Word: feng
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...Feng stuffed-toy factory is one of about 1,000 Guangdong manufacturing operations that together employ more than 2 million people. As one of approximately 10,000 joint ventures established since 1979, most along the coast, Lun Feng represents both the promise and the problems that have accompanied Deng's economic reforms...
...upgrade Lun Feng for state-of-the-art stuffed-toy manufacture, which really means little more than loading an empty building with sewing machines, Lun Feng's Hong Kong joint-venture partner lent the factory's nominal owner, the town of Kai Kong, more than $1 million. (The national government got its cut by charging a fee for converting the Hong Kong dollars into Chinese currency.) Since then, Lun Feng has been on its own. Much of the fabric used by the factory comes from Taiwan. "No problem," says Lun Feng's operations manager, who happens to belong...
...relationship varies from place to place. "It is nothing more than a normal battle for control," admits a factory party secretary in Jinan. "I don't know much about what my factory actually does, but that doesn't mean I don't want to be the boss." At Lun Feng, Deng's system works fairly well. Only after Tiananmen did the secretary actively meddle, but then just to direct that the radio be tuned to a mainland station rather than one in Hong Kong. The music the workers listen to all day is the same, but the news is different...
There seem to be three keys to Lun Feng's success. The first is its location on the Kai Kong River, which allows the factory to ship its goods by sea and not by the country's notoriously awful roads. Even in Guangdong, many of the paved highways are narrow, and virtually impassable when travelers stop to shop at roadside stands...
...Feng's second ace is electricity. Across China, electric power is in such short supply that even favored state-owned operations must routinely shut down for two or three days a week. Lun Feng beat the power problem with money. For about $3 million, the factory installed five auxiliary diesel generators. With eleven workers maintaining the equipment 24 hours a day, eight seconds is the longest Lun Feng has been without electric power...