Word: marteli
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...From Wal-Mart's modest offices across town--a sea of small cubicles plastered with Sam Walton's inspirational messages (DON'T ALLOW YOURSELF TO FALL INTO DIFFICULT SITUATIONS YOU CAN'T CHANGE!) in Chinese--Hatfield is staging his own little revolution. He runs 46 stores today but has much bigger plans. In two years, Wal-Mart will double that number and, in the next year alone, he will train some 25,000 new employees in the art of delivering those everyday low prices to China's growing middle class. It's a grueling, nonstop job. Hatfield has visited...
...side, not the sell side that gets the headlines back home. Wal-Mart sources everything from T shirts to toys to lighting fixtures in China--which puts the company right in the firing line of those who think the U.S. manufacturing sector is being killed by too-cheap-to-beat Chinese imports. By itself, Wal-Mart is China's sixth largest export market-- just behind Germany--buying some $18 billion worth of goods last year...
That makes someone you have never heard of, Chiqui (pronounced Chick-ee) Cui, one of the most powerful men in the global economy. The U.S. ran a $162 billion trade deficit with China last year and, as Wal-Mart's top buyer in the country, he is a big part of the transmission belt linking China and the U.S. A gentle-spoken Filipino, Cui, 54, is managing director for Greater China and North Asia in Wal-Mart's global-procurement department. So, for factory owners across China, he is, simply put, the man to see. Every day on the fourth...
...Hatfield sounds defensive, it's understandable. Wal-Mart's passion for buying in China makes it an easy target back in the U.S. "Wal-Mart is both a beneficiary and a driver of the race to the bottom in the global economy," says Alejandra Domenzain, an associate director of Sweatshop Watch, a U.S. advocacy group. "It has enormous leverage, and how it uses that leverage in the pursuit of ever cheaper labor has enormous consequences for communities in the United States." But that may be less true now than it was 20 years ago. The production of most...
...easy being a supplier to the barons of Bentonville. "In fact, it's very tough," concedes Tsuei. Wal-Mart says it's trying to export its American-style standards and ethics to China's manufacturing sector too. In China, where sweatshops are alive and well, the company insists those measures make a difference. Suppliers, including those who sell to Wal-Mart indirectly through other companies, must limit the work week to 40 hours plus no more than three hours of overtime a day, meet safety requirements and provide decent accommodations for workers. Even those critical of Wal-Mart concede that...