Pearl River Delta | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

10/12/2015

China to introduce tough emissions controls for ships | Reuters

China will introduce tough controls on ship emissions at three key port areas from January to reduce sulfur dioxide which results in acid rain, causing respiratory difficulties and sometimes premature death, said the Ministry of Transport.

Shipping containers are seen on a ship docked at a port in Rizhao, Shandong province, China, December 6, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer

If strictly implemented the move would force oil suppliers to increase the supply of cleaner marine fuel, industry experts said. The ministry gave no details on how the new emissions rules would be enforced or penalties for non-compliance.

The new rules will apply to merchant ships navigating or anchoring in the waters of Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai Bay rim, with a goal to cut sulfur dioxide by 65 percent by 2020 from the 2015 level, according to a document issued by the Ministry of Transport.

Similar emissions control areas exist in the North Sea and the north American coast.

Ships berthed at ports within the three Chinese emissions control zones will start using bunker fuel with a maximum sulfur dioxide (SO2) content of 0.5 percent from January 2016, the ministry said.

Hong Kong made it mandatory in July for merchant ships to switch to fuel with a SO2 content of 0.5 percent from high sulfur fuel. Neighboring Shenzhen port launched a voluntary fuel switching scheme in July this year that is expected to cost 200 million yuan ($31.07 million) in subsidies over three years.

Enforcement of the new emission measures will initially be up to individual ports, but the controls will be toughened in 2017 to cover all key ports in the three control areas.

They will be tightened further from the start of 2019, when ships entering control zones, not just berthed or anchored, will have to use 0.5 percent SO2 bunker fuel or below. Fishing, sports and military vessels will be exempt, said the ministry.

Oil consultancy ICIS estimated that majority of fuel use in China’s shipping sector is currently using fuel with 1-2 percent SO2 content.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), a U.N. body which regulates merchant shipping, plans to introduce a global cap on ship emissions in either 2020 or 2025.

The IMO will carry out a review in 2018 that will include an assessment of the availability of low-sulfur fuel that will be used to decide the actual implementation date.

Source: China to introduce tough emissions controls for ships | Reuters

Posted in air pollution, China alert, Economics, Environment, greenhouse gas | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Barack Obama, China, Coal in Australia, Hong Kong, Houston, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, Pearl River Delta, United States, United States Department of State, Xi JinPing

27/01/2015

New highway encircles stubborn homeowners – Chinadaily.com.cn

A room with a 360-degree road view

If you can’t build through it, build around it – city planners seem to have taken this advice quite literally.

Motorway builders encircled the homes of three Chinese families with a four-lane flyover after they refused to make way for the bulldozers.

Demolition teams in Guangzhou had planned to destroy the houses in order to connect the city’s road network to a recently opened tunnel under the Pearl River.

A photograph of the so-called “nail houses” – so named because they proved difficult to move–completely surrounded by the flyover, proved popular on the Chinese Internet this week.

Some Internet users joked that authorities had given locals homes “with a 360-degree road view”.

via New highway encircles stubborn homeowners[1]- Chinadaily.com.cn.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, chinese families, city planners, Dongguan, Foshan, Guangdong, Guangzhou, Pearl River Delta, Road, road network, road view, Shanghai

28/04/2014

Labour unrest: Danger zone | The Economist

THE Pearl river delta in the southern province of Guangdong is no stranger to strikes, most of them small and quickly resolved. But a walk-out by workers at factories owned by a Taiwanese company, Yue Yuen, the world’s largest maker of branded sports shoes, including big names such as Nike and Reebok, has been remarkable for its scale and duration. It began on April 5th and has grown to involve tens of thousands of employees. On a sprawling industrial estate, angry workers watched by riot police rage about an issue few cared much about until recently: their pensions. For bosses and officials, this is a worrying sign of change.

The government has imposed a virtual news blackout on the unrest in the city of Dongguan, a place synonymous with the delta’s manufacturing heft (nearly 80% of its 8.3m people have moved there from other parts of China over the past three decades, or are the children of such migrants). Foreign journalists have been allowed onto Yue Yuen’s main estate in Gaobu township, a Dongguan suburb, but strikers complain that Chinese media are kept away. This contrasts with a relatively free rein given to Chinese reporters in 2010 to report on a large strike over pay by workers at a factory owned by Honda in Foshan, another delta city. That incident involved putting pressure on a Japanese company, an uncontroversial target for most Chinese. This latest, bigger strike (one of the largest in years involving a non-state enterprise in China) has touched a more sensitive government nerve.

