The Pain Of Industrial Pfer: Where Should Guangdong Go?

Published works include: China inflation and investment control (published by University of Cambridge press in 1996), and foreign direct investment in China (Singapore Southeast Asian Research Institute, 1998).

In fact, the Pearl River Delta is experiencing an unprecedented pain: tens of thousands of factories are facing closure, and a larger number of small and medium-sized enterprises are planning to move out.

Will the "factory of the world", which is lively and brilliant, become a history?

In the throes of high pressure, restlessness, hesitation and confrontation, Guangdong is standing at the crossroads of fission.

So, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where you are now (MIT), launched the China Lab project to help China's small start-up enterprises. What was the reason for setting up this laboratory?

What is the concrete operation of the laboratory?

According to the survey data of the National Federation of industry and Commerce in 2006, there are several indicators that illustrate that the average proportion of staff training expenses to the sales revenue of enterprises is only about 1%, and 25% of enterprises invest less in training.

Since 2000, China's macro-economy has undergone tremendous changes. However, the proportion of enterprises' technology investment in sales revenue has not increased.

For example, Guangdong is now faced with the challenges of increasing labor costs and raising raw material costs. If enterprises have a good mechanism and management and have independent innovation capability, it will be able to digest this challenge.

Let us look at the experience of Japan and South Korea in the 80-90 century, when they encountered similar problems, such as currency appreciation, labor cost increase and so on, but their better companies did not lose competitiveness. Instead, they seized the opportunity to grow into large multinational companies.

TOYOTA motor was still producing low-grade cars in the 80s of last century. It is no stronger than Chery today. But after the appreciation of the yen, TOYOTA immediately innovated on its products and launched Lexus and other high-end products to achieve its upgrading and pformation.

By contrast, our Chinese enterprises obviously do not have the ability to cope with them.

I have been doing academic research in this field in MIT, and I often ask myself if I can do anything to help Chinese SMEs improve their management and innovation ability.

Because the innovation of any country is mainly dependent on small and medium-sized enterprises.

This is the initial idea of launching the Chinese laboratory.

They go to school on my side, and I have two years' free use of these resources. Based on this consideration, the Chinese laboratory can provide free training to SMEs in China.

We have been doing this project for 7 years. As for the criteria for selecting enterprises, some of them are recommended by alumni of Fudan University business school, which we are working with, some of which are familiar with some risks and private equity investment enterprises. But these are all recently established entrepreneurial companies. There are 20 Applications this year. We only chose 12 of them, and 3 in Guangzhou.

We are not most interested in the high-tech enterprises that we usually think of. We value the enterprises that are related to the daily life of the people. For example, we have a community medical company in Hangzhou, a company in Guangzhou doing an economic chain hotel, and a furniture and branch airline in Kunming.

Our ultimate goal is to enable SMEs to recognize the value of business management.

However, at present, the development of SMEs in Guangdong is also facing some difficulties.

Some time ago, Wang Yang, Secretary of the Guangdong provincial Party committee, went to Hangzhou to pay a visit to Guangdong, and invited Ma Yun to cooperate with Guangdong to open up the Guangdong market.

What do you think of Ma Yun phenomenon?

What can the government do to support SMEs' innovation?

Are there any areas for improvement in Guangdong?

Ma Yungang started his own business in Shanghai. He felt that Shanghai's business environment was not good enough to run to Zhejiang.

It can be seen from this point that the government had better not do anything that interferes with the operation of the enterprise, so long as we can do well the local business environment: for example, we should cancel the complicated examination and approval procedures, not suppress the self-employed individuals, provide some information to the SMEs in finance, and provide some loan guarantees to some extent.

As for inviting Ma Yunlai to cooperate, it may be more of a gesture.

Ma Yun did not pull in, but provided a good environment for him to grow up himself.