Chinese Tech Companies Building Factories In India

jfruh writes: Over the past two decades, China's relatively high skill, low cost workforce made the country a powerhouse of tech and electronics manufacturing. But in a sign that things might be changing, several large Chinese companies, including Foxconn and Huawei, are investing billions to start manufacturing in India. Xiaomi is expected to announce its first India-made phone today, as well. The article says that Foxconn's planned factory in Maharashtra "would create employment for at least 50,000 people, state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said after the signing of the agreement at which Foxconn CEO Terry Gou was present."

Comments

Re:Africa after That?

[TheRaven64]

Foxconn is increasingly using mostly automated factories, so the cost of labour is less important. I suspect that the 50,000 jobs was part of a briefing that said 'similar factories that we've built of this size employ 50,000 people' and forget to mention that this one will use fully automated production lines and will employ 50 people. The main requirements are reliable power, easy access to materials and components, good distribution routes for the final product, and lax environmental regulation (if the surroundings are uninhabitable at the end of the operating life of the factory, that's fine - they're building a new one anyway, may as well build it somewhere else...).

It might work out

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Indian manufacturing sector is perpetually troubled by labor union activism. Two states in India (Kerala and West Bengal) have been electing communists to power for decades. In fact these governments are probably the only ones in the whole world where the Communists have taken power by democratic elections and held on to them by elections.

The labor is extremely powerful in factories. One simple personal anecdote, a worker was drilling holes in the wind tunnel model for me to mount the sensors. Did a 9.9 mm hole, and had mounted the 10mm reamer bit in the machine. He had one hole to finish when the siren sounded for tea time, he walked off! I was standing by him and asked him to just finish the last hole, (move the handle once down like in a slot machine, that was all that was pending) he was upset by that request, and refused to finish that job for three weeks. No other worker would touch the machine, other drilling jobs were piling up. I was a very fresh rookie at that time. I did not even had the perception to understand he was waiting for me to apologize for the affront. I would have readily done it if I had known it. No one clued me in on it too. They were all having fun watching me running from pillar to post to get the model to the four-foot tunnel. No one dared to order a worker to finish the job.

There are other stories of workers deliberately opening the autoclave some 24 hours into the cycle, corrupting the tempering process of all the pieces inside. They were aircraft parts, all of them had to be scrapped. Loss of almost a million rupees. A foreman was injured in a shop floor. Ambulance could not reach the location. They had a battery truck. But the workers would not let it be used to transport the guy. Why? foremen belong to the "management"! It is that bad there.

But almost all the unions are controlled by the communists, and China being nominally communist, they may be able to sway the leadership. Also communist party leaders in India have a reputation of being above bribery etc. But the reality was that USSR would give their children scholarships to study in Soviet universities and use their publication (Mir publications, New Century Bookhouse etc) arms to pay them for books that never sell. My cousins have audited the inventory of millions of unsold books being eaten by moths in warehouses.

So given the money China has and the nominal communist government it has, it could bribe the union leaders the way USSR did. It could have factories with much less labor trouble.

So it could work out for China the way it would never work out for USA or European companies.

Re:It might work out

[Moridineas]

The labor is extremely powerful in factories. One simple personal anecdote, a worker was drilling holes in the wind tunnel model for me to mount the sensors. Did a 9.9 mm hole, and had mounted the 10mm reamer bit in the machine. He had one hole to finish when the siren sounded for tea time, he walked off! I was standing by him and asked him to just finish the last hole, (move the handle once down like in a slot machine, that was all that was pending) he was upset by that request, and refused to finish that job for three weeks. No other worker would touch the machine, other drilling jobs were piling up. I was a very fresh rookie at that time. I did not even had the perception to understand he was waiting for me to apologize for the affront. I would have readily done it if I had known it. No one clued me in on it too. They were all having fun watching me running from pillar to post to get the model to the four-foot tunnel. No one dared to order a worker to finish the job.

There are other stories of workers deliberately opening the autoclave some 24 hours into the cycle, corrupting the tempering process of all the pieces inside. They were aircraft parts, all of them had to be scrapped. Loss of almost a million rupees. A foreman was injured in a shop floor. Ambulance could not reach the location. They had a battery truck. But the workers would not let it be used to transport the guy. Why? foremen belong to the "management"! It is that bad there.

Very interesting stories. My father's family worked in factories in Ohio/West Virginia/Kentucky area for several generations, and they were all union. He has very similar stories about people sabotaging the line, crashing a lift to cause an incident to get a break, etc. There's no doubt unions have done a ton of good, but that type of action just doesn't sit well for most Americans.

From my own experience, about 20 years ago I was setting up an exhibit at a tradeshow in New York. Most of the exhibitors were big companies who paid for union labor to put together their displays. I was a one person operation and had one tiny booth in a large hall with one table covered by a tablecloth. All I had to do was drape the tablecloth and set up my flyers and inventory--nothing elaborate. The table I had ordered from the convention service was at an angle near the entrance to the booth. I started to move the table towards the back of the booth--about six feet total--and you would have thought I was starting a nuclear war. Several of the union staff ran over yelling that I wasn't allowed to move anything and I had to wait for an authorized laborer to move the table for me. I had to wait over two hours until the floor boss had someone come over and move my table five feet. Like you, I had no idea what I had done and was baffled by the response. I could have been out of there in ten minutes if I had flipped them some cash...

Having gone to many tradeshows across the country since then, the convention handling unions have been greatly reduced over the last 20 years.

Re:It might work out

[Theovon]

I could be misinterpreting, but I teach a lot of masters students from India and China. The Indians in particular seem to have a massive entitlement complex. In particular, they feel entitled to cheat with impunity. I'll give an assignment with an old problem I borrowed from a previous year, but with the numbers changed. Six of them will turn in exactly the same assignment, with exactly the same formatting, with all of the wrong answers, because they copied the older question's answer without even bothering to look at it. And then they get angry when they get a zero for the assignment. This semester, I'm going to just fail the cheaters out completely. (With ample and repeated warning about the rules, of course.)