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Massive China shoe factory strike rolls on as offer falls flat | Reuters

Thousands of workers at a giant Chinese shoe factory shrugged off an offer for improved social benefits on Tuesday, prolonging one of the largest strikes in China in recent years amid signs of increased labor activism as the economy slows.

Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The industrial unrest at Yue Yuen Industrial (Holdings), now stretching to around ten days and sparking sporadic scuffles with police, has centered on issues including unpaid social insurance, improper labor contracts and low wages. Workers have demanded improved social insurance payments, a pay rise and more equitable contracts.

“The factory has been tricking us for 10 years,” said a female worker inside a giant industrial campus in Gaobu town run by Yue Yuen in the southern factory hub of Dongguan in the Pearl River Delta. “The Gaobu government, labor bureau, social security bureau and the company were all tricking us together.”

A spokesman for Yue Yuen said the firm, which makes shoes for the likes of Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Asics and Converse with a market capitalization of some $5.59 billion, had agreed to an improved “social benefit plan” on Monday, while stressing the business impact had been “mild” so far.

“Basically, the terms that we announced yesterday was after a very thorough internal analysis and calculation and considering all the factors including the affordability from the factory perspective,” the spokesman told Reuters by phone.

via Massive China shoe factory strike rolls on as offer falls flat | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Labour, strike | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Adidas, Asics, China, China shoe factory, Dongguan, Nike, Pearl River Delta, Reebok, shoe factory, Social insurance, Yue Yuen, Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings

21/02/2014

Behind China’s Labor Unrest: Factory Workers and Taxi Drivers – Businessweek

On top of the other article about pessimistic Chinese economists, this is worrying. See https://chindia-alert.org/2014/02/21/even-chinas-economists-are-singing-the-blues-china-real-time-report-wsj/

“What’s the state of dissent among China’s hundreds of millions of workers? They are increasingly aware of and demanding their rights, according to a new report by the China Labor Bulletin.

Workers sew blue jeans in a Chinese textile factory in 2012

There were 1,171 strikes and protests in China recorded by the Hong Kong-based labor advocacy group from June 2011 until the end of last year. Of those, 40 percent occurred among factory workers, as China’s exports suffered a slowdown and its overall economy cooled. “Many manufacturers in China sought to offset their reduced profits by cheating workers out of overtime and cutting back on bonuses and benefits, etc. These cost-cutting tactics proved to be a regular source of conflict with the workforce,” notes the report, “Searching for the Union: The workers’ movement in China 2011-13″ (pdf), which was published on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the report cites a large number of worker protests “caused by the downsizing, closure, relocation, sale or merger of businesses” spurred by the government’s declared policy of tenglong huanniao, or “changing the birds in the cage.” That’s when Beijing has encouraged the closure of factories engaged in lower-tech businesses, including shoes, textiles, and toys. All together, 57 percent of factory worker protests took place in Guangdong, home to the Pearl River Delta manufacturing region, followed by 9 percent in Jiangsu, home to many export factories in the Yangtze River Delta.”

via Behind China’s Labor Unrest: Factory Workers and Taxi Drivers – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Economics, slow down | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, China Labour Bulletin, Factory, factory workers, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Jiangsu, Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta

23/01/2014

Hardware startups: Hacking Shenzhen | The Economist

OH NO, NOT another accelerator, you may think. But this one is different. On the tables are not just the obligatory laptops and smartphones but circuit boards, cables, screwdrivers and a few items which look only vaguely familiar. One resembles a very old mobile phone with an oddly shaped knob attached to it. Another, a set of small blocks with switches and buttons, calls to mind a disassembled mixer in a recording studio. Yet another might be the microphone of a computer headset, but is mounted on a pair of glasses.

Even more surprisingly, the home of Haxlr8r (pronounced “Hackcelerator”) is not some co-working space in London or San Francisco but the 10th floor of an office building in Shenzhen. The city in the Pearl River Delta, close to Hong Kong, is the world capital of electronics: most of the planet’s digital devices are assembled in factories in and around the city.

