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2024 m. balandžio 2 d., antradienis

To Grow or Not to Grow? Poor Nations Are Writing a New Handbook for Getting Rich: analysis


"Economies focused on exports have lifted millions out of poverty, but epochal changes in trade, supply chains and technology are making it a lot harder.

For more than half a century, the handbook for how developing countries can grow rich hasn’t changed much: Move subsistence farmers into manufacturing jobs, and then sell what they produce to the rest of the world.

The recipe — customized in varying ways by Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and China — has produced the most potent engine the world has ever known for generating economic growth. It has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, create jobs and raise standards of living.

The Asian Tigers and China succeeded by combining vast pools of cheap labor with access to international know-how and financing, and buyers that reached from Kalamazoo to Kuala Lumpur. Governments provided the scaffolding: They built up roads and schools, offered business-friendly rules and incentives, developed capable administrative institutions and nurtured incipient industries.

But technology is advancing, supply chains are shifting, and political tensions are reshaping trade patterns. And with that, doubts are growing about whether industrialization can still deliver the miracle growth it once did. For developing countries, which contain 85 percent of the globe’s population — 6.8 billion people — the implications are profound.

Today, manufacturing accounts for a smaller share of the world’s output, and China already does more than a third of it. At the same time, more emerging countries are selling inexpensive goods abroad, increasing competition. There are not as many gains to be squeezed out: Not everyone can be a net exporter or offer the world’s lowest wages and overhead.

There are doubts that industrialization can create the game-changing benefits it did in the past. Factories today tend to rely more on automated technology and less on cheapworkers who have little training.

“You cannot generate enough jobs for the vast majority of workers who are not very educated,” said Dani Rodrik, a leading development economist at Harvard.

The process can be seen in Bangladesh, which the World Bank’s managing director called “one of the world’s greatest development stories” last year. The country built its success on turning farmers into textile workers.

Last year, though, Rubana Huq, chair of Mohammadi Group, a family-owned conglomerate, replaced 3,000 employees with automated jacquard machines to do complex weaving patterns.

The women found similar jobs elsewhere in the company. “But what follows when this happens on a large scale?” asked Ms. Huq, who is also president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

These workers don’t have training, she said. “They’re not going to turn into coders overnight.”

Recent global developments have accelerated the transition.

Supply chain meltdowns related to the Covid-19 pandemic and to sanctions on Russia drove up the price of essentials like food and fuel, biting into incomes. High interest rates, imposed by central banks to quell inflation, set off another series of crises: Developing nations’ debts ballooned, and investment capital dried up.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund warned of the noxious combination of lower growth and higher debt.

The supercharged globalization that had encouraged companies to buy and sell in every spot around the planet has also been shifting. Rising political tensions, especially between China and the United States, are affecting where businesses and governments invest and trade.

Companies want supply chains to be secure as well as cheap, and they are looking at neighbors or political allies to provide them.

In this new era, Mr. Rodrik said, “the industrialization model — which practically every country that has become rich has relied on — is no longer capable of generating rapid and sustained economic growth.”

Nor is it clear what might replace it.

There’s a future in service jobs.

One alternative might be found in Bengaluru, a high-tech center in the Indian state of Karnataka.

Multinationals like Goldman Sachs, Victoria’s Secret and the Economist magazine have flocked to the city and set up hundreds of operational hubs — known as global capability centers — to handle accounting, design products, develop cybersecurity systems and artificial intelligence, and more.

Such centers are expected to generate 500,000 jobs nationwide in the next two to three years, according to the consulting firm Deloitte.

They are joining hundreds of biotech, engineering and information technology companies including homegrown giants like Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Infosys Limited. Four months ago, the American chip company AMD unveiled its largest global design center there.

“We have to move away from the idea of classic development stages, that you go from the farm to the factory and then from the factory to offices,” said Richard Baldwin, an economist at the International Institute for Management Development in Geneva. “That whole development model is wrong.”

