Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Pou Chen makes footwear for the likes of Nike and Adidas, but says it has suffered from a lack of orders as global value chains strain under the impact from the virus
Chinese workers moved to Vietnam to help set-up new factories as the company expand its production, but have now become expendable
With the likes of Nike and Adidas closing retail stores around the world to comply with social distancing requirements, analysts also said orders plummeted 50 per cent in the second quarter, although the company declined to comment on the media reports. Photo: Bloomberg
A group of 150 Chinese workers believe the world’s largest maker of trainers used the coronavirus as an excuse to fire them, having helped Taiwanese firm Pou Chen successfully expand its production into Vietnam for more than a decade.
Pou Chen, which makes footwear for the likes of Nike and Adidas, informed the group in late April that they would no longer be needed as they were unable to return to
from their hometowns in China due to the coronavirus lockdowns.
“We believe we contributed greatly to the firm’s relocation process, copying the production line management experience and successful model of China’s factories to Vietnamese factories,” said Dave Zhang, who started working for Pou Chen in Vietnam in 2003.
“Now, when the factories over there have matured, and there is a higher automation level in production, our value has faded in the management’s eyes and we got laid off, in the name of the automation level.”
Rush hour chaos returns to Vietnam’s streets as coronavirus lockdown lifted
The group claims the firm began to fire Chinese employees several years ago, with the total number dropping from over 1,000 at its peak to around 400 last year.
“We 150 employees were the first batch of Chinese employees to be laid off this year. We are all pessimistic and expect more will be cut,” added Zhang.
In its email on April 27, Pou Chen said it was forced to terminate the contracts of the Chinese employees across five of its factories due to an unprecedented decline in orders and financial losses.
The Chinese employees, many of whom have been working for the shoemaker for decades, said the compensation offered was unfair and below the levels required by labour law in both Vietnam and China.
In a further statement to the South China Morning Post, Pou Chen stood by the move as the coronavirus pandemic had reduced demand for footwear products and so required an “adjustment of manpower.”
“[The dismissals were] in accordance with the relevant labour laws of the country of employment … and employee labour contracts,” added the statement from Pou Chen, which employs around 350,000 people worldwide.
Company data showed Pou Chen’s first quarter revenues tumbled 22.4 per cent year-on-year to NT$59.46 billion (US$1.99 billion), the weakest in six years.
With the likes of Nike and Adidas closing retail stores around the world to comply with social distancing requirements, analysts also said orders plummeted 50 per cent in the second quarter, although the company declined to comment on the media reports.
Last month, the company was also mulling pay cuts and furloughs that would affect 3,000 employees in Taiwan and officials based in its overseas factories, according to the Taipei Times.
Andy Zeng, who had worked for the firm since 1995, said the group were “very upset” when they received the news last month as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic began to reverberate around the world, disrupting global value chains.
“Most of us joined Pou Chen in the 1990s when we were in our late teens or early 20s, when the Taiwan-invested company started investing and setting up factories in mainland China. Now more than two decades have passed,” he said.
Zeng was among the first generation of skilled workers in China as Pou Chen developed rapidly, enjoying the benefits of cheap labour, although the workers themselves were rewarded with regular pay rises.
The company needed a group of skilled Chinese workers to go to its new factories in Vietnam. I said yes because I thought it was a good opportunity to see the outside world – Andy Zeng
“I worked at the Dongguan branch of Pou Chen for 11 years from 1995.” Zeng added “In the 1990s and early 2000s, the company expanded rapidly in Dongguan with a growing number of large orders, and every worker had to work hard around the clock. I remember I earned 300 yuan (US$42) a month in 1995, and my monthly salary rose to 1,000 yuan (US$141) in 1998.”
Zeng’s salary eventually rose to over 3,000 yuan in 2005 as China’s economy boomed, leading Pou Chen to seek alternative production sites in Vietnam and Indonesia where labour and land were even cheaper. However, in the early 2000s, the new locations lacked skilled shoe manufacturing workers like Zeng.
“The company needed a group of skilled Chinese workers to go to its new factories in Vietnam. I said yes because I thought it was a good opportunity to see the outside world and the offer of US$700 per month was not bad.” Zeng said.
“We actively cooperated with their plans. Over the past decade, we have been away from our families and hometowns, and followed the company’s strategy to work hard in Vietnam.
With no deaths and cases limited to the hundreds, Vietnam’s Covid-19 response appears to be working
“In 2005, the company sent me to its newly-built factory in Vietnam. This year was my 14th year in Dong Nai in Vietnam. I have witnessed the company’s production capacity in Vietnam become larger and larger. When I arrived, there were only a few production lines, and now there are at least dozens of them, employing more than 10,000 workers in each factory.”
