富士康(Foxconn)今年动辄见诸报刊头条。这家装配iPod的台湾公司是全球最大的代工制造企业。
今年4月和5月，富士康位于深圳的工厂发生了一连串自杀事件，10多名年轻工人跳楼身亡。这些接踵而至的可怕事件，暴露了许多中国工厂里刻板而重复的工作条件。
不过，在中国另一场重要的变化中，富士康也走在最前沿。该公司计划彻底改组中国业务，逐步将大部分生产迁至内地省份。
以为苹果(Apple)代工的产品为例，富士康正计划将部分生产迁至北部的天津和中部的河南省。该公司正在与河南省会郑州的地方政府进行商谈，计划在那里兴建一座大型工厂。
这样做的绝不止富士康一家，整个中国的经济地理正在出现大范围转移。部分制造业基地正从较为富裕的沿海地区迁至内陆省份。这种向内地转移并不是新鲜事，一些公司十年前就开始制定此类计划了，只不过在过去两年有所加速。
这种转移对中国经济可能意义重大。
迁往成本较低的城市，有助于保持制造企业的竞争力，同时促进这些地区新的现代消费者阶层的形成。
此外，在出口行业面临西方国家需求疲软、一些沿海城市房地产市场过热的情况下，向内地的大举投资还有助于保持经济的快速增长。
制造业向内地转移受到两股力量的推动：政府投资和成本不断上升。在全球金融危机期间，中国借机加大了对基础设施的投资，尤其是交通运输。例如，政府出台了极具雄心的高铁网络拓展计划，到2020年，将把高铁总里程增加两倍，达到1.6万公里以上。根据世界银行(World Bank)的数据，中国政府计划未来几年每年投资逾1000亿美元，用以扩大高铁网络，投资额将占到同期全球铁路投资总额的一半以上。
内陆省份是主要的受益者之一。在广州与正在成为主要交通枢纽的武汉之间，已新建一条高铁，使这段1100公里路程的行驶时间从过去的11小时降到3小时，号称是全球最快的长途铁路线。另一条长达505公里的新高铁线路连接着西安和另一个飞速发展的中部枢纽城市郑州。近年来，中部地区的许多公路网也获得了大量投资。
基础设施的改善，极大地改变了中部许多地区制造业的前景。“距离感已彻底改变了，”安徽省政府经济顾问宋宏表示。
制造业向中部转移的另一个推动因素，是沿海地区生产成本的不断攀升。富士康深圳工厂在发生自杀事件后宣布加薪30%，这也许是个极端的例子，但在南部的制造业地区和东部的上海周边地区，两位数的工资增长率已很常见。
在纺织、电器制造等利润率通常很低的行业，企业发现自己只有两种选择：要么迁至海外，比方说越南，要么迁至成本较低的内陆省份。对于许多企业而言，中部地区物流条件的改善，意味着迁往内地是更好的选择。
人口迁移的模式也在改变。过去30年，安徽和江西等省一直在向沿海省份大量输出劳动力。如今，随着工人们选择呆在离家更近的地方，这种流动已经部分发生逆转。这使中部城市成为更具吸引力的消费者市场，从而形成经济活力的另一源泉。在武汉，开发商正在扩建“摩尔城”(Mall City)——其所有者称，落成后，它将是全球最大的购物中心之一，总面积达40万平方米。
不过，尽管强大的力量推动着中部的扩张，但也有一个巨大的风险可能阻碍其快速发展。中国经济严重依赖投资，而这种情况在几个中部省份尤为明显。根据安徽省政府发布的数字，去年，该省投资占GDP的比重超过90%。而在湖北省，这一比例为64%。
不过，这些数字可能更令人怀疑中国省级统计数据的准确性，现实经济的问题也许没有那么严重。例如，假如安徽省的官方数据是准确的，那么该省的消费就基本可以忽略不计了，这不大可能。
但不论如何，这些数字也值得警惕：如果中国政府出于某种原因（如通货膨胀出现飞涨苗头）而不得不突然降低投资规模，中部省份的经济可能骤然减速。
译者/陈云飞
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035873
Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles iPods and is the world’s largest contract manufacturer, has hardly been out of the headlines this year.
