Dongguan building witnesses change
One six- story- high factory building in Dongguan, a manufacturing powerhouse in South China’s Guangdong Province, sees China’s industrial transformation firsthand.
The building, made of concrete and steel to withstand one ton of pressure per r square meter, is located about one hour’s drive inside one township outside the urban district of the Dongguan city.
The owner of the building, a multi- floor concrete structure specially built to house equipment, producduction lines and materials, is a Hong Kong businessman who takes original equipment manufacturer ( OEM) orders of f cloth and textile products from big supermarket brands in Western countries.
Sadly, the golden age for textile OEM did not last into today’s ay’s Dongguan. When n I visited, the plant nt only had a few hunundred workers left t as production withered ered and was partially y moved out of China to emerging countries such as Vietnam – labor is cheaper there and those places can somewhat evade a bruising trade war between China and the US.
However, the owner told me that his business as a property landlord takes off since last year as he found a tenant who makes chips for home appliance makers.
Different from the sadness and “natural withering” seen in the floors occupied by landlord’s textile business, the floors rented by the tenant are thriving – production lines are humming, workers bustling and unshipped finished goods are stored right next to production lines, leaving only a small passage for people to pass through.
Dongguan has always struck me as a place of contrast. It is the place where limousines and dirt- covered truck wait for traffic lights side by side; where rich bosses and poor migrant workers eat at the same street- side barbeque, but nothing left me more amazed as how the new industrial force takes up the space of the old industrial force inside this factory building and how a unique snapshot of decades- long industrial transformation was encapsuled here.