Haxlr8r is living proof that, as Karl Popper once said, history repeats itself, but never in the same way. Just as with software services, new technology makes it ever easier to build new types of devices, most of them connected to the internet. The difference is that making hardware remains, well, hard—which is why Haxlr8r is in Shenzhen. That way its teams may avoid the fate of a first generation of hardware startups, mostly based in America. They put their ideas up on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the leading crowdfunding services, but then endured months of delay or never got as far as manufacturing their devices.

The technologies that allowed software services to be developed more cheaply and quickly were cloud computing, social networks and any number of digital services called application programming interfaces (APIs). For hardware the list includes all of the above plus 3D printers, sensors and microcontrollers which bridge the analogue and the digital worlds. The platform for most connected devices is smartphones. All these elements can be combined in countless ways, creating a Cambrian explosion not just in software but in physical electronic devices too.

via Hardware startups: Hacking Shenzhen | The Economist.

Posted in Economics, Technology | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Application programming interface, Hong Kong, Karl Popper, Kickstarter, London, Pearl River Delta, San Francisco, Shenzhen, smartphones

17/09/2013

China’s Bosses Size Up a Changing Labor Force

This post about the workforce and another posted today about houses-for-pensions show how fast China is catching up with the developed nations; not always for the good of its citizens.

BusinessWeek: “John Liu is the 31-year-old founder and owner of Harderson International, a small factory in southern China that applies paint and decals to ceramics and glass. His showroom includes samples of tinted perfume bottles made for Ralph Lauren and Kate Spade.

A 2006 graduate of Wuhan University in central China, Liu is not much older than the 20-somethings and late teenagers who come to work on the assembly line. But generational cohorts in China are extremely compressed, and Liu sees a vast gap in expectations between himself and those a decade younger. “When I finished school, I felt I needed to find a good stable job quickly and earn money,” he says. “But living conditions in China have improved quickly. Young people now don’t have to work so hard to earn a living, and many have parents who will support them. … A lot of those born in the 1990s can’t stand this kind of repetitive work, so they choose to stay home or do very simple cashier work, even though it pays less.” The upshot is that, for a small factory, it’s “getting harder to find workers.”

Last year the total size of China’s working-age population began to decline, according to figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics. As the Economist ominously noted, China’s moment of “peak toil” has passed. Yet it’s not only demographics that are changing. Today’s Internet-savvy young workers have different ideas and higher expectations than their predecessors, and not only regarding pay. In response to an evolving workforce, factory managers at a handful of small and midsize plants in China’s Pearl River Delta say they must now offer better conditions to attract and retain workers—or else look for opportunities to automate.”

via China’s Bosses Size Up a Changing Labor Force – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Economics, education, employment, income-wealth gap, labour shortage, middle class, One-child policy, Politics, Population, Social & cultural, The Chinese Dream | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, generational cohorts, Labor force, national bureau of statistics, Pearl River Delta, Ralph Lauren, stable job, Wuhan University

13/09/2013

China gets tough on air pollution

China Daily: “Updated action plan drawn up in response to severe smog at start of the year, Wu Wencong reports

China gets tough on air pollution

The toughest-ever measures to tackle China’s worsening air pollution have been announced by the government.

The Airborne Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013-17) unveiled on Thursday sets out goals for the nation’s 338 cities.

A couple in Beijing’s Jingshan Park take photos against the background of a smog-shrouded Forbidden City as bad air pollution hit the capital on June 30. ZHUO ENSEN / FOR CHINA DAILY

The plan aims for a marked improvement in air quality over the next five years, said Wang Jian, deputy head of the Pollution Prevention and Control Department at the Environmental Protection Ministry.

The concentration levels of breathable suspended particles with a diameter of 10 microns — known as PM10 — or less, must fall by at least 10 percent by 2017 from the levels in 2012.

Tougher objectives have been set for some key areas.

For the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional cluster, concentration levels of PM2.5 particles — those smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, which can penetrate deep into the lungs — must be cut by 25 percent by 2017 from the 2012 level, under the plan.

The target for the Yangtze River Delta region is a reduction of 20 percent and for the Pearl River Delta region it is a cut of about 15 percent.

The plan takes into account pollution and economic development in different areas, with the aim of reducing PM2.5 levels in the three key regions and PM10 levels in the other cities, Wang said.

“But this does not mean that controlling PM2.5 is not important in the other regions, as PM2.5 particles account for 50 to 60 percent of PM10 particles,” he added.

The plan is an updated version of one released late last year that was designed to tackle air pollution in 13 key areas.

via China gets tough on air pollution[1]|chinadaily.com.cn.

