I can't confirm the current situation...
...but in the 1980s I worked for a manufacturer of ceramic tableware and we were visited by a Chinese trade delegation. One of the senior managers in the group told my boss that his company manufactured a similar volume of goods to us. Our factory employed about 350 people, his was nearer 11,000 and he freely admitted that a large proportion of those people spent their days playing cards, reading the paper, etc. but he could still undercut us on price.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Thu 2 Apr 2015, 19:28, 1 reply)

They called it the iron ricebowl - cradle to grave welfare. It's gone now.
Industries have been made more efficient but there's still crazy amounts of overmanning. My first job over there was teaching English at a university. Each classroom had an interactive whiteboard, so you had to get the key to access the computer and a remote for the projector from the AV room. There were four people working in that room, their single function being handing keys over to lecturers before classes. There were about six members of staff in the cash office, and I remember once counting three of them reading the paper when I went to get paid.

It all made me wish for a Thatcherite government to come in and kick some ass.
(McChinaman banned, Thu 2 Apr 2015, 19:58, closed)

Salaries have gone up so much now in larger cities private companies cannot afford to do that anymore. It is now cheaper to have R&D centres in Taiwan because the salaries are lower, and factory workers have massively bigger than inflation raises every year. Many companies can manufacture electronic goods cheaper in eastern Europe now.
( jagwap, Fri 3 Apr 2015, 11:40, closed)

The eventual and inevitable civil unrest will be interesting.

(zebideedoodah likes florence but prefers venice, Sat 4 Apr 2015, 0:15, closed)