THE HONG KONG-CHINA PHENOMENON
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Kong companies in Guangdong today, motivation comes through direct incentive and recognition for work done.
With few if any comparable toy firms remaining in Hong Kong, the savings to a firm like I have described from having its operation across the border are difficult to quantify. Between 70 and 80 per cent of the toy industry worldwide, and some 95 per cent of all plastic toys produced, are manufactured in China today. Alternative production sites cannot rival China when it comes to competitiveness in the toy industry.
As China's economic reforms have taken hold and outside investment has increased, better living standards and higher expectations are evident among officials and ordinary citizens alike. Small village officials are negotiating fewer outward processing plants and more joint ventures, which can give the Chinese side a greater economic stake in inward investment. People in the countryside, once looked down upon by their urban neighbours, are earning small fortunes through land leases and often substantial side businesses. People in the Special Economic Zones, often unwilling to take menial clerical jobs, opt instead for the more glamorous positions in hospitality and other boom industries. More and more, manufacturing workers in Guangdong factories are being hired from less prosperous inland provinces. The same trend is taking place in more technically-orientated positions. Many of the small, family-owned firms operating in Guangdong have had difficulty expanding in the past, since competing with larger firms for key management positions is difficult. With the lure of south China, however, an increasing number of firms are getting around the problem by hiring highly-qualified northern Chinese managers eager to hone their skills and gain experience in international business.
Modernisation of cross-border transportation and communications facilities have helped to make this partnership possible. In contrast to the tortuous travel difficulties of the past, transport options to and from south China have now been expanded to include several non-stop trains each day to Guangzhou, ferry services to various points in the Pearl River Delta, hoverferries, and several daily flights to Bai Yun airport from Kai Tak. Today, Taiwanese businessmen crowd the flights to Xiamen, where special zones have been established to accommodate their investment projects. Travel and business within the region will receive a further boost in the near future with the inauguration of the superhighway linking Hong Kong to Guangzhou, expected to cut the time between the two cities to little more than one hour. Even with the existing road network, 20 153 freight trucks cross the border each day compared with 17 000 in January 1992 and there is great demand for expansion of opening hours at the various border checkpoints to accommodate the huge volume of goods moving in both directions. The three land border control points at Man Kam To, Sha Tau Kok and Lok Ma Chau are now open for a total of 41 hours daily, five and a half hours longer than in January 1992.
Added to the flow of foodstuffs crossing the border today is an enormous volume of textiles and light industrial items, raw materials, machinery, spare parts, and high- technology goods. Any recent traveller between Hong Kong and Shenzhen can attest to the changes that have come to the once sleepy border. By 1990, Hong Kong/China trade had exceeded HK$400 billion - a fifty-fold increase in just over a dozen years. Hong Kong's domestic exports to China amounted to just two-tenths of one per cent of the territory's total exports in 1978. The percentage as of 1991 was some 24 per cent and in 1992 was 26 per cent. The volume of goods being transported today boggles the mind, and more often than not the traveller between Hong Kong and Guangzhou finds colossal