Chapter 7 Chapter 2 10 Powers to Flatten the World (4)

My conclusion is: whether it is an individual upload or a collective upload.All are favorable factors for flattening the world. Uploading is expanding because the flat-world platforms that make uploading possible are expanding, and because uploading responds to people's desire to participate and have their voices heard. "New York Times" reporter Seth.Hissel has reported on this (June 21, 2005), noting that more and more young men would rather play a sports-related video game than watch a game on television.He points out that since 2000, sales of sports-related video games in the US have grown 34 percent, reaching $1.2 billion in 2004; Viewership has dropped.

What struck me most about the article, however, was a young man, Abbott, cited by Hissel.Acer, for his part, enjoys playing NBA-branded video basketball games.In the game, you control the movement of the player (all modeled after real NBA players) as he runs and shoots.Aser said, I like Kobe, the basketball star of the Los Angeles Lakers.Kobe Bryant: I like playing this game because I can make him pass the ball to other people in the game, but on TV, he doesn't seem to know how to pass the ball. He would much rather play the game than watch Kobe play.Micah.Micah Sifry It is said that this mentality implies that in the Internet age, there will be a major change in the way of accessing media from a static and passive way to an active and participatory way.Competing in a game is more fun than watching it.

Tim.Tim Oreilly is the founder and CEO of Oreilly Media, Inc., one of the world's leading publishers of computer books.He has a unique way of describing the uploading phenomenon, which he calls a framework of participation systems, which is used by users to produce rather than just consume.He believes that companies that design their own software, systems, websites, and encyclopedias will attract more users. People love to upload.That's why, of the top 10 forces flattening the world, uploading has the potential to be the most destructive.How many people use this ability to participate in the game and when will determine the degree of destructive uploading.Participating in this behavior is like having to use a muscle in your body, Sifry said. We're not used to calling it an active participant in the process, and while the tools are out there, many people don't use them... Blind submission to authority And the idea of ​​agency is still ingrained.In short, the number of uploaders is relatively small.But as tools for individual uploads and masterpieces become more commonplace, and as more and more people get positive feedback from their upload experience, I'm pretty sure every big institution or hierarchy will feel shock.

I have warned you. The fifth largest flattening force-outsourcing: Y2K Since the independence day on August 15, 1947, India's national fortune has alternately risen and fallen, but in some respects, India can be called the luckiest country at the end of the 20th century. Until recently, India was known in banking circles as a "second buyer".In the business world, you'll want to be a second buyer - you'll want to buy a hotel, golf course, or shopping center from a previous buyer who went bankrupt, because that's when the bank will auction off for 1/10 the original value these assets.These ex-buyers are the American shareholders who blindly lay fiber optic cables, thinking that the digital world will expand endlessly, and they will also endlessly become rich.When the digital bubble burst, their holdings were either slashed in value or rendered worthless.

Indians are actually the second buyers of these fiber optic companies. Indians are not actually buying these stocks, but are directly benefiting from the overinvestment in these fiber optic cables because they and their American customers are using almost all of this fiber for free.India was the biggest beneficiary (China, the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries also gained).India actually has no natural resources, but this also makes it pay special attention to one thing - to develop the intellectual capital of its citizens and to cultivate a large number of elites in the fields of science, engineering and medicine. In 1953, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru established the first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the eastern city of Kharagpur, and six more were established one after another.Over the next 50 years, thousands of Indians flocked to these polytechnics and other private universities (there are six management schools in India).

In India, which has a population of more than one billion, this competition has also created a knowledge management class, which is like a factory, producing and exporting the most talented engineering, computer and software talents. This is one of the right choices for India.Due to the unstable political situation after India's independence, and the Nehru government's emphasis on the planned economic system of the former Soviet Union, until the mid-1990s, India could not provide good job opportunities for most scientific and technological talents, so the United States became India. The second buyer of tech talent.At that time, if you were a well-educated Indian, the way to reach your fullest potential was to leave your country, ideally, to go to America, where 25,000 engineers graduated from Indian institutions of higher learning settled since 1953 In the United States, the minds of the United States have been greatly enriched by the talents cultivated by Indian taxpayers.

The Wall Street Journal article on April 16, 2003 said: "The Indian Institute of Technology is the cradle of outstanding scientific research personnel. It is not easy to enter and study there. You can only get admission after the exam. Govt also doesn't interfere with the curriculum offered by the school, the curriculum is heavy there.. Getting into IIT is even harder than getting into Harvard or MIT.. Participated in founding IIT of Sun Microelectronics Graduate Vinod Khosla said: "When I graduated from IIT to Carnegie Mellon University for my master's degree, I felt a lot easier. '" For more than 50 years, the graduates of these Indian institutes of technology have been arguably the best and cheapest products that the United States has bought. It is like a drain that fills it in New Delhi and then goes to Palo Alto (Birthplace of Silicon Valley)

empty it. Then there was Netscape, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Global Crossing, and the rest of the fiber optic cable companies.The world is flattened and the global rollout of fiber optic cables allows IIT grads to stay at home and export their brainwork.One of the most admired hedge fund managers on Wall Street, young Indian Dinaka.Singh said: "India has few resources and infrastructure. Although it can produce high-quality talents in large quantities, many people in the past are like rotten vegetables in Indian ports. Fewer people can go abroad to find their own piece of land.Not now because we have this thing called fiber optic cable laid across the ocean..for the past few decades you have to leave India to get a good Development... Now you can connect to the world in India. You don’t have to be like me, to go to Goldman Sachs after graduating from Yale.”