Tags: air pollution, airborne pollution, Beijing, China, climate, environment, Jingshan Park, Particulates, Pearl River Delta, pm10 particles, river delta region, science, Yangtze River Delta

13/07/2013

China cancels $6 billion uranium project after protest

Reuters: “China has canceled plans to build a uranium processing plant in a southern Chinese city a day after hundreds of protesters took to the streets demanding the project be scrapped, a local government website said on Saturday.

The proposed 230-hectare complex in the heart of China’s Pearl River delta industrial heartland in Guangdong province had also sparked unease in neighboring Hong Kong and Macau.

Authorities in the gambling enclave had formally raised the issue with their Guangdong counterparts, the South China Morning Post reported.

A one-line statement published on the Heshan city government’s website said that “to respect people’s desire, the Heshan government will not propose the CNNC project”. State-run China National Nuclear Corporation had planned to build the 37 billion yuan ($6 billion) project.

CNNC officials could not be reached for comment.”

via China cancels $6 billion uranium project after protest | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Politics, public protest | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, China National Nuclear Corporation, Guangdong, Pearl River Delta

21/06/2013

China’s Manufacturers Seek Ways to Cut Costs

Wage inflation and shortage of skilled labour is making outsourcing less easy to justify.

BusinessWeek: “In the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, two hours by ferry and car from Hong Kong, there’s something new on the rooftop of the large factory complex owned by outsourcing specialist Flextronics International (FLEX): solar panels.

A worker on a communications equipment assembly line in Shenzhen, China

Flextronics first opened shop in Zhuhai in 1999, when the area was a backwater compared with Shenzhen and other industrial hot spots closer to Hong Kong. Today the company’s 50,000 Zhuhai workers produce Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox game consoles, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) printers, Nike+ (NKE) FuelBands and other electronics. With wages rising quickly throughout Guangdong province along the coast, Flextronics managers must save money wherever they can. “Instead of paying the electric company, I’m able to generate my own electricity,” says Melinda Chong, general manager in charge of infrastructure operations.

A little savings here, a little there—that’s the new focus for multinationals that manufacture in the Pearl River Delta and other coastal export hubs. The country’s one-child policy is taking its toll. The number of working-age Chinese in 2012 fell by 3.45 million, to 937.27 million, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. While that’s just a small drop, it’s the first decline since record-keeping began and marks “the start of a trend expected to accelerate in the next two decades,” the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin wrote in a June 11 report. “China no longer has an inexhaustible supply of young workers.”

China’s government is also mandating big raises: In 2012, 25 provinces increased the minimum wage by an average of 20.2 percent. The current five-year plan ending in 2015 calls for base wages to increase by an average 13 percent a year, part of a policy to address growing income inequality. Coping with mandated wage increases is “very tough,” says Carmen Lau, Asia vice president of human resources for Flextronics. Even when companies offer higher wages, they still find it difficult to hire workers since fewer young people are interested in toiling on factory floors. “We have a smaller and smaller pool” of potential recruits, Lau says.

Some of the biggest electronics manufacturers have relocated to other parts of China where workers are more plentiful and there’s space to grow. “They can’t get land in the Shenzhen area, so they have to be somewhere else,” says Cynthia Meng, an analyst in Hong Kong with Jefferies (JEF). Foxconn Technology (2354), the Taiwan-based maker of iPads and iPhones for Apple (AAPL), has expanded away from the coastal regions. There are 250,000 to 300,000 workers at a Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou in the central province of Henan, according to the company and Bloomberg Industries. Hiring in the interior has helped the manufacturer boost its workforce in China by 50 percent in two years, to 1.2 million.

Wages are going up in the interior, too. “The cost differential is merging very, very fast,” says Jitendra Waral, a Bloomberg Industries analyst in Hong Kong. “If you move inland, it’s not really saving you costs any which way.””

via China’s Manufacturers Seek Ways to Cut Costs – Businessweek.

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China to introduce tough emissions controls for ships | Reuters

Labour unrest: Danger zone | The Economist

Behind China’s Labor Unrest: Factory Workers and Taxi Drivers – Businessweek

Hardware startups: Hacking Shenzhen | The Economist

China gets tough on air pollution

China cancels $6 billion uranium project after protest

China’s Manufacturers Seek Ways to Cut Costs

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