Two-thirds of the world’s output now comes from the service sector — a mishmash that includes dog walkers, manicurists, food preparers, cleaners and drivers, as well as highly trained chip designers, graphic artists, nurses, engineers and accountants.

It is possible to leapfrog to the service sector and grow by selling to businesses around the world, Mr. Baldwin argued. That is what helped India become the world’s fifth-largest economy.

In Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, a general rise in middle-class living attracted more people and more businesses that, in turn, attracted more people and businesses, continuing the cycle, Mr. Baldwin explained.

Covid sped this transition, by forcing people to work remotely — from a different part of town, a different city or a different country.

In the new model, countries can focus growth around cities rather than a particular industry. “That creates economic activities which are fairly diverse,” Mr. Baldwin said.

“Think Bangalore, not South China,” he said.

Free markets are not enough.

Many developing nations remain focused on building export-oriented industries as the path to prosperity. And that’s how it should be, said Justin Yifu Lin, dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University.

Pessimism about the classic development formula, he said, has been fueled by a misguided belief that the growth process was automatic: Just clear the way for the free market and the rest will take care of itself.

Countries were often pressured by the United States and the international institutions to embrace open markets and hands-off governance.

Export-led growth in Africa and Latin America stumbled because governments failed to protect and subsidize infant industries, said Mr. Lin, a former chief economist at the World Bank.

“Industrial policy was taboo for a long time,” he said, and many of those who tried failed. But there were also success stories like China and South Korea.

“You need the state to help the private sector overcome market failures,” he said. “You cannot do it without industrial policy. ”

It won’t work without education.

The overriding question is whether anything — services or manufacturing — can generate the type of growth that is desperately needed: broad based, large scale and sustainable.

Service jobs for businesses are multiplying, but many offering middle and high incomes are in areas like finance and tech, which tend to require advanced skills and education levels far above what most people in developing nations have.

In India, nearly half of college graduates don’t have the skills they need for these jobs, according to Wheebox, an educational testing service.

The mismatch is everywhere. The Future of Jobs report, published last year by the World Economic Forum, found that six in 10 workers will need retraining in the next three years, but the overwhelming majority won’t have access to it.

Other kinds of service jobs are proliferating, too, but many are neither well paid nor exportable. A barber in Bengaluru can’t cut your hair if you’re in Brooklyn.

That could mean smaller — and more uneven — growth.

Researchers at Yale University found that in India and several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural workers jumped into consumer service jobs and raised their productivity and incomes.

But there was a catch: The gains were “strikingly unequal” and disproportionately benefited the rich.

With a weakening global economy, developing countries will need to wring every bit of growth they can from every corner of their economies. Industrial policy is essential, Mr. Rodrik of Harvard said, but it should focus on smaller service firms and households because that is going to be the source of most future growth.

He and others caution that even so, gains are likely to be modest and hard won.

“The envelope has shrunk,” he said. “How much growth we can get is definitely less than in the past.”" [1]

There is a possibility that the growth stops after the environment becomes too hot, and we switch to sustainable energy, since everything is ending up too expensive. Survival becomes an issue. Forget the growth.

1. Poor Nations Are Writing a New Handbook for Getting Rich: analysis. Cohen, Patricia.  New York Times (Online)New York Times Company. Apr 2, 2024.

 

„Temu“ motininė įmonė naudoja ieškinius, kad išlaikytų jos paslaptis --- Kinijos PDD skatina nekonkuravimo susitarimų kultūrą

   „Kinijos technologijų darbuotojams darbas elektroninės prekybos milžinėje PDD Holdings yra labai paklausus. Atlyginimas įmonėje, kuri yra „Alibaba“ varžovė ir „Temu“ motina, yra gana dosnus, o darbavimasis ten pakelia bet kokį gyvenimo aprašymą. Darbuotojų bėdos ateina, jiems išėjus.

 

     Taip yra dėl nekonkuravimo susitarimų, teisininkų teigimu, Kinijoje vis dažniau naudojamas įrankis prieš eilinius darbuotojus, net kai JAV jų naudojimas mažėja, o buvę darbuotojai ir teismo duomenys rodo, kad PDD įgyvendino tokius susitarimus, ypač ryžtingai siekdama sužlugdyti potencialius varžovus.