India would never have been able to pay for the broadband linking talent-rich India to high-tech America, so American shareholders paid for them.Of course, overinvestment can also be a good thing, and overinvestment in railroads has greatly benefited the U.S. economy."Overinvestment in railways and the resulting benefits can only be limited to your own country, but digital railways can benefit foreigners," Singh said. American companies are discovering at this time that they can tap the rich human capital there in India. Let us hear what Indians who have witnessed this transformation have to say.Vivek, president of Indian software giant Vipro Technologies."In many ways, India's IT outsourcing revolution started with the arrival of General Electric," Paul said.

We're talking about the late 1980s and early 1990s.At that time, Texas Pacific Group Corporation also began to do some chip design work in India. Some of the main designers of this company in the United States were Indians. Later, they let these Indian designers return to China and directly carry out design and development locally. .At that time, I was in charge of GE Healthcare's operations in Bangalore. In 1989, General Electric's then-president Jack. When Welch came to India, he immediately found that India had a lot of human resources that GE needed.Welch often said, 'India is a developing country with well-developed knowledge and skills. ’ He found a talent pool to tap into.So he said, 'We spent a lot of money developing software.Can't we do something for the IT department here? '” Because India had until then been closed to foreign technology companies like IBM, India opened its own factories to make computers and servers. Welch felt that if they could make it for themselves, they could make it for General Electric.

Welch sent a team led by GE's chief integration officer (CIO) to Bangalore for a field trip.Paul, who was GE's head of business development in India at the time, recalls: "It was the early 1990s, and my assignment was to accompany the CIO who was going to India for the first time, and they brought some pilot projects. It was already midnight when the plane arrived at Delhi Airport, and a convoy of five Indian-made cars—the Ambassador car (Ambassador), which was still based on the old cars of the British Morris Company in the 1950s and 1960s— came to pick them up. Design basis. On the way from the airport to the town, I was sitting in the back of a car, and suddenly I heard a loud bang, what happened? I rushed to the front of the convoy and saw that the hood of the lead car had been Knocked off and smashed the windshield - and the GE guys were sitting in it. So all the GE guys gathered on the side of the road, and I heard them muttering, 'This Is that where we're going to get the software?'” To the relief of Indians, GE Group did not decide to quit because of low quality Indian cars, instead it decided to start a joint project with Wipro Technologies and take root in India.But this was still before the age of fiber optics.For example, Simon & Schuster in the United States ships its books to India and pays Indians $50 a month ($1,000 in the U.S.) to type the contents of the book into a computer and copy the book Digitized electronic files so that they can be easily edited or revised later—especially for books such as dictionaries that need to be updated frequently. Manmohan, who was India's finance minister in 1991. Singh began to open the country, introduce foreign capital, and introduce competition to the Indian communications industry.In order to attract more foreign capital, Singh has provided great convenience to foreign companies, such as helping to establish a communication satellite downlink in Bangalore, so that they can bypass India's local telephone system and directly communicate with them in the United States, Europe or Asia contact the headquarters.Before that, only Texas Pacific Group dared to face the challenge of the Indian bureaucracy, becoming the first multinational company to establish an R&D center and IC design in India in 1985.TPG has its own satellite downlink in Bangalore, but it must be supervised by Indian government officials who have the authority to inspect any data coming in or going out.Singh has deregulated all these regulations since 1991. In 1994, a "health record" company partially financed by Indian-American doctors was established in Bangalore to undertake computer entry work outsourced by American doctors and hospitals.Previously, physicians had to dictate and record handwritten notes and hand them off to a