Hoss
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 2539
Location: Cairo, Egypt
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| Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:45 pm Post subject: The Birth and Rebirth of Shenzhen |
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The Birth and Rebirth of Shenzhen
The city that has driven China's manufacturing boom must now bank on innovation, not sweatshops, for continued economic growth
By MICHAEL SCHUMAN | SHENZHEN
Monday, Aug. 14, 2006
The city of Shenzhen, cradle of China's industrial revolution, is usually associated with impoverished migrant workers and cheerless gray factories churning out cheap toys, T shirts and sneakers for the world. While that gritty image represents Shenzhen's past, entrepreneur Pony Ma is a harbinger of its future. The 34-year-old Ma is an Internet tycoon with a fortune of nearly $500 million, thanks to the success of the Shenzhen company he founded in 1998, Tencent, China's largest instant-messaging service with 532 million registered users. The company's home is a tidy, landscaped campus where employees, the best and brightest from universities in Beijing and Shanghai, come to work in blue jeans instead of sewing them together in sweatshops. Some of the software engineers at Ma's R&D center earn $5,000 a month, 50 times a typical Chinese factory salary.
Read ON : http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501060821-1226199,00.html |
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