 

     Konkurencinis PDD uolumas padėjo paskatinti jos staigų augimą – Nasdaq biržoje kotiruojamos bendrovės rinkos vertė yra 154 mlrd. JAV dolerių ir praėjusiais metais trumpam buvo vertingiausia Kinijos elektroninės prekybos įmonė. Jos „Temu“ programa yra labiausiai atsisiunčiama apsipirkimo programa pasaulyje. 

 

Ji atidžiai saugo savo verslo paslaptis ir laiko savo darbuotojus silosuose, kad išvengtų informacijos nutekėjimo. Kai kurie darbuotojai sako nežinantys net ir ilgamečių kolegų tikrųjų vardų.

 

     Kai kurie buvę PDD darbuotojai, įskaitant žemo ir vidutinio lygio darbuotojus, teigia, kad PDD ėmėsi jų ir skyrė didelių nekonkuravimo bausmių.

 

     Vienas buvęs PDD vidutinio lygio vadovas pasirašė nekonkuravimo sutartį, prieš palikdamas įmonę 2021 m. Kita jo įmonė buvo smulkus verslas, pardavinėjantis svorio metimo priedus internetu, kuris atnešdavo apie 2800 dolerių per mėnesį. Praėjusiais metais PDD, kurios pardavimai 2023 m. siekė 34,9 mlrd. dolerių, jį padavė į teismą. Teismas įpareigojo jį sumokėti daugiau, nei 1 milijoną dolerių kompensaciją už tai, kad varžėsi toje pačioje erdvėje, kaip ir buvęs darbdavys.

 

     „Prieš prisijungdamas prie PDD buvau tikras viduriniosios klasės narys“, – sakė jis. „Dabar, net jei sukaupčiau visas savo santaupas, niekaip negalėčiau sumokėti, ką esu skolingas."

 

     JAV pastaraisiais metais vis dažniau atsisako nekonkuravimo sąlygų darbo sutartyse. Federalinė prekybos komisija vadovauja pastangoms uždrausti tokias sąlygas, remdamasi susirūpinimu, kad jos gali slopinti konkurenciją ir pakenkti darbuotojams.

 

     Kinijoje tendencija yra priešinga. Nors Kinijos darbo sutarčių įstatymas teigia, kad nekonkuravimo apribojimai turėtų būti taikomi tik aukšto rango vadovams ir kitiems asmenims, turintiems konfidencialumo įsipareigojimų, vis dažniau technologijų įmonės reikalauja, kad žemesnio lygio darbuotojai pasirašytų sutartis, teigia teisininkai.

 

     Maždaug 20, daugiausia žemesnio lygio buvusių PDD darbuotojų, Kinijos socialinėje žiniasklaidoje išreiškė priekaištus po to, kai bendrovė jiems skyrė nekonkuravimo nuobaudas.

 

     PDD teigė, kad nekonkuravimo susitarimus taiko „ribotai ir atsakingai“ ir griežtai laikosi įstatymų bei geriausios pramonės praktikos. Per šešis mėnesius iki vasario mėnesio buvę darbuotojai, patraukti į teismą dėl įtariamų nekonkuravimo pažeidimų, sudarė mažiau nei 2% darbuotojų, kurie per tą laikotarpį paliko įmonę, nurodė PDD.

 

     PDD, kurioje 2022 m. pabaigoje dirbo 13 000 darbuotojų, teigė, kad tik nedidelė dalis išvykstančių darbuotojų yra susaistyti nekonkuravimo susitarimų, kurie, pasak jos, yra pagrįsti jų darbo svarba įmonės komercinėms paslaptims, o ne darbo stažu ar darbo metų patirtimi.