secretary or someone else to complete the entry, often taking days or weeks. Health Records has built a system that turns a doctor's touch-tone phone into a dictation machine, where the doctor dials a number and then dictates a handwritten note to a computer equipped with a sound card so that the computer can transcribe his voice Digitizing.Thanks to the satellite transmission system, a housewife or student in Bangalore can download the doctor's digitized voice from their computer, complete the entry in 2 hours instead of 2 weeks, and then she (he) can send the completed voice via satellite. The text file is sent to the hospital's computer system.Because of the 12-hour time difference between the US and India, Indians can get their work done while the US doctor is still asleep, allowing the doctor to be seen the next morning.This is a major breakthrough for companies because if you can safely and legally do the entry of medical records, lab notes and doctors' diagnoses in Bangalore, many other industries will also consider moving the back office work to India .And that's exactly what they did later on. But there is a limit to what satellites can handle, and there is also a problem of sound lag ("Health Records" Ram Dass, one of the founders of the company.pungent.Khalsa said their initial outsourcers were Indians in Maine — that is, Indian-Americans).The cost of doing this type of entry in India is 1/5 of the cost in the US, a gap that has attracted a lot of attention. By the late 1990s, Lady Luck began to look after India on two fronts: the fiber optic bubble started to inflate, linking India and the US, and the Y2K computer crisis — the so-called “Year 2000 Bug” — erupted.Computers usually have internal clocks, and initially to save storage space, these clocks used only 6 digits to represent time -- 2 digits for the day, 2 digits for the month, and 2 digits for the year. This means that the computer can only show the time up to 12/31/99. When the date arrives on January 1, 2000, many old-fashioned computers cannot show 01/01/2000, but only 01/01/00. Back to 1900 again.So a lot of old computers at the time (the clocks of newer computers have solved these problems) Both had to adjust their internal clocks and related systems, or these computer programs would shut down, causing a global crisis. Adjusting a computer system is a huge and cumbersome project.Which country in the world has software engineers who can complete this project?The answer is India, with its vast pool of tech talent graduating from Indian Institutes of Technology and other private tech universities.So in front of the archenemy of Y2K, America and India started dating frequently, and their relationship greatly contributed to the process of flattening the world, because it showed many different industries that the combination of PCs, networks and fiber optic cables provided new types of cooperation And a new way of horizontal value creation: outsourcing.Any service, call center, business support or knowledge work that can be digitized can be outsourced to the cheapest and most efficient provider in the world.Engineers in India, halfway around the world, can do these computer tweaks for you, using workstations connected by fiber-optic cables. Weipro Technology Company once undertook part of the Y2K outsourcing work, President Viwork."Y2K work is very tedious and doesn't give Western companies a strong competitive advantage, so they're really looking to outsource that work for as low a fee as possible," Paul said. "They say, 'We just want security. Live the damn year 2000!’ So they started working with Indian tech companies.” jerry.Rao said: "Y2K means different things to different people. It represents the biggest opportunity for Indian industry. In the past, India has been seen as a backward country. Y2K suddenly demands that every machine in the world Computer checks and India happens to have that pool of talent. Y2K has given the Indian IT industry a global footprint and it is our growth engine.” By the beginning of 2000, the Y2K problem was basically resolved, and then a new business opportunity - e-commerce emerged.At that time, the Internet bubble had not yet burst, demand was still very strong, and technical talents were relatively scarce.Paul said: "People want applications that are vital to survival, and they turn to Indian companies. It turns out that these Indian companies can not only complete complex tasks, but also provide higher quality services than elsewhere. This has won widespread respect for IT suppliers in India. If Y2K is the process