According to a report in the Taipei Times on April 14, citing both Reuters and Bloomberg, Pou Chen was ordered to temporarily shut down one of its units in Vietnam over coronavirus concerns, according to Vietnamese state media.
The company was forced to suspend production for two days after failing to meet local rules on social distancing, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.
“We Chinese employees actually were pathfinders for the company’s relocation from China to Vietnam,” said Zhang, who was in charge of a 1,700-worker factory producing 1.7 million shoe soles per month.
What our Chinese employees have done in Vietnam for more than a decade can be said to be very simple but very difficult – Dave Zhang
“We were sent to resolve any ‘bottlenecks’ in the production lines that were slowing down the rest of the plant, because during the launch of every new production line, Vietnamese workers would strike and get into disputes. As far as I know, there were over a thousand Chinese employees managing various aspects of the production lines in the company’s Vietnamese factories.
“In fact, what our Chinese employees have done in Vietnam for more than a decade can be said to be very simple but very difficult. That is to teach Vietnamese workers our experience of working on a production line, improve the productivity of the Vietnamese workers, and help the factories become localised.”
Overall, Pou Chen says it produces more than 300 million pairs of shoes per year, accounting for around 20 per cent of the combined wholesale value of the global branded athletic and casual footwear market.
“Because of cultural shock and great pressure to expedite orders, Vietnamese workers were not used to the management style of Taiwan factories,” Zhang added.
“Many of our Chinese employees were beaten by Vietnamese workers [due to cultural differences about work]. During anti-China protests in Vietnam, we were still under great pressure to keep the local production lines operating.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Delhi’sair quality has improved remarkably during the shutdown
When India shut down last month and suspended all transport to contain the spread of coronavirus, the skies over its polluted cities quickly turned an azure blue, and the air, unusually fresh.
As air pollution plummeted to levels unseen in living memory, people shared pictures of spotless skies and even Himalayan peaks from cities where the view had been obscured by fog for decades.
On one social messaging group, a resident of the capital, Delhi, which regularly records some of the foulest air in the world, celebrated the city’s “alpine weather“. Politician and author Shashi Tharoor wrote that the “blissful sight of blue skies and the joy of breathing clean air provides just the contrast to illustrate what we are doing to ourselves the rest of the time”.
Media caption India coronavirus lockdown cleans up Ganges river
Less than six months ago, Delhi was gasping for breath. Authorities said air quality had reached “unbearable levels”. Schools were shut, flights were diverted, and people were asked to wear masks, avoid polluted areas and keep doors and windows closed.
Delhi and 13 other Indian cities feature on a list of the world’s 20 most polluted. It is estimated that more than a million Indians die every year because of air pollution-related diseases. Industrial smoke, vehicular emissions, burning of trash and crop residue, and construction and road dust are the major contributors.
As urban Indians gazed at the skies and breathed clean air inside their homes, researchers hunkered down to track data on how the grinding lockdown – now extended to 3 May – was impacting air pollution across the country.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Lucknow is another city on the top 20 world’s most polluted list
“This was an unprecedented opportunity for us to take a close look at how air pollution levels have responded to an extraordinary development,” Sarath Guttikunda, who heads Urban Emissions, an independent research group that provides air quality forecasts, told me.
Dr Guttikunda and his team of researchers looked at the data spewed out by the 100-odd air quality monitoring stations all over India. They decided to concentrate on the capital Delhi and its suburbs – a massive sprawl called the National Capital region, where more than 20 million people live. Last winter, air pollution here had reached more than 20 times the World Health Organization’s safe limit.
Image copyright HINDUSTAN TIMESImage caption The financial capital Mumbai also seems very different
The deadliest particle in Delhi’s foul air is the tiny but deadly PM 2.5, which increases the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. They primarily come from combustion – fires, automobiles and power plants.
Urban Emissions found the levels of PM 2.5 in Delhi during the lockdown plummeted to 20 micrograms per cubic metre with a 20-day average of 35.
To put this into context, between 2017 and 2019, the monthly average of PM 2.5 in the capital was up to four times higher. (The national standard is set at 40, and the WHO has an annual average guideline of just 10 micrograms per cubic metre.)
“If 35 is the average lowest available PM2.5 with limited local emissions, it means that at least 70% of the pollution is locally generated,” Mr Guttikunda told me.
Media caption India coronavirus lockdown cleans up Ganges river
His study also found a marked dip in PM 10, caused mainly by road and construction dust, and nitrogen dioxide, which comes mainly from vehicular emissions, and nearly 90% of vehicles are off the road.
“The current crisis has shown us that clear skies and breathable air can be achieved very fast if concrete action is taken to reduce burning of fossil fuels,” says Sunil Dahiya, of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which has also been tracking air pollution levels during the lockdown.
