Effort to Move Factories and Migrant Workers from Pearl

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 GUANGZHOU 000406 SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE PASS USTR FOR STRATFORD/WINTER/MCCARTIN/LEE STATE PASS FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD FOR JOHNSON/SCHINDLER STATE PASS SAN FRANCISCO FRB FOR CURRAN TREASURY FOR MOGHTADER E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON PGOV ELAB SMIG PHUM EINV CH SUBJECT: Effort to Move Factories and Migrant Workers from Pearl River Delta Faces Obstacles (U) This document is sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly. Not for release outside U.S. government channels. Not for internet publication. ¶1. (U) Summary: He could have called it the "Out with the Old" policy, but instead Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang recently announced a ?Double Transfer? policy to move both labor-intensive industries and migrant laborers to less-developed areas of Guangdong, or out of the province entirely. This is part of the province's ambitious campaign to upgrade industries in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Many municipal governments in the PRD are opposed to this plan, because they fear the high-tech and service industries envisioned by Wang will be slow to develop, and the drop in tax revenues will have an impact on program and welfare planning. A lack of suitable infrastructure for more advanced industries in the PRD, the Delta's persistent advantages as a manufacturing base and certain central government polices - like the labor contract law and the limitations on foreign investment in service industries -will also present challenges to the success of the campaign. End Summary. ?Empty the Cage and Replace the Old Bird with a New One? -------------- -------------- ¶2. (U) The Guangdong provincial government recently announced a ?Double Transfer? policy backed with a budget of nearly 50 billion RMB (7.3 billion USD). According to press reports, this strategy will seek to move labor-intensive industries to less-developed areas at the periphery of the province. At the same time, training will be provided to unskilled workers, enabling them to work for the high-tech companies the government seeks to attract to the PRD in place of departing factories. ¶3. (SBU) Although the strategy, as reported in the local press, said nothing about relocating migrant workers outside the province, our contacts have told us that this is a major goal of the government. Peter Pak-yan Leung, the Director of Hong Kong's Economic and Trade Office (HK ETO) in Guangdong, told us that new promotion criteria for public officials promulgated by Beijing represent a shift from ?quantity to quality.? These criteria, he said, stress per capita economic statistics, as opposed to the aggregate figures, and also emphasize social infrastructure. Leung told us that the provincial government has determined that success under the new promotion criteria will rely on its ability to reduce the denominator of the per capita statistics by decreasing the number of migrant workers in the province. Leung commented that the government is also concerned about the potential cost of developing social infrastructure for tens of millions of migrant workers. ¶4. (SBU) Dr. Zhang Jie, the Dean of the Economics School at Jinan University, told us recently that the Guangdong government has determined that the millions of uneducated migrant laborers currently working in Guangdong factories will have difficulty taking part in the high-tech service industry the government is trying to establish in the PRD. He echoed HK ETO's Leung, saying that the government's concern about per capita GDP growth is leading it to push many of these migrant workers back to their home provinces. Zhang suggested that this may be a controversial policy, arguing that it was not fair to the millions of migrant workers who helped transform the PRD into an engine of economic growth. According to an article in the Southern Metropolis newspaper, the Dongguan municipal government recently scrapped a proposed policy to "transfer low-quality laborers" from the city after receiving negative feedback from the public. Opposition from Local Governments -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Zhang claims that many of the municipal governments in Guangdong oppose the Double Transfer policy. He said that most local governments in the PRD were reluctant to push out labor-intensive factories, because they worry that the new high-tech companies promised by the provincial government won't actually materialize. While Shenzhen and Guangzhou have had some success in attracting high-tech investment, other cities in the PRD have struggled. Municipal governments are also concerned, Zhang said, about how to handle the many workers who would be laid-off by the departing factories. His colleague, Li Guangming, added that he sees the Double Transfer policy as a tug-of-war between coastal GUANGZHOU 00000406 002 OF 002 cities in the PRD and less-developed ones in the interior of the province. Li commented that municipal governments in the interior are hopeful that factories displaced from the PRD will resettle in their cities. Other Challenges -------------- ¶6. (SBU) In addition to uncertain support from local governments, the Double Transfer policy faces a number of other challenges, including a deficit of necessary resources; central government policies that discourage such a transfer; and a lack of suitable destinations for the existing labor-intensive industry. Jinan University's Zhang told us that it is difficult to shift from manufacturing to service industries because the required infrastructures are quite different. Dr. Lu Jun, the Chair of Sun Yatsen University's Department of Finance, said in a separate meeting that Guangdong lacks the talented workforce necessary to establish high-tech operations. Lu commented that for this reason it is currently very difficult to attract foreign companies to bring their R&D operations to Guangdong. Frank Newman, the Chairman and CEO of Shenzhen Development Bank, recently told the Consul General that his bank is having difficulty finding people with skills even in relatively basic areas, such as accounting; this leads to the intense "poaching" that goes on in banking sectors where good people are courted and wooed and won away with extra pay and extra benefits. ¶7. (SBU) Another obstacle is the reluctance of factory owners to move away from the massive and efficient supply chains that have grown up around existing industries. Although many manufacturing companies have been looking to relocate from the PRD in recent years due to the appreciating yuan and rising labor costs, highly developed supply chains, among other factors, continue to make the PRD very competitive as a manufacturing base. Sun Yatsen University's Lu told us that he believes Vietnam is far too small to absorb a significant number of the PRD's factories, and he can't imagine that other countries, such as Bangladesh and India, would have sufficient infrastructure to merit relocation. One footwear manufacturer told us that there currently is no better alternative to coastal China for shoe factories, due to established supply chain and transportation infrastructure. (Comment: Rising energy prices will likely increase the advantage of a compact supply chain, enhancing the PRD's attractiveness as a manufacturing base for many industries. End Comment.) ¶8. (SBU) Certain central government policies also present challenges, perhaps inadvertent, to the vision of a high-tech PRD. According to HK ETO's Leung, the new labor law has made it far more costly for factories to shut down due to new requirements for severance pay. This may slow the speed at which old industries depart, as owners seek to delay incurring prohibitive closing costs. Jinan University's Zhang pointed out that national restrictions on foreign investment in service industries also present a serious obstacle to the Double Transfer strategy. In addition, he commented that Party Secretary Wang's call for a Hong Kong/Macau/Guangdong Special Economic Cooperative Zone, which would create a larger, more integrated market that could encourage service industry investment in the PRD, has yet to win substantial support in the central government. Expected to be a Long Process -------------- ¶9. (SBU) Many of our contacts emphasized that the envisioned transformation will not be easy. HK ETO's Leung told us that he sees the shift as a long, drawn-out process. Jinan University's Zhang pointed out that a similar industrial upgrading took other Asian tigers (Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) 15-20 years. Zhang commented that Guangdong is likely to take even longer than this, since it has a much larger population and economic scale than the others. GOLDBERG