With the growing number of companies that outsource in China and the advanced technology whose development has started to occur there, China has become a leader on the world stage, especially in the auto market. To fuel this growing demand (no pun intended) GM has a large auto research center in Shanghai. The company has such a hard time feeding the appetite of Chinese car enthusiasts and, in fact, all those in Asia, that it has planned to spread its facilities to Singapore as well to be able to accommodate the consumers. In addition to this demand drawing Western companies into the Eastern regions, China in particular has huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers. Equally appealing are the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies.
Xi’an — a city about 600 miles southwest of Beijing known for the discovery nearby of 2,200-year-old terra cotta warriors — has 47 universities and other institutions of higher learning, churning out engineers with master’s degrees who can be hired for $730 a month. Although it seems like these people are being taken advantage of and that all of the good jobs are leaving the United States, in reality there is a somewhat fair give and take. Thermal Power Research Institute, China’s world-leading laboratory on cleaner coal, has just licensed its latest design to Future Fuels in the United States. The American company plans to pay about $100 million to import from China a 130-foot-high maze of equipment that turns coal into a gas before burning it. This method reduces toxic pollution and makes it easier to capture and sequester gases like carbon dioxide under ground. Future Fuels will ship the equipment to Pennsylvania and have Chinese engineers teach American workers how to assemble and operate it.
This in many ways should at least satisfy the reader to the extent of not being angry with the companies that move overseas, but rather help him to understand the trade in resources and capabilities that occurs as a result, so often left in the shadows.