But will this prompt change? After all, urban Indians’ and the media’s panic and outrage during the deadly winter pollution every year soon gets lost in the fog of summer heat and concerns over monsoon rains and droughts.
“We don’t yet have a democratic demand for clean air,” Arunabha Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a leading climate think tank, told me. Orders to clean up the air have almost always come from the courts, responding to pleas by NGOs.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Pollution in Delhi peaks during winter
However, Dr Ghosh still hopes that “the experience of blue skies and fresh air could be a trigger to create a democratic demand for clean air in India”.
Crises often trigger life changing reforms. A fatal four-day “pea-souper” that engulfed London in 1952 and killed thousands provoked the passing of the Clean Air Act to reduce the use of smoky fuels.
China tried to clean up its air several times before hosting marquee international events – like the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the World Expo in Shanghai and the Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 – before sliding back to grey, smoky skies.
But many believe the 2014 Apec meeting in Beijing, when China hosted 21 heads of Asia-Pacific economies, was a turning point. The rare blue skies over Beijing spawned the phrase ‘Apec blue‘. In a rush to clean its air, China introduced a set of far-reaching measures. Over the next four years, this resulted in a 32% drop in average pollution across major Chinese cities.
So could a lockdown to prevent the spread of a pandemic, which has imperilled the health and livelihoods of millions, trigger similar policy changes to clean up India’s air?
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The movement for clean air has been sporadic and mainly pushed by NGOs
Could it move to a shift in reducing traffic on the road by asking people to work from home in shifts now that millions have experienced clean air for the first time in years? (Facing energy shortages after the loss of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan unleashed a Cool Biz campaign to cut down air conditioning in workplaces and reduce carbon emissions by asking office workers to shed their suits.)
Or can India use some of the money from an inevitable stimulus to help kick-start the economy go towards helping green industries? Renewables, experts say, creates more jobs than coal: India has already created nearly 100,000 jobs in solar and wind energy firms.
Can the country use the windfall revenues accruing from the steep decline in oil prices – most of India’s oil is imported – to provide rebates to polluting factories to set up much-needed emission control equipment?
“We have to learn lessons to deploy the economic recovery from the pandemic. We need growth, jobs and sustainable development,” says Dr Ghosh. Cleaning up the air could be the key. For too long, India – and Indians – have ignored their right to breathe easy.
What’s more, if China can reduce air pollution by 32% in four-and-a-half years, why can’t India pledge to reduce pollution by 80% in 80 cities by 2027, which is our 80th anniversary of Independence? asks Dr Ghosh.
BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) — China will set up 46 new integrated pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce, as well as support processing trade with new steps and hold the Canton Fair online to keep foreign trade and investment stable amid the epidemic, according to the State Council’s executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang Tuesday.
Figures from the General Administration of Customs showed that the retail sales of China’s cross-border e-commerce businesses reached 186.21 billion yuan (about 26.25 billion U.S. dollars) in 2019.
The Tuesday meeting noted the massive impact of the fast-evolving outbreak worldwide on the global economy, trade and investment. The fast growth of cross-border e-commerce in recent years has become a new highlight in the country’s foreign trade. It is important to leverage the unique strength of cross-border e-commerce when the traditional sectors in foreign trade are hit hard in the COVID-19 outbreak, in order to drive foreign trade with new business forms in this trying time.
“Tackling the economic impact of the outbreak abroad is a pressing task. With the tight containment measures introduced across countries, foreign trade and investment are persistently going downward,” Li said.
The meeting decided to set up another 46 integrated pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce on top of the 59 existing ones. In addition to applying the practices proven effective in boosting the flow of commerce, firms in these zones will enjoy such support policies as exemption of value-added and consumption taxes on retail exports, and assessed levy of the corporate income tax.
Integrated pilot zones with proper conditions will be listed into the pilot program on retail imports of cross-border e-commerce. Companies will be supported to jointly build and share overseas warehouses.
“We must accelerate the development of cross-border e-commerce and other new models to boost foreign trade and investment. Competent departments must exercise sound quality supervision and ensure unimpeded logistic services,” Li said.
Measures to boost processing trade are also discussed at the meeting. With processing trade accounting for one fourth of the country’s foreign trade, the meeting stressed the need to coordinate domestic and foreign trade and help companies engaged in processing trade tackle their difficulties, as well as to stabilize foreign investment and employment.
“In a globalized world, countries all have a stake in each other’s future. The Chinese economy has been deeply integrated into the world economy. We must promptly analyze the outbreak’s impact on the industrial chains and work out our policy response accordingly. This is vitally important for stabilizing employment,” Li said.
It was decided at the meeting that interests of the deferred tax for the bonded materials or finished products in processing trade sold domestically will be temporarily waived till the end of this year. The pilot program where processing trade companies may pay duty for their domestic sales as either imported materials or finished goods will be extended to all the integrated bonded zones.
