When I was a child, my parents used to say: "Clean your plate because there are starving children in Africa and China. My message has changed. Now I have to tell my kids, "Study, and work hard, because someone in China wants your job."
I recently returned from a business trip to Shanghai and Beijing where I saw firsthand their explosive growth and booming economy. It was a great experience and left an indelible impression of what's to come.
The Great Wall was designed to keep people out; but now the hotels I stayed in were brimming with Americans, Australians, and Europeans who were there on business trips.
Ancient mariners and cartographers once thought the world was flat. If you traveled too far, you would fall off the edge of the earth. Years hence, scientists, and some of those same mariners discovered the world was not actually flat, but round. Walls, languages, oceans, distances, and political ideologies separated countries. None of that is true today.
Those barriers and differences are evaporating. We are living in a global world now where barriers are meaningless -- and the world, in a business sense is flat.
It doesn't matter what kind of business you are in -- whether you are a multi-national corporation, or a "mom and pop" business -- you will be affected by what is happening in China. China is like this huge vortex consuming both human and natural resources at an amazing rate.
I am proud to be an American, but the things that make us the most powerful nation in the world are slipping away fast.
Here are some of the things I noticed during my trip to China:
- Pay scales: Although the pay scales are improving rapidly in China, they are still way below American levels. An industrial engineer in China earns about $20,000 a year, while a software engineer is paid about $40,000. A Silicon Valley software engineer with the same skills was paid $300,000 in 2001.
- Work ethic: It depends on the job, but what I saw was go, go, go. In the industrialized cities, it was as if everyone was on steroids -- very competitive.
- Education: The competition for higher paying jobs is fierce. This fuels the drive for higher education--more people stay in school. The country is importing training and knowledge -- colleges and universities are popping up everywhere.
- Employment level: At most places of business, there are ten more employees per job than at American businesses. Low labor costs allow employers to hire more people.