of acquaintance between American companies and Indian companies, the e-commerce stage is the process of their love.” With the burst of the tech bubble, outsourcing as a new form of cooperation between the US and India has grown tremendously, and the fiber optic cable between my workstation in Bangalore and our company's mainframe has allowed me to Enterprises handle things like e-commerce and hosting applications. "We started collaborating on mainframe applications and e-commerce, which means we're married," Paul said. India was once lucky that it could take advantage of all the undersea fiber optic cables.Paul added: "At that time, I had an office very close to the Leela Palace Hotel in Bangalore, and I was also working in a factory in the International Technology Park in Whitefield, a suburb of Bangalore, but even at the Installing local phone lines between factories is not possible unless you are willing to bribe the officials, which we are not willing to do. So every time I call from the office to the factory, I will first go from the Bangalore office to the United States General Electric mainframe in Kentucky, and from Kentucky back to Whitefell. We can use leased fiber optic cables across the ocean, but it takes bribes just to use the cable that goes through town." Although India has benefited from the prosperity of the Internet economy, it has benefited more from the bursting of the Internet bubble. This is indeed very ironic.The dot-com boom laid the fiber optic cables linking India to the world, and its downfall not only reduced the cost of using those cables to zero, but also dramatically increased the availability of American companies willing to use them to outsource work to India. quantity. Y2K made Indian brainworkers very popular, and Indian companies provided high-quality and low-cost services, but price was not the primary issue for customers at the time-solving the "millennium bug" problem was the priority. After Y2K came the boom of the dot-com economy, almost all English-speaking engineers in the US were poached by e-commerce companies, and India became the only place where such talents could be found.Then came the bursting of the Internet bubble, the stock market slump, and the shortage of investment funds. The funds in the hands of the surviving American IT companies and venture fund companies are running low. Their need for Indian engineers is more to save costs. One of the mistakes many analysts made in the early 2000s was to confuse the dot-com boom with globalization, thinking that both were temporary manias.When the dot-com bubble burst, some stubborn analysts believed that globalization was over, too.But actually just the opposite.Internet prosperity is only one aspect of globalization, and the bursting of the Internet bubble not only did not destroy globalization, but accelerated its process. Indian-American Promod.Hanke was one of Silicon Valley's leading venture capitalists when he and his firm, Norwest Venture, were in transition."When the dot-com bubble burst, Indian engineers who were on short-term work visas in the U.S. lost their jobs and had to go back to India," explains Hanke. As a result, nearly every major U.S. company's IT budget shrunk. a lot.He continued: "What are the IT leaders at every company told to do as much or more for as little money as possible? They would say to their subordinates, 'Do you remember that Indian Vijay who used to work for us during the dot-com boom?He has gone home and is calling his home in Bangalore to see if he is still willing to work for us. ’” Fiber-optic cables laid during the dot-com boom made it easy for them to find Vijay and put him in a job. Y2K computer tuning is mostly done by low-skilled Indian programmers, mostly fresh out of technical school.Hanke said: "However, those Indians who came to the United States with visas did not graduate from trade schools. Most of them have obtained advanced engineering degrees. American companies found that these people are very good at computer design jobs such as Java and C++. These people were forced to be laid off and would go back to China, and at this time, the IT director in the United States was instructed by his superiors, 'I don't care how you complete the task, but you must reduce the cost.' So he called Vijay." When the United States and India were "dating", IT companies in Bangalore began to have their own ideas. The Y2K work brought them into contact with large corporations in the United States, and they began to understand how to improve business processes. So those Indians who had been