Country Driving [186]
At the bra ring factory, the product wasn’t tied to Christmas schedules, and their problems went far beyond uncomfortable weather. The bosses looked tense and tight-lipped, and Master Luo said they were bickering about investment. Originally both Boss Wang and Boss Gao had agreed to fund the factory fifty-fifty, and each was supposed to contribute 750,000 yuan, about $90,000. But neither paid the full promised amount, and during summer each of them waited, unwilling to be the first to spend more. According to Master Luo, family-run factories are often trouble. “It’s better to have a partnership between friends,” he said. “With a friend you can speak more directly. With a relative, people are more sensitive, and they get angry easily.”
The fundamental problem, though, seemed to be a complete lack of system. The factory had no management board, no investment schedule; nobody cared about legal contracts or predefined protocol. The bosses had funded almost entirely with cash, which raised the stakes and created tensions within families. They had sketched the blueprints for their factory in one hour and four minutes. Their most critical machinery had been designed according to the memory of a former peasant with a middle-school education. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a formal business plan. The future customer base depended upon the hopeful distribution of Wuliangye baijiu and Chunghwa cigarettes. It was hardly surprising that by July the factory’s most liquid assets consisted of a million bra rings packed in plastic bags.
If anything, it was amazing that they had gotten this far. The most educated person in the factory was Boss Gao, who had attended a couple years of trade school. The majority of employees lacked any formal training, and all of them, from top to bottom, had grown up on farms. Boss Gao and Boss Wang came from rice-growing families; Master Luo had been born on a cotton plot. Old Tian, the man in charge of underwire, had once farmed rice. Little Long’s parents grew tea and tobacco. The Taos knew wheat and soybeans. The secretary—she was essentially an accountant, because she handled the books—had grown up in pear country. A former resident of an orange plot worked the metal punch press. Somehow all these agricultural products had been left behind, and the former peasant labor now manufactured two inedible objects: razor-thin underwire and bra rings that weighed half a gram each.
Almost every Chinese factory tells a similar story. People might lack formal education, but they find themselves in situations where they’re forced to learn on the job. Most important, there are plenty of them out there. Of the nation’s 1.3 billion citizens, 72 percent are between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four. In modern history, the nation has never enjoyed such a high percentage of able workers, and it’s never been easier for them to leave the countryside. Roads are better; migrant networks are well established; the old Communist hukou registration system has become so lax that people can go wherever they wish. And all of them have been toughened by the past—workers are resourceful and motivated, and entrepreneurs are fearless. The government’s basic strategy has been to unleash this human energy, trusting the market to build new towns like Lishui.
But there are limits to how far individuals can go on sheer will-power. Even with a product as simple as a bra ring, there’s a point at which a lack of systematic structure and formal education causes problems. And the bigger