WHEN he moved from a Chinese state-run enterprise to a German firm with an office in Beijing, Mr Huang was overwhelmed not by his new salary, but by the enormity of his new responsibilities.
''My first thoughts were not that my pay had risen, but that the difficulty of my work had increased,'' said Mr Huang (a pseudonym).
Nevertheless, he never regretted the switch. ''From the point of view of management methods and productivity, foreign-invested firms are better than Chinese companies,'' he said.
A report last week by the Beijing Youth News surprised readers by drawing attention to worker dissatisfaction at the Beijing outlet of one of the world's best-known enterprises: McDonald's.
Workers at the fast-food outlet complained of low wages, hard work and lack of adequate benefits, according to the report.
Despite complaints at McDonald's, however, the general picture of work conditions at foreign-invested enterprises in China compares favourably with those at Chinese-run firms.