 

    Sprendžiant iš kai kurių priemonių, PDD ypač aktyviai vykdo tokius susitarimus teisme. Remiantis Kinijos įmonių registro duomenų baze „Tianyancha“, per pastaruosius penkerius metus Kinijoje buvo pateikta 110, su darbo santykiais susijusių, ieškinių, kuriuose dalyvavo pagrindiniai PDD verslo subjektai. Palyginti su 125 ieškiniais, kuriuose dalyvavo „Alibaba“ verslo subjektai, kurių darbuotojų skaičius buvo daugiau, nei 18 kartų didesnis, nei PDD 2022 m.

 

     Iš su PDD susijusių ieškinių 15 % buvo dėl nekonkuravimo susitarimų, o Alibaba – 5 %. Skundai dėl nekonkuravimo taip pat nagrinėjami ne teisingumo sistemoje, teisiškai įpareigojančiame arbitraže.

 

     Vienas „Temu“ darbuotojas, anksčiau dirbęs „Temu“ kinų programoje „Pinduoduo“, sakė, kad PDD paskyrė žmogiškųjų išteklių atstovą, kuris stebėtų kiekvieno iš įmonės išėjusio vidutinio lygio vadovo veiklą ir karjeros judėjimą. Darbuotojas teigė, kad PDD kartais samdydavo išorines agentūras, kad galėtų stebėti, kur ėjo buvę darbuotojai ar kokį verslą jie pradėjo.

 

     Kai kurie buvę darbuotojai teigia, kad PDD nurodė jų buvimo vietą realiuoju laiku ir socialinio draudimo mokėjimų įrašus, kaip įrodymą, kad jie ėmėsi darbo pas konkurentus. PDD neigė naudojusi tokius metodus ir teigė, kad bendrovė „nevykdo jokios neteisėtos ar neetiškos sekimo praktikos“.

 

     Nekonkuravimo susitarimai Kinijoje galioja iki dvejų metų, o įstatymai reikalauja, kad įmonės mokėtų kompensacijas buvusiems darbuotojams tuo laikotarpiu, kai jie negali dirbti konkurentams.

 

     Dažnai darbuotojai jaučia, kad neturi kito pasirinkimo, kaip tik pasirašyti nekonkuravimo susitarimus arba rizikuoti atpildu, pavyzdžiui, prarasti darbą, sakė Niujorke dirbantis Kinijos žmogaus teisių teisininkas Huang Sha, besispecializuojantis darbo ginčuose.

 

     Dviejuose, „The Wall Street Journal“ peržiūrėtuose, PDD nekonkuravimo susitarimuose matosi, kaip PDD konkuruoja su daugiau, nei 30, technologijų įmonių, įskaitant įmones, kuriose ji turėjo akcijų arba kurios turėjo jos akcijų. Susitarimai sakė, kad varžovai neapsiribojo nurodytomis įmonėmis. Jie taip pat neleido buvusiems darbuotojams pradėti įmonių, kurios sutampa su PDD verslu.

 

     Įmonės, kurias PDD laiko konkurentėmis, „rimtai veikia darbuotojų darbo perspektyvas“, sakė You Yunting, vyresnysis DeBund advokatų kontoros Šanchajuje partneris.

 

     PDD teigė, kad įmonei plečiantis, jos konkurentų sąrašas keitėsi.

 

     Darbuotojai sako, kad jie neskatinami bendrauti darbe, o bendradarbiavimas tarp skyrių yra griežtai kontroliuojamas.“ [1]

 

1. Temu Parent Sues to Keep Its Secrets --- China's PDD enforces culture with noncompete agreements. Shen, Lu; Huang, Raffaele.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 02 Apr 2024: B.6.

Temu Parent Sues to Keep Its Secrets --- China's PDD enforces culture with noncompete agreements


"For Chinese tech workers, jobs at e-commerce behemoth PDD Holdings are highly sought after. The pay at the company, a challenger to Alibaba and parent to Temu, is relatively generous and a position there lifts any resume. The trouble, for some workers, comes after they leave.

That is because of noncompete agreements, a tool lawyers say is increasingly being used against rank-and-file workers in China, even as their use wanes in the U.S. Former employees and court data suggest that PDD has enforced such agreements with particular determination to thwart potential rivals.