In April and May, a wave of suicides swept through its factory in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen with as many as 10 young workers taking their lives – a gruesome series of events that shone light on the rigid and repetitive working conditions at many Chinese factories.
The company has also been at the forefront of another important development. It plans a radical shake-up of its China operations that would spread much more of its production to inland provinces.
In the case of the products that Foxconn makes for Apple, the company is proposing to shift some of the work to two locations: Tianjin in the north and the central province of Henan. Foxconn is in talks with the local government in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, to build a huge plant there.
Foxconn is by no means alone, but part of a broader shift in the economic geography of the country. Part of the manufacturing base is moving from the richer, coastal regions to provinces in the centre. This drift inland is not exactly new – some companies starting making such plans a decade ago – but has gathered pace in the past two years.
The move inland could be hugely important for Chinese economy.
By relocating to cheaper cities, it is helping maintain the competitiveness of manufacturing companies, while at the same time stimulating the creation of a new class of modern consumers in these regions.
And the heavy investment is also helping keep the economy growing at a rapid rate at a time when the export sector is facing weak demand in western countries and the real estate market in some of the coastal cities is overheated.
The shift inland is being driven by two forces – government investment and rising costs. China took advantage of the global financial crisis to step up its investments in infrastructure, most notably transport. For instance, there are hugely ambitious plans to expand the high-speed rail network, tripling the amount of track to more than 16,000km by 2020. The government intends to spend more than $100bn a year for the next few years on expanding the system, which will account for more than half global rail spending over that period, according to the World Bank.
The interior has been one of the main beneficiaries. One of the new lines links Guangzhou in the south with Wuhan, the city that is becoming a main hub. By cutting the time to travel the 1,100km from 11 hours to just three, the service claims to be the fastest long-distance route in the world. Another new service travels the 505km between Xian and Zhengzhou, another booming central China hub. Many of the road networks in the region have also received huge investments in recent years.
The improved infrastructure has significantly changed the outlook for manufacturing in many parts of central China. “The sense of distance has been completely transformed,” says Song Hong, an economic adviser to the Anhui provincial government.
The shift inland to central China is also being pushed by rising costs on the coast. The 30 per cent increase in wages that Foxconn announced in Shenzhen after the suicides may be an extreme example, but salaries are often rising at double-digit rates in the manufacturing areas in the south and in the region around Shanghai in the east.
In industries such as textiles or manufacturing electrical appliances, where the margins are often very small, companies are finding themselves facing two choices – either move overseas, to say Vietnam, or shift production inland to cheaper provinces. The improvement in the logistics in central China means that for many companies, moving inland is the preferred option.
Migration patterns are changing. In the past 30 years, provinces such as Anhui and Jiangxi have been huge exporters of labour to coastal provinces. Now, some of the flow is being reversed, as workers stay closer to home. And that makes central cities more attractive consumer markets – another source of dynamism for the economy. In Wuhan, developers are extending Mall City, a retail complex, which its owners say will be one of the biggest shopping centres in the world, with 400,000 square metres of space, when completed.
Yet while there are powerful forces driving the expansion in the centre, there is one big risk that could derail the boom. The Chinese economy relies heavily on investment but that is especially the case in several central provinces. According to figures published by the Anhui provincial government, investment accounted for more than 90 per cent of GDP last year. In Hubei, the province of which Wuhan is the capital, investment accounted for 64 per cent of GDP.
Such figures could say more about the problems with province-level statistics in China than with the actual economies – if the official figures in Anhui were correct, it would imply that consumption was essentially negligible.
However it is a warning that if Beijing had to scale back investment sharply, for instance if inflation were to take off, central China could witness a jarring slowdown.
没有评论:
发表评论