doing detailed customization started developing their own products, transforming themselves from maintenance companies into product companies, offering a range of services and consultations.This allowed Indian companies to penetrate deeper into US companies, and business process outsourcing was taken to a new level where Indians started taking care of the back-office work."I have an accounts payable department that I can move to Vipro Technologies or Infosys in India and the cost will be cut in half," says Hanke. "The CEO of a US company will say, 'Do more with less A lot of work.' And the Indian company will say, 'I have done some repair work on your computer, and now I will provide you with a complete solution at the lowest price.'" Indian outsourcing companies mean , "Do you remember when I repaired 'tires and pistons' for you during Y2K? If you want, I can also do other jobs for you that I have been comfortable with. Now that you know me, you know that I can Get this done." Indian labor is not only cheap, but also eager to learn new knowledge and skills. The scarcity of capital after the dot-com bust led venture capital firms to discover that their investees were struggling to find the most efficient way to innovate at a high quality and at low cost.Hanke points out that during the dot-com boom, a $50 million investment could easily return $500 million when the company went public.After the dot-com bubble burst, the same investment project may only get a return on investment of US$100 million after it goes public.As a result, venture capitalists are only willing to put up $20 million to risk after the bubble bursts.Hanke said: "The biggest problem facing venture capital companies is, how can I make my investment objects recover their costs faster and make profits? And the invested companies will think like this: I better start as much as possible from the beginning." Outsource more processes, because I must bring returns to investors faster, so what can be outsourced must be outsourced.” Henry, who ran Lucent at this stage.Schachter analyzed the problem from the level of corporate management: "Everyone finds business economics 'hateful'. Everyone finds that prices are hard to come down, markets are stagnant, and they can no longer operate in the back office of the company. Businesses are spending huge sums of money. Cost pressures are high and people are forced to do things they never thought they could do or be able to do ... Globalization has accelerated—whether it’s manufacturing or knowledge-based industries.” These American companies found that they could go to MIT and find 4 super smart Chinese engineers who are going back to China, and let these people work for them in China, and the salary cost of these 4 people is only equivalent to hiring an engineer in the United States the cost of.Bell Labs has a research institute in Qingdao, China, which can be connected with Lucent computers in the United States."They can use our computers at night (in the U.S.) when computing power and data transfers are free and the computers are idle," Schachter said. For all these reasons, I think Y2K should be the second Independence Day of India and should be made a national holiday. Like Michael, a foreign policy expert at Johns Hopkins University.Mandelbaum (who spent his youth in India) As pointed out: "Y2K should be called India's Independence Day. The fiber optic network brought India the ability to cooperate with Western companies, giving Indians real freedom to choose how, who and where they work." In other words, August 15th commemorates freedom at midnight, and Y2K commemorates midnight jobs—not jobs for anyone, but opportunities for India's intellectual elite. August 15th gave India Independence and Y2K gave Indians Independence.India is lucky in this sense, but it is also built on hard work, good education and wise decisions by older generations of leaders. louis.Pasteur once had a famous saying: "Chance favors only the prepared mind." The sixth major factor - offshore operation: race with gazelles, prey with lions. On December 11, 2001, China officially joined the World Trade Organization, which means that China, like most countries in the world, must abide by import and export and foreign investment. aspects of the global rules.It also shows that China has agreed in principle to provide the same playing field as the rest of the world.A few days later, the Chinese supervisor of a fuel pump factory in Beijing posted African proverbs translated into Chinese inside the plant.I know this because the factory is a friend of