The category of industries where foreign investment is encouraged will be expanded, and the list of prohibited goods in processing trade will be shortened.
“We must take a holistic approach in developing domestic and foreign trade, and swiftly introduce support policies prioritizing the domestic sales by processing trade companies,” Li added.
It was also decided that given the serious outbreak situation globally, the 127th China Import and Export Fair, also known as Canton Fair, will be hosted online in mid- to late June.
Companies from home and abroad will be widely invited to exhibit their products online. Powered by advanced information technology, the Fair will provide around-the-clock services for online product promotion, matchmaking and business negotiations. It will be an Internet-enabled foreign trade platform of quality and specialty products where Chinese and foreign businesses may place orders and cut deals without the hassle of travel.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China and Malaysia have agreed to set up a joint dialogue mechanism for the disputed South China Sea, the Chinese government’s top diplomat said on Thursday after meeting Malaysia’s foreign minister.
Recent Chinese naval deployments in the strategic waterway, through which more than $3.4 trillion worth of goods are transported annually, have reignited tension with Vietnam and the Philippines. Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have competing claims in the South China Sea.
Malaysia had been critical of China’s South China Sea position, but has not been excessively outspoken recently, especially after China pumped in billions of dollars into infrastructure projects under its Belt and Road Initiative.
Malaysia regularly tracked Chinese naval and coastguard vessels entering Malaysia’s territorial waters, but China respects Malaysia and had “not done anything that caused us trouble, so far”, Defence Minister Mohamad Sabu told Reuters last month.
Chinese State Councillor Wang Yi told a news conference with Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah that this year, tensions in the South China Sea had dropped.
Littoral states and China were committed to continue appropriately handling the South China Sea issue and jointly safeguard peace and stability there, said Wang, who is the Chinese government’s top diplomat.
“To this end, our two sides have agreed to set up a bilateral consultation mechanism for maritime issues, a new platform for dialogue and cooperation for both sides,” he said.
Abdullah, who referred to Wang as “my brother”, said the mechanism would be led by the two countries’ foreign ministries.
“Our officers will be discussing the details, but I think this is one important outcome of the meeting today and also the 45 years of our diplomatic relations,” he said.
China is debt-heavy Malaysia’s biggest trade partner and the countries have close cultural ties too.
In July, China and Malaysia resumed construction on a train project in northern Malaysia, which is part of China’s Belt and Road plan, after a year-long suspension and following a rare agreement to cut its cost by nearly a third, to about $11 billion.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image copyright HINDUSTAN TIMES
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
Coronavirus: Chinese workers in Vietnam cry foul after being fired by Taiwanese firm making shoes for Nike, Adidas
A group of 150 Chinese workers believe the world’s largest maker of trainers used the coronavirus as an excuse to fire them, having helped Taiwanese firm Pou Chen successfully expand its production into Vietnam for more than a decade.
Pou Chen, which makes footwear for the likes of Nike and Adidas, informed the group in late April that they would no longer be needed as they were unable to return to
from their hometowns in China due to the coronavirus lockdowns.
“We 150 employees were the first batch of Chinese employees to be laid off this year. We are all pessimistic and expect more will be cut,” added Zhang.
In its email on April 27, Pou Chen said it was forced to terminate the contracts of the Chinese employees across five of its factories due to an unprecedented decline in orders and financial losses.
The Chinese employees, many of whom have been working for the shoemaker for decades, said the compensation offered was unfair and below the levels required by labour law in both Vietnam and China.
“[The dismissals were] in accordance with the relevant labour laws of the country of employment … and employee labour contracts,” added the statement from Pou Chen, which employs around 350,000 people worldwide.
Company data showed Pou Chen’s first quarter revenues tumbled 22.4 per cent year-on-year to NT$59.46 billion (US$1.99 billion), the weakest in six years.
With the likes of Nike and Adidas closing retail stores around the world to comply with social distancing requirements, analysts also said orders plummeted 50 per cent in the second quarter, although the company declined to comment on the media reports.
Andy Zeng, who had worked for the firm since 1995, said the group were “very upset” when they received the news last month as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic began to reverberate around the world, disrupting global value chains.
“Most of us joined Pou Chen in the 1990s when we were in our late teens or early 20s, when the Taiwan-invested company started investing and setting up factories in mainland China. Now more than two decades have passed,” he said.
Zeng was among the first generation of skilled workers in China as Pou Chen developed rapidly, enjoying the benefits of cheap labour, although the workers themselves were rewarded with regular pay rises.
The company needed a group of skilled Chinese workers to go to its new factories in Vietnam. I said yes because I thought it was a good opportunity to see the outside world – Andy Zeng
What our Chinese employees have done in Vietnam for more than a decade can be said to be very simple but very difficult – Dave Zhang
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