chinese capitalism - 7 million sq. ft. (650,000 sq m) of leasable space, with wings designed to mimic Venice and the Champs Elysées. But, as Anthony J. Barbieri-Low notes in Artisans in Early Imperial China, the concept behind these new mainland megamalls (four of the globe's 10 biggest are in China) is quite old news. As in two millenniums...
...Zang Lifang is hardly alone. Guangdong authorities say that more than 12 million of the province's 30 million migrant workers were forced to stay in the cities where they work because of the transportation chaos caused by some of the worst storms in a century. Last month, heavy snow and ice blocked major highways, toppled power lines, and hobbled rail traffic, leaving more than half a million homeward-bound migrants stranded outside the Guangzhou train station...
...migrant workers to suffer grueling hours at low pay that has turned this nation into an economic power. Lately, authorities have begun to realize they cannot take such sacrifice for granted. "Only in the last couple of years, as labor prices have begun to rise, have local authorities in Guangdong paid more attention to migrant workers," says Dali Yang, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. "Before they were treated as just another piece of equipment that was brought in when needed, because of the almost unlimited supply of labor." But despite the growing attention...
...ease pressure on the stricken transport system, Guangdong authorities encouraged migrant workers to spend their holiday in the province. Still, millions still tried to make the journey. For many, like Zang, that proved impossible. His employer, the Hengda Real Estate Group, says about 3,000 of the 10,000 migrants it employs in Guangdong stayed behind over the holiday. Li Xiao, the company's Guangdong general manager, says Hengda will spend $300,000 over the next week to offer banquets, parties and outings for its workers. "They have helped make us rich," Li says. "We have to look...