mine, Jack.Pankowski, CEO of ASIMCO Industrial Technology Co., Ltd.The proverb goes like this: In Africa, when a gazelle wakes up every morning, he knows he must outrun the fastest lion or he will be eaten. Every morning when a lion wakes up, he knows that he must outrun the slowest gazelle or starve to death. It doesn't matter if you're a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better start running. I don't know who to compare to a lion or a gazelle, but I do know this: from the day the Chinese entered the WTO, China and the rest of the world had to run faster and faster.This is because China's accession to the WTO has greatly promoted another form of cooperation: offshore operations.Prior to this, offshore operations had a history of several decades, which was a way of international cooperation different from outsourcing.Outsourcing means handing over limited and specific operations (such as research and development, call centers, or account management, etc.) to other companies, and then integrating the completed work into the overall operating system.Offshoring is a completely different way of doing business: If a company moves its The entire factory was transferred to Guangzhou, China through offshore operation, which means that the Guangzhou factory will produce exactly the same products in the same way, but the labor force is cheaper, and taxation, arable land, energy can be subsidized, medical treatment The cost is also lower.Just like Y2K brought India and the world to a whole new level of outsourcing, China's accession to WTO brought China and the world to a whole new level of offshoring, more companies will produce offshoring and then integrate it globally supply chain. In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping brought China to the development path of reform and opening up, convincing people that "it is a glorious thing to get rich through hard work".When China first opened its dusty doors, companies in industrialized countries saw this as a golden opportunity to expand their exports.The manufacturers dream of selling a billion sets of underwear to the populous country, and some foreign companies have set up dealerships in China.But since China was not bound by world trade rules before joining the WTO, it can restrict the entry of Western products through various forms of trade and investment barriers.Even if China didn't do it on purpose, various cultural differences can have the same effect.Many of the earliest investors in China experienced disillusionment, and China's weak legal system at that time could not provide them with assistance. Since the 1980s, many foreign investors, especially some overseas Chinese, have considered such a question: If we can’t sell so many products to China, why not use China’s cheap labor to produce and process them locally, and then export them?This catered to the needs of China at the time. China hoped to attract foreign capital and foreign advanced production technology. This was not only to produce 1 billion sets of underwear sold in China, but also to sell 6 billion sets of products produced by Chinese labor to the rest of the world. , the prices of these products are much lower than the prices of similar products in Europe, the United States, and even Mexico. Once offshore operations started in industries such as textiles, electronics, furniture, spectacle frames, and auto parts, companies in other industries began to follow suit, or went to China for offshore operations, or looked for Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, or other regions as production centers . China's accession to the WTO in 2001 convinced foreign companies that if they offshored factories to China, they would be protected by international law and uniform international rules.China has agreed to gradually implement national treatment for foreign companies and citizens, meaning foreign companies can sell their products anywhere in China.China has also agreed to apply most-favored-nation treatment to all WTO members, meaning the same tariffs and rules will apply to all members.It also agreed to submit to international arbitration in case of trade disputes with any country or foreign company.At the same time, government officials have become more friendly, investment procedures have been greatly simplified, and the websites of various ministries and commissions have become increasingly rich in content, all of which are to facilitate foreign investors' investment in China.I learned from the US embassy in China that within a few weeks after China's accession to