Mainland factories ready to explode
Growth threatened by with restive male workforce and a thick, low glass ceiling
How can it be that a company clever enough to satisfy Apple's famously stringent requirements can't figure out how to keep its workers from killing themselves and hurting one another?
The recent riot at a Foxconn Technology Group factory in northern China belies the myth that better pay and benefits are enough to mollify Chinese workers. Foxconn, which is Apple's leading supplier, already pays above-market rates and has been raising wages.
A sea change is rippling through many Chinese factories. A workforce once dominated by women is now increasingly male. China's one-child policy chips away daily at its competitive advantage in manufacturing for export, first by choking the supply of labour of both sexes, then by restricting the flow of women into factory jobs. The result is a more restive male workforce, frustrated by crude management and a thick, low glass ceiling.
When I first started visiting Chinese clothing and electronics factories a decade ago, there were often more women than men on the assembly line. Like the industrial bosses of 18th-century England, factory managers chose women for their docility, dexterity and attention to detail.
Today, many plants have no choice but to hire more men than women. China's gender ratio - 107 boys born for every 100 girls in 1980 - has widened to 118 boys born for every 100 girls as of 2010.
Sex-selective abortion is creating kindergartens of boys and villages of bachelors.