From John Rustads site, an excerpt from an article on Business News Network, Sept. 17, 2013: CEOs from China Find BC Too Laid Back: China’s massive state-owned enterprises have flocked to Vancouver for its beautiful natural environment and proximity to Asia, but a new survey shows they have also experienced numerous frustrations – including British Columbia’s “laid-back lifestyle.” In interviews with a researcher at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, senior executives detailed their experiences setting up local offices in Vancouver. The interviews were conducted with people working at Chinese SOEs, as well as with the Canada China Chamber of Commerce, which represents non-state-owned Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE. The interviews offer an intriguing glimpse at the often-unvoiced views of Chinese executives working in Vancouver, who represent some of China’s largest companies but have very little public profile in Canada, where the scale of investments from Chinese companies has attracted some controversy in recent years. These executives said the city’s busy Pacific coast port made it an ideal location for shipping companies such as Sinotrans and China Ocean Shipping. Vancouver’s large local Chinese population, and numerous Chinese businesspeople pursuing opportunities in the resource sector, have also provided a bustling market for banking and financing services from Chinese banks such as the Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China. But the companies’ representatives, dispatched from bustling metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai, have also encountered numerous difficulties along the way – one of which has been the slower pace of living on North America’s West Coast. “Local people have such a laid-back lifestyle,” one Chinese executive said. “They never work in a hurry, nor work overtime. They leave the office as soon as it hits five o’clock.” Although the executives praised the “China-friendly” support they have received from the B.C. government, they also complained that they faced various operational and regulatory difficulties. They said labour costs here were too high, sometimes sucking up 35 percent of their operational expenses, and expressed frustration that there was not an easier way to bring over Chinese workers. ----- The whole point of globalization and the network of free trade agreements like the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPPA) is to drive our living standards, wage levels, employment standards and environmental standards down to the level of the Third World sweatshop powers. This is what our provincial neo-liberal government wants, and it is also what our neo-Conservative government in Ottawa wants. The mantra is always we have to be competitive. Its the enshrinement of the race to the bottom. Of course, if they want workers who work overtime for free without complaint, the state-owned enterprises from China can go to Alberta where Calvinist puritanical killjoys dominate the social atmosphere and create the pressure to work excessive uncompensated overtime. With officials from the state-owned enterprises from China trying to set labour standards and work hours for Canadian workers, the FIPPA agreement looks more and more like a type of Anschluss rather than just a trade treaty.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 00:50:43 +0000