the WTO, the Chinese version of the WTO rules books sold 2 million copies at once.Deng Xiaoping made China absorb the 10 factors that make the world flat, thus making China a challenge to the world. Before China joined the WTO, it was believed that the government and banks would protect Chinese companies from foreign competition even though China had chosen to open up to reap the benefits of trade with the West.Jack has lived and worked in China since the early 1990s.Pankowski told me that China's entry into the WTO is a signal to the rest of the world that China will not deviate from the market economy. Because China can recruit a large number of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers at low cost, because China is willing to absorb a large number of factories and equipment in order to increase employment opportunities, and because China has a huge and booming consumer market, it has become an offshore Ideal location to do business.No matter what industry you are in, sooner or later China will become a major competitor and consumer market, so you have to think about how to cooperate with it, compete with it, and even take advantage of it.There are more than 160 cities in China with a population of more than 1 million, you can go to a city on the eastern seaboard that you have never heard of before, and you will find that there is a small town that supplies most of the eye frames in the world, and the adjacent Small towns produce most of the lighters in the world, some small towns produce computer screens for Dell, and some specialize in mobile phones.The aforementioned Japanese consultant Kenichi Ohmae mentioned in his book The United States of China that there were 50,000 electronic parts suppliers in the Pearl River Delta north of Hong Kong. One day in Tokyo, Ken Ohmae said to me that China is a threat, China is a customer, and China is an opportunity. You cannot ignore China; you should not regard China as an enemy of competition, and you should divide your business into several parts. For each part, think about which part can be invested in China, which part needs to be exported to China, and which part needs to be imported from China. Now let's look at the real impact of China's opening up on world flattening.The greater China's advantage as a base for offshore operations, the more pressure its rivals, including Malaysia, Thailand, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil and Vietnam, will feel.Seeing the changes that are happening in China, seeing a lot of jobs going to China, they say to themselves, we better start offering the same incentives.This creates a competitive flattening process, in which countries compete against each other on the basis of cheap labor and who can offer the best tax breaks, educational incentives and subsidies of all kinds in order to encourage offshoring to the homeland. "The Chinese Century" Odide is a professor at Ohio State University and the author of (The Chinese Century).In an interview with Business Week in December 2004, Oded Shenkar bluntly warned American entrepreneurs: If you are still engaged in the production of labor-intensive products, you should quit now, or you will bleed to death. To compete you have to have a new business model.Even if you cut costs by 5%, that doesn't help, Chinese producers can make the same adjustment.You need a whole new business model to compete, he said. China's flattening power is also related to its continuous development of its huge domestic market.同一篇《商业周刊》的文章提到，这带来了规模经济和激烈的国内竞争，降低了产品价格，并且每年都新增35万工程师；年轻的工人和管理人员吃苦耐劳，他们愿意每天工作12小时，在电子行业和轻工业，这都是无与伦比的竞争优势；企业家的工作热情也很高，他们愿尽一切努力取悦沃尔玛、Target、百思买和JC Penney 等大型零售商。 2005年秋，我在北京参加访问时，遇见了美国商会驻中国主席查尔斯。M.马丁。 他告诉我，他刚从浙江省一家袜业厂参观回来。这个制造厂为世界各地的大商家和中国的零售商生产短袜和女式内衣。厂长为马丁打开一盒短袜并告诉他，如果你从他那里买12双这种普通短袜，按批发价计算，每双你只需要支付11美分。 但是厂长继续解释说，即使是以这么低的价格出售，其竞争力也很难维持，因为它的竞争对手正以更低的价格出售短袜。所以他打算将厂址迁到400 英里（1 英里=1.61 千米）之外的内陆地区——江苏省北部的一个贫困地区，那里的地方政府已经许诺给他更低的税收、更低的地租和更低的劳动成本。 最终，中国将不再有这样的内陆地区可供工厂迁址，中国制造商将不能仅通过迁址进一步降低成本。但我们现在还没有到过那里，这就是为什么说中国是制造业的一大变平力量，这就是西方制造商削减5%的成本根本解决不了问题的原因。 你需要一个全新的商业模型。 不过，这种经营模式也遭到了批评人士的抨击，他们认为，中国的市场规模和经济实力意味着中国的经营模式将很快成为全球效仿的标准，而这种标准下不仅工资水平较低，而且劳动法保障不力。这在商业上被称作“中国价格”（the China price ）。 但真正让世人感到惊慌的是，中国并非仅仅通过超级优惠的条件吸引外国投资。 这只是短期战略。很多人在谈到中国现象时，他们犯的最大的错误就是认为中国不是靠改善质量和提高生产率，而仅仅凭工资水平来占据优势。世界大企业联合会（US Conference Board ）的研究发现，1995~2002 年，中国的私营工业部门每年的生产率增加17% ——我再重复一遍，是17%.这主要是因为中国吸收了新科技和现代化的商业模式。该委员会还发现，中国在此期间失去了1500万个制造业的工作机会，而美国的这一数字只有200 万。研究指出，“随着中国制造业生产率的提高，中国正失去制造业的就业机会——而且其数量要远远超过美国——这有利于中国服务业的发展，这一模式正是多年来发达国家一直在遵循的。” 中国真正的长期战略是赶超欧美国家，并且已经有了一个很好的开端。