The Chinese city that produces 90% of the world's consumer electronics

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the world media, the Chinese city of Shenzhen is usually mentioned in connection with the Foxconn plant located here. A mega-factory with half a million employees produces smartphones, tablets, laptops, game consoles for Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Sony and other companies.

Foxconn is the largest and most famous factory in Shenzhen. But few people know that this is just one of several hundred factories located in the city and the vicinity of the "Chinese Silicon Valley". By some estimates, 90% of all consumer electronics in the world is produced here, and most of it is not at all as glamorous as iPhones or PlayStation, writes a journalist for Motherboard, who took a trip to the world capital of gadgets.

Shenzhen is a kind of experiment, the first free economic zone (FEZ) in China, open to the outside world, where Western investments were freely allowed. The experiment clearly showed how phenomenal such freedom gives, especially in conditions of low taxes and cheap labor. An entire city was built almost from scratch to become an assembly plant for the global market.

Shenzhen was recently announced as the third largest city in China, after Beijing and Shanghai, and will soon overtake Shanghai.

Before receiving the status of a FEZ in 1979, it was a small fishing village with a population of 30 thousand people. Now the conglomeration has 15 million inhabitants: one and a half times the population of Belarus, and the city continues to grow rapidly, as if sucking young workers from the Chinese provinces with a vacuum cleaner. Peasant children come here in search of a better life.

If they are lucky, they can get a job at one of the factories in the TCL LCD Industrial Park, one of the largest TV factories in the world. It employs 10,000 people, of whom 3,000 live on the territory of the enterprise.

TCL LCD produces 18 million TVs a year, as well as Roku set-top boxes and other appliances popular in the States: refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, Blu-ray players. All of these are sold around the world under different brands.

Collecting 160 TVs per hour, the factory receives parts from other factories in Shenzhen, such as the $ 4 billion China Star LCD, which makes LCD panels.

TCL is proud to have bought the American company Thompson, which owns the developer of America's first RCA TV. Therefore, in the guest zone of the plant, a museum of the history of television was organized: after all, the Chinese are now also involved in this story.

Taking pictures on the assembly line is strictly prohibited, but the Motherboard journalist drew attention to the unusual organization of the assembly: a variety of robots work together with people. They somehow interact with each other through QR codes printed on the back of the shirt of each worker. The futuristic conveyor is organized vertically - the panels come from somewhere on the lower floor, from under the floor.

The work shift lasts eight hours, but employees can stay for another eight hours if they wish. They get one day off per week, so there is time to rest. The average salary is 3,000 yuan (about $ 484) per month. If an employee works a lot, he will not only receive more money, but also a promotion.

Recently, the salaries at the plant were raised, and throughout China, the income of the population is growing rapidly. For example, according to statistics from Britain's Overseas Development Institute, male rural incomes more than doubled from 1997 to 2007, from $ 3.02 to over $ 7 a day.

Including due to the rise in salaries, many companies are now outsourcing part of their work to other countries. TCL even has a factory in Poland, which makes it easier to deliver goods to European markets. By the way, there are already 14 free economic zones in Poland, and many of them have Chinese manufacturers. A giant Chinese technopark is being built in Belarus in a forest near Minsk. German politicians believe that poor Greece should also open a free economic zone with the Chinese in order to overcome the financial crisis.

For every large factory like TCL in Shenzhen, there are a dozen smaller factories with 100-200 workers. For example, Shenzhen Yuwei Information and Technology Development owns such a GPS tracker vehicle manufacturing plant. Mostly manual labor is used here. Young workers sit in rows and check electronic components in the light of table lamps. The workshop is dark, it smells of sweat and hot solder, and the general atmosphere is rather depressing. Here, too, workers can work one or two eight-hour shifts, but the salary here is lower: 2000 yuan ($ 323) per month.

There are hundreds of factories in Shenzhen that specialize in component testing, not manufacturing.

At 17:00 the bell rings for dinner. Everyone gets up and waits for the manager's command, which group can go to the cafeteria, and then go through a metal detector and a scanner with face recognition. As soon as the scanner beeps, the door from the workshop opens.

Everything happens in a very disciplined and precise manner. Most of the factory workers live in dormitories two minutes walk from the factory: their rooms are sterile, clean and modest, nothing superfluous. Almost everywhere, the setting is limited to a poster on the wall, a plastic water bottle, a plastic chair, a pair of shoes, and an iron bed without a mattress.

They say that due to rising wages and real estate prices in Shenzhen, factories will soon have to change their registration. Many will move inland, and Shenzhen itself will become a prestigious and wealthy business center. Not an assembly shop for the whole world, but an innovative technological unit. Now 100 new companies are registered here every day. In the past, the fishing town has already surpassed Hong Kong in terms of economic growth.