Business Focus. Elementary. Teacher's Book

With WTO, China said, 'We are on one course.'” Because China can amass so many low-wage workers at the unskilled, semiskilled, and skilled levels, because it has such a voracious appetite for factory, equipment, and knowledge jobs to keep its people employed, and because it has such a massive and burgeoning consumer market, it has become an unparalleled zone for offshoring. China has more than 160 cities with a population of 1 million or more. You can go to towns on the east coast of China today that you have never heard of and discover that this one town manufacturers most of the eyeglass frames in the world, while the town next door manufacturers most of the portable cigarette lighters in the world, and the one next to that is doing most of the computer screens for Dell, and another is specializing in mobile phones. Kenichi Ohmae, the Japanese business consultant, estimates in his book The United States of China that in the Zhu Jiang Delta area alone, north of Hong Kong, there are fifty thousand Chinese electronics component suppliers. “China is a threat, China is a customer, and China is an opportunity,” Ohmae remarked to me one day in Tokyo. “You have to internalize China to succeed. You cannot ignore it.” Instead of competing with China as an enemy, argues Ohmae, you break down your business and think about which part of the business you would like to do in China, which part you would like to sell to China, and which part you want to buy from China ...»