中国领导人比很多西方国家领导人更关注如何提高年青一代的数理和计算机知识（这在平坦的世界中无疑是成功的必备条件），如何建立高度发达的通讯基础设施，如何创建吸引外国投资的激励机制。中国领导人希望看到的是新一代的内衣服装和飞机机翼都能在中国完成设计，这也是她们在下一个10年中希望达到的目标。 因此30年的历史将见证中国经历“中国销售”—“中国制造”—“中国设计”—“中国梦想”的整个过程——或者说，中国在同全球制造商的合作中，从一切都无能为力到成为了一个低成本、高效率的合作者。在写这一章节的过程中，我正好在网上看到了有关半导体行业的、名为Inquirer的时事通讯，给我印象最深的是2001年11月5 日一期的文章《中国将成为一切的中心》。文章引用《人民日报》的文章称，福布斯500 强中的400 家企业已经在中国内地投资了2000多个项目，这还是5 年前的事情。 与中国一衣带水的日本在内部化中国的挑战方面采取了非常积极的方式。日本推动出口的官方机构——日本贸易振兴会理事长渡边修（Osamu Watanabe）在东京告诉我：“中国现在发展得非常迅速，并且他们正从低端产品发展到高端、高科技产品。” 他认为，日本公司要维持其全球竞争力就必须将一些中间产品的生产和装配工作转移到中国，在日本国内主要从事一些更高附加值的产品，因此中国和日本“正成为同一供应链的一部分”。和美国积极参与北美自由贸易区、欧盟不断东扩一样，日本也在加大和他西面邻居的一体化。在经历长时期的经济衰退后，日本经济从2003年开始反弹，部分原因是当时销售了数千吨的机器和关键零部件给中国。而真正的购买者是那些将工厂离岸经营到中国内地的韩国、日本和中国台湾人。2003年，中国取代美国成为日本最大的进口国。 中国的飞速发展也许会影响一些国家制造业工人的就业，但对世界各地的消费者来说，中国廉价的产品的确是天赐福音。2004年10月4 日的《财富》杂志引用摩根斯坦利的研究数据称，从20世纪90年代开始，中国的廉价产品已经给美国消费者节省了大约6000亿美元，给美国制造商节省的零部件进口费用更是不计其数。文章称，这些节省下来的费用让美联储可维持更久的低利率水平，居民有能力购买房屋，商家也可以有更多资本进行创新。 为了更好地理解在中国的离岸经营，我和北京亚新科工业技术有限公司的杰克。潘考夫斯基进行了一次畅谈，他可以说是这种合作形式的领头兵。如果在奥运会中有一类叫做“极端资本主义”的比赛项目，我想杰克。潘考夫斯基一定会得金牌。 1988年，他离开了在潘威伯集团（PaineWebber Group Inc.）高级投资银行家的职务，并且在42岁的时候决定迎接一项新的挑战——他和合作伙伴一起筹得1.5 亿美元用于收购中国企业。从那之后，他在中国的商海中起起浮浮，尽管也曾遭遇惨痛的失败，但最终还是成为中国离岸经营方面的成功范例，并且验证了这一合作方式的有效性。 “1992~1993 年我刚到中国时，所有人都以为我遇到的最大困难将是如何在中国找到和得到机会，”事实上，当时中国到处都是机会，缺少的只不过是知道如何按照先进方式经营汽车零件工厂的中国经理人。潘考夫斯基说的一点都没错，在中国建厂是很容易的，难的是在中国找到善于经营的管理人。所以当他最初购买中国汽车零件公司的大多数股权时，他也开始从国外聘请管理人，成本当然是很高的，而且让外国人在中国从事经营无疑也存在很多不便。第一种方案失败了。 “所以我们就辞退了所有的外国管理人，并且开始尝试第二种方案——聘用收购工厂原来的管理人员。”但是后来发现，这一办法也不行，因为这些人已经习惯于计划经济条件下的经营模式，他们不知道怎么和市场打交道。中国不乏具有企业家才干的人，但在中国入世之前，中国没有健全的法制和债市股市，因此你只能从国有企业的管理者或第一批下海的私人企业主中进行选择。 他在中国第一次购买的是一家橡胶零配件公司的股份。当他后来和中方合作伙伴达成进一步收购股份的协议时，中方还同他签署了非竞争条款。然而，交易刚刚达成，中方合作伙伴的主管就自己开了一家从事同类生产的工厂。非竞争条款根本没有起到约束的作用。第二种方案也失败了。 潘考夫斯基的生意曾经亏损过很多钱，他称其为在中国学做生意的学费，后来他发现自己已经拥有好几家零件工厂。他说：“1997年左右是我事业的低点。 我们的公司从整体来看是在缩水，当时根本没有利润可言。尽管在收购的企业中，我们持有大多数股份，理论上讲我们可以根据自己的意愿选择管理者，但在企业内部已有的管理人员中，我实在挑不出理想的人选了。“这时候我们选择了方案三。 “我们后来得出的重要结论是，我们不喜欢'计划经济下的中国'，我们想把赌注放在'市场经济下的中国'上。”潘考夫斯基称：“我们开始寻找新一代的中国管理者，他们大多思路开阔，受过一定形式的管理培训，在熟悉中国企业运营方式的同时还了解西方国家的管理经验。所以在1997~1999 年，我们聘用了'新三代'的管理者，他们一般都曾在外企里工作过很多年。”自从有了这些得力管理者的支持，亚新科工业技术有限公司就开始赢利了。 今天，亚新科工业技术有限公司在中国9 个省份13家中国工厂1 年的销售额达到3.5 亿美元。这家公司的产品远销到美国，在中国也有36个销售网点，专门给中国汽车制造商提供服务。 在这个基础上，潘考夫斯基作出了又一个大胆的决策——将在中国离岸经营获得的利润再带回美国去赚钱。他说：“2003年4 月，我们收购了联邦默高公司（Federal-Mogul ）在北美的凸轮轴业务，收购的目的是首先是要获得其客户群——主要是美国的三大汽车制造商，再加上卡特比勒和康明斯。我们同卡特比勒和康明斯有着多年的合作关系，此次收购强化了我们的关系，增加对三大汽车巨头的凸轮轴销售才是我们真正希望达到的目标。收购的第二大原因是为了获取可以带回中国取得先进技术。人们以前不太重视凸轮轴技术，但实际上对于汽车发动机来说，凸轮轴技术水平的高低至关重要。此次收购获取的专利技术足以奠定我们在中国凸轮轴生产的领导地位。现在，我们拥有了最先进的凸轮轴生产技术，并且在中国和美国都拥有客户群。” 这是非常重要的。因为人们普遍认为，离岸经营对美国工人来说是绝无好处的事情——本来是这里的东西去了那里，这就是故事的结尾。现实更加复杂。 多数企业建立离岸经营的工厂不仅是为了给在美国或欧洲出售的产品获取更廉价的劳动力，他们更大的愿望是希望能在不必担心贸易壁垒的情况下在这个国家获得较为有利的竞争地位，特别是在像中国这样巨大的市场。美国商务部的数字显示，美国拥有的离岸经营工厂有90% 的产品都卖给了外国消费者，但这事实上刺激了美国的产品出口。很多研究表明，一家公司在离岸经营工厂每投资1 美元都会为它的母国带来额外出口，因为当前大约有1/3 的全球贸易都是在跨国公司内部完成的。即使离岸经营的目的是为了节省工资成本，但实际上就像亚新科工业有限公司的实践所证明的那样，并非所有的工作机会都被转移到了国外。美国很多企业离岸经营生产出来的产品已经成为他们全球供应链的一部分，很多商品仍旧会在美国完成最后的加工步骤。 传统基金会（The Heritage Foundation ）的一项研究报告《创造就业和对外国来源收入的征税》（Job Creation and the Taxation of Foreign-Source Income，2004年1 月26日） 指出，那些既在美国国内也在中国从事生产的美国企业，他们的产出占美国产出的21% ，占美国出口的56% ，提供了美国制造业3/5 的就业机会（大约900万人）。所以，如果通用电器在上海建立一个离岸经营工厂，通过给这家中国工厂出口商品和服务，他也给美国创造了很多就业机会，并且美国方面还可以受益于从中国进口的低成本零件。刚才只顾讨论美国企业在中国的离岸经营，忽略了美国每年吸收的大量离岸经营投资，因为外国投资者也希望能通过这一方式进入美国的市场。2003年9 月25日，戴姆勒克莱斯勒集团庆祝在美国阿拉巴马州塔斯卡卢萨阿市建厂10周年，这家工厂是该集团第一次在德国之外建立的梅塞德斯-奔驰轿车生产厂，在庆祝会上该集团还宣布对这家工厂增资6 亿美元。戴- 克集团负责梅塞德斯业务的主管于尔根。哈伯特在庆祝会上说：“在塔斯卡卢萨阿市，我们已经成功地验证，在一个全新的工厂利用全新的工人生产全新的产品是可以实现的。我们也证明，在德国之外是可以成功地生产出梅塞德斯产品的。” 亚新科工业技术有限公司也是如此。它利用在中国的凸轮轴工厂完成原材料处理和基本的生产过程，然后将半成品出口到在美国的凸轮轴工厂，在那里技术更熟练的美国工人完成最后的加工工作，这对于保证产品质量也是十分必要的。 这种情况下，亚新科工业技术有限公司的美国客户既可以享受拥有中国供应链的好处，同时也可以很方便地和已经十分了解的美国供货商联系。 美国高级技工每月的平均工资为3000~4000 美元，而中国工厂工人每月的平均工资只有150 美元。除此之外，亚新科工业技术有限公司还必须参加美国政府要求的养老金计划（包括医疗、住房和退休福利）。中国工人每月的工资要交纳35%~45%到当地的劳动部门以获得上述福利。中国的医疗保险业便宜得多，因为工资更低、医疗保险涵盖的内容更有限。潘考夫斯基说：“这些当然让中国成为拓展业务的理想地点了。 如果可以采取什么措施减轻美国公司医疗保险负担，那将有助于美国保留住更多就业机会。 “他还说：”通过离岸和本土经营的合作，高工资、高技能的美国工人和低工资中国工人的合作，我们美国公司的竞争力不减反增，我们得到了更多订单，业务增长也很快。这是很多美国人在谈论离岸经营时经常忽略的事情。比如，在并购了联邦默高公司在北美的凸轮轴业务后，我们和康明斯的业务翻了一番，和卡特比勒的业务也大幅增加。我们的所有客户都接触到了全球竞争，他们也非常希望成为供应商的我们能够提供更有价格竞争力的产品。他们希望和理解平坦世界的供应商合作。我在拜访美国客户并向他们讲述我们凸轮轴业务的发展战略时，他们对我们的办法表示肯定，因为他们可以看出来，我们对业务的调整能让他们的竞争力也大为提高。 " 潘考夫斯基说，“这种合作程度也只有在最近几年才有可能实现，在1983年或1993年是绝对不可能的。从1993年之后，情况就发生了很大转变。比如，人们经常谈论因特网如何使美国受惠，但我经常说，中国的受惠程度要胜于美国。过去阻碍中国发展的是信息不畅。外面的人不了解中国，而中国人也没法了解世界。 在因特网出现之前，唯一可以获取信息的方式就是出行。可是现在，你可以待在家里并通过因特网了解一切。我们现在直接通过电子邮件发送设计图，甚至连联邦快递都不需要了。 " 潘考夫斯基补充道，对于一些行业来说，在中国完成加工制造的好处是无与伦比的，“如果你老老实实地待在美国，根本不知道怎么进入中国，10~15 年之内你都不能在全球获得领先地位。” 中国入世后，一些传统、效率低下且备受保护的经济领域都面临着全球竞争的挑战。在中国入世谈判期间担任美中商务理事会驻京办事处负责人的帕特。包尔斯表示，如果中国政府将入世这件事进行全民直接投票，恐怕永远都无法通过。 在最近的两年半中，他们已经采取了强力行动。