PDD's competitive zeal helped propel its meteoric rise -- the Nasdaq-listed company has a $154 billion market cap and was briefly China's most valuable e-commerce company last year. Its Temu app is the world's most downloaded shopping app. It closely guards its corporate secrets, keeping its workers in silos to prevent information leaks. Some employees say they don't know the real names of even longtime colleagues.

Some former PDD employees, including low- and midlevel workers, say PDD has gone after them to mete out hefty noncompete penalties.

One former PDD midlevel manager signed a noncompete agreement before he left the company in 2021. His next venture was a small business selling a weight-loss supplement online that brought in around $2,800 a month. Last year PDD, which had sales of $34.9 billion in 2023, sued him. The court ordered him to pay more than $1 million in compensation for competing in the same space as his former employer.

"I was a proper member of the middle class before joining PDD," he said. "Now, even if I pooled all my savings, I can't possibly pay off what I owe."

The U.S. has in recent years moved away from noncompete clauses in job contracts. The Federal Trade Commission is leading the effort to ban such clauses, citing concerns about their potential to stifle competition and hurt workers.

In China, the trend is in the opposite direction. While China's Labor Contract Law says noncompete restrictions should apply only to senior executives and others with confidentiality obligations, it is increasingly common for tech companies to require lower-level workers to sign the agreements, lawyers say.

Some 20 mostly lower-level former PDD employees have voiced grievances on Chinese social media after the company hit them with noncompete penalties.

PDD said it uses noncompete agreements in a "limited and responsible manner" and strictly adheres to the law and best industry practices. Former employees taken to court for alleged noncompete violations in the six months to February accounted for less than 2% of workers who left the company during the period, PDD said.

PDD, which had 13,000 workers at the end of 2022, said only a small percentage of departing employees were bound by noncompete agreements, which it said are based on the relevance of their jobs to the company's commercial secrets rather than seniority or years of work experience.

By some measures, PDD is especially active in enforcing such agreements in court. In the past five years, 110 employment-related lawsuits involving PDD's main business entities were filed in China, according to the Chinese corporate-registry database Tianyancha. That compares with 125 lawsuits involving business entities of Alibaba, which had a head count more than 18 times that of PDD in 2022.

Of the PDD-related lawsuits, 15% were over noncompete agreements, compared with 5% for Alibaba. Noncompete grievances are also dealt with outside the justice system, in legally binding arbitration.

One Temu employee, who previously worked for Temu's Chinese sibling app Pinduoduo, said PDD assigned a human-resources representative to monitor the activities and career movements of each midlevel manager who left the company. The employee said PDD sometimes hired external agencies to track where former employees went or what businesses they started.

Some former employees say PDD has cited their real-time locations and social-security payment records as evidence that they have taken jobs at competitors. PDD denied using such methods and said the company "doesn't engage in any illegal or unethical surveillance practices."

Noncompete agreements in China run for up to two years, and the law requires companies to pay compensation to former workers during the period they can't work for rivals.

Often workers feel they have no choice but to sign noncompete agreements or risk retribution such as losing their jobs, said Huang Sha, a New York-based Chinese human-rights lawyer specializing in labor disputes.

Two PDD noncompete agreements reviewed by The Wall Street Journal listed as PDD competitors more than 30 tech companies, including businesses they had stakes in or that owned stakes in them. The agreements said that rivals weren't limited to the companies named. They also barred former workers from starting ventures that overlap with PDD's businesses.

The scope of companies whom PDD considers rivals is "seriously affecting employees' job prospects," said You Yunting, a senior partner of the DeBund Law Office in Shanghai.

PDD said that as the company has expanded, its list of competitors has evolved.

Employees say they are discouraged from socializing at work, and cross-department collaboration is strictly controlled." [1]

1. Temu Parent Sues to Keep Its Secrets --- China's PDD enforces culture with noncompete agreements. Shen, Lu; Huang, Raffaele.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 02 Apr 2024: B.6.