From their various vantage points in major trade hubs, three businessmen have had front-row seats to China’s economic ascension since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. And the 20-year journey has been a lucrative one for Li Yixin, a Shanghai-based independent investor in his forties; Liu Kaiming, a Shenzhen-based supply-chain specialist; and Chai Kwong-wah, 72, from Hong Kong. But as the coming years almost certainly look to be filled with more political and economic tensions and uncertainties, the three Chinese men have different prospects and outlooks. “When I first came to Shenzhen to set up toy factory in 1993, I felt that the place was very backward,” Chai said. “At that time, I paid the government about 1 million yuan to use more than 5,000 square metres of land for 30 years. Local officials warmly welcomed me and encouraged me to pick up a 50-year contract, but I chose only the 30-year one. Now China has developed much more than I had expected back then.” China marks 20 years at WTO, but rising costs and trade tensions loom large Output at Chai’s toy factory – producing Hello Kitty items for Japan, and Disney dolls and stuffed animals for the United States and Europe – grew rapidly following China’s accession to the WTO as labour and raw materials remained cheap and stable. At its peak, he said, the factory employed as many as 10,000 workers. Meanwhile, as one of China’s well-educated young professionals, Li shaped his career around emerging foreign firms and eventually became senior PR adviser for the Boeing Company in the mainland market. And Liu founded the Institute of Contemporary Observation in 2001, nine months before China formally joined the WTO. The NGO, committed to labour rights development and corporate social responsibility, has partnered with global brands and institutes to supervise working conditions at hundreds of factories on the mainland. Chai has watched as Shenzhen’s remote farmland was developed into the world’s manufacturing powerhouse . And in 2015, the local government’s ambitious aspirations to turn the city into a global tech hub resulted in Chai being given a 20 million yuan payout to terminate his land lease so that a subway could be built. As labour costs were rising in China, Chai relocated his factory operations to Vietnam in 2016, at the request of Japanese clients. Even amid the pandemic, he said, the average monthly labour cost per worker has been about US$200, but the cost of a Chinese worker in Guangdong has surpassed 5,000 yuan (US$785) a month – way up from 200 yuan in the 1990s. “Many of my management team in the Vietnam plants are Chinese workers who have been working with me since the 1990s,” Chai said. “They also helped bring the manufacturing experience, formed in China, overseas.” Chai acknowledged that he’s a beneficiary of China joining the WTO, and he feels as though the quality of made-in-China products has greatly improved since 2001, while manufacturing industries have transformed and evolved. “Chinese youth like consuming domestic mobile phones and new energy vehicles, which are no longer inferior to foreign brands,” Chai said. “As for me, I now often wear high-end shirts from a Chinese brand – they’re cheaper than many international luxury brands, but with a better cut and quality.” Everything you need to know about China manufacturing And it can all be traced directly to 2001, said Li, who also commented on the improved quality of goods coming out of China. “In fact, between 1978 and 2000, most ordinary Chinese people did not have a chance to reach the outside world,” Li explained. “After joining the WTO, a large number of Chinese people took an interest in international exchanges and trades. As a result, we Chinese companies and talents became more and more mature in our understanding of the market and commercial transactions. This is what the Chinese have learned in the years since joining the WTO.” Liu in Shenzhen agreed. “For sure, China is the biggest beneficiary of the WTO,” he said. “After China’s accession to the WTO, China established the most complete supply chain in the world by using money earned from foreign trade, which is the cornerstone and driving force of the country’s economy.” I have a prosperous retirement life, and the Chinese elderly and children deserve a better life Chai Kwong-wah, Hong Kong But Chai, with an outsider’s perspective from Hong Kong, said it is much more difficult for foreign firms to invest in China now than it was for him. “Back then, it was easy for me to make good profits when I went from an advanced place to a backward place to invest,” Chai said. “But now, whether it is Hong Kong’s capital or foreign capital, the advantages are not as obvious as they were in the past. The soaring cost of various resources has also led to a decline in profits.” Meanwhile, Chai said he supports Beijing’s recent policy shifts. “It is now very important to expand the size of the middle-income group … It is also a crucial time to shift to the domestic demand market – that’s more important than expanding exports.” The 72-year-old also intends to donate a good portion of his earnings to charity, in line with President Xi Jinping’s call for China’s rich to “give back more to society”. “I have a prosperous retirement life, and the Chinese elderly and children deserve a better life,” Chai said. What is China’s dual circulation strategy and why is it important? For his part, Li in Shanghai said the outlook for doing business out of China now contains a high degree of uncertainty, particularly amid external factors and fierce competition from foreign firms. “As an individual investor, it is indeed a difficult situation to grasp,” Li said. Looking ahead, Liu expects exports to remain the engine powering China’s economy, even as authorities have introduced policies to increase domestic consumption. “Exports will also be the biggest variable in the next few years,” he said, pointing to the possibility of tensions worsening across the Taiwan Strait. “Due to the pandemic, it is estimated there will not yet be a massive relocation of supply chains moving out of China in the short term, but the variable might exist in the more than 1 trillion yuan (US$157 billion) worth of annual exports of electronics, as 60 per cent of them are related to Taiwanese-invested businesses.”