Modern Facilities Give China’s Competitiveness a New Edge

In this city about an hour’s drive west of Guangzhou, thousands of men’s dress shirts are turned out every day on brightly lighted, air-conditioned shop floors, to the sound of an Asian version of Muzak.

This is China, a country whose competitive edge doesn’t necessarily depend on the sweatshops, low wages and long hours that many Americans associate with the “Made in China” label.

These days, other ingredients also fuel the manufactur- ing juggernaut: first-class working conditions, modern ports and roads, high-quality raw materials, efficient domestic suppliers and increasingly enlightened management techniques.

Consider Esquel, a supplier of high-end textiles and apparel for blue-ribbon brand names that include Brooks Bros. and Hugo Boss.

Esquel, headquartered in Hong Kong, has factories in Mauritius, Vietnam, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. But its most innovative new products -- such as 100% cotton, wrinkle-free shirts -- are made by skilled workers on cutting-edge machinery in mainland China, home for nearly half of its 47,000 employees.

In remote parts of western China, where Esquel grows much of its cotton, the company subsidizes school libraries. At its main production facilities in Gaoming, it built its own central wastewater treatment plant and power station equipped with modern pollution-control equipment. Employees live in tidy high-rise apartments paid for by Esquel; the children of managers are eligible to attend an Esquel English-language school.

To attract companies like Esquel, Beijing has poured billions of dollars into the infrastructure needed to make the job of clothing the world easier, quicker and cheaper.

Once the knit shirts and khaki pants roll off the assembly lines and are inspected and packaged, they can be rushed onto a waiting truck and sped along a multilane freeway that feeds into major container ports just a few hours away from the factory doors in Gaoming and other sites in Guangdong province.

Hong Kong is the busiest container port in the world, and the port at Shenzhen, just up the Pearl River Delta, isn’t far behind.

What’s more, most of Esquel’s raw materials come from China, which reduces costs and saves time.

The company uses extra-long-staple cotton from Xinjiang province to produce the fabric for its top-line apparel, substituting high-quality California Pima cotton only to make up shortfalls.

And in the region surrounding Esquel’s southern China operation are thousands of suppliers that can produce the packing materials or the right color of buttons or thread to keep the assembly lines humming.

“It’s hard for any one country to match all this,” said John Cheh, the company’s executive director, who like Chairman and Chief Executive Marjorie Yang has a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “China is very strong.”

Qi Ying is one of Esquel’s 21,000-plus employees in Gaoming. The 26-year-old works the 8 a.m.-to-5 p.m. shift -- with an hourlong break for lunch -- and has Sundays off. Her wage of $90 a month is about the same as that of garment workers in Lesotho and about double what her counterparts in Cambodia take home.

Qi, who someday hopes to open her own shop, isn’t about to complain about being overworked.

Her biggest worry: “There won’t be enough to do.”