I’ll preface these comments with this: we’ve been designing, manufacturing and exporting from China and South America for about 15 years (early in that time I was senior staff with a Fortune 100, then midway thru this journey I left to build our current company). I’ve found it is easy to manufacture in China (and as a PM I can drive innovation) but tough to sell innovation for its own sake to Chinese manufacturers.
Lots of good comments and observations in the posts and article links above but I tend to think China is going to be hurt from this Global recession and the idea that they will recover stronger is optimistic - I think they’ll need to change their ways to make that happen. China relies heavily on Europe and North America, secondarily on South America and others - all those regions have been hit and so China will bear the wrath of that in total - figure they’re halfway thru a 3-5 yr slump.
Add to that China’s continuing resistance to stand back from a problem and innovate to find a solution (they love to use the term to capture the minds and hearts of customers and they smile all the while but they don’t yet REALLY appreciate what it represents) and the result is soon to be a horse with either a broken cart or no cart at all.
The stories of the big bosses running away are true, and I can attest to that personally, as our company took a high 5 figure loss in 2008 from one such boss, but in that same time and since we have recouped the loss from other Chinese partners who did not slow down and who continued to use our services, but in general terms I’m not sure our Far East clients have truly valued the innovative solutions we help them uncover…they don’t do it themselves and their generation of up and coming designers and CAD jockeys don’t do it yet either - that’s a big problem for them.
China should beware the last piece of the puzzle - the double edged sword called the US…downtrodden, in debt, lied to for the last 10 years…only recently have its citizens been awoken from their slumber and told the truth. The US will begin a rebirth of innovative thinking and doing as a whole, just like after the Great Depression…but who will they choose to be the manufacturer of their innovative new world of products? There have been grumblings of ‘where’s the next low-cost manufacturing base’…is it Turkey, the Eastern EU, South America? Or will the US once again turn to China and help them while it helps itself?
Good stuff to consider.
Scott