IBM研究院邁入六十周年
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CNET新聞專區：Michael Kanellos 14/10/2005
本週二IBM研究院(IBM Research)慶祝60周年生日，紀念其在電腦科學、物理及半導體設計方面的成就。
發跡於哥倫比亞大學兄弟會宿舍、後來被稱為華生科學運算實驗室(Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory)的IBM研究院，已經
成為世界上最優秀的科學研究中心之一，它在許多領域都使 IBM領先競爭對手。
IBM 的5 名員工由於發現了電子隧穿(electron tunneling)現象，以及發明能夠觀察到單個原子的電子顯微鏡而獲頒諾貝爾獎。另外
，IBM 的員工還五次獲得全美科技獎、四次獲得全美科學獎、四次獲得杜寧獎(A.M. Turing Awards)。
IBM 的發明和創新包括編程語言Fortran （1957）、磁儲存技術（1955）、關聯式資料庫（1970）、DRAM cell（1962）、RISC架構
（1980）、規則幾何基礎元素（fractals 1967）、超導性（1987）、資料加密標準（1974）。
在過去的12年中，IBM 共獲得了29021 項專利，比世界上任何其他公司和個人都多。
與傳奇性的貝爾實驗室、全錄帕洛亞托研究中心 (Xerox PARC)不同的是，IBM 一直致力於使研究能透過產品提升、服務、智財權來
增加公司的營收。
在接受採訪時，IBM 負責研發的資深測總裁Paul Hron說，「儘管我們也進行探索性的研究，但我們也希望研發活動可回饋於公司母
體的發展。貝爾實驗室也花了很多錢，但它們卻沒有一個很好的模式讓公司可從研究中獲益。」Horn表示，「這種實用理念可以追溯
到IBM研究院成立之初，雖然該實驗室成立於1945年，但並不是因應二次大戰或戰後重建而設立，Thomas. J. Watson認為那些工作靠
電腦實在很難解決」。
但是，IBM 研究院正在發生天翻地覆的變化。其中之一是，研究活動不再像過去那樣集中在美國，研究人員在海外寫成的論文數量，
以及對這些論文的引用數量飛快成長。
IBM 研究活動的方向也有所變動。多年前，IBM的研發活動主要集中在硬體領域，這在1947年催生了IBM 603 電子乘法器（
Electronic Multiplier）、以及1962年的Sabre預約系統等硬體產品。
儘管仍然是奈米研究的重鎮，但IBM力推服務和軟體也促使實驗室更著重於解決商業流程問題，像是供應鏈管理、應用軟體整合、以
及解決交易效率低落的問題。
最終極的問題是「現行網路上的人員怎麼作業？」Horn表示，「我們估計未來二年內企業流程交易服務將發展為5000億美元的市場，
整個IT產業的規模不過1.2 兆美元而已。
他表示，目前最重大的挑戰是提出研究這些問題的架構。「這牽涉到社會科學，牽涉到商業，牽涉到經濟面。」軟體編碼和博奕理論
也很關鍵。IBM在多所大學開設供應鏈管理課程是建立龐大知識庫的第一步。現在IBM正和北卡羅來納州合作開發稱為「社會科學及管
理工程」的課程。
「服務科學」聽來很怪異，但Horn指出，「以前人們也認為電腦科學中沒有"科學"。如果你是IBM研究院的成員，就一定得從事硬體
方面的研究，軟體根本沒有什麼學問。」他說，「現在人們對服務的觀念也一樣，」。
IBM 研究院的六十年紀念在紐約州的T.J. Watson Research Center舉行。演講者包括Horn，Nick D'Onofrio創新與技術中心執行副
總裁、DRAM Cell發明人Bob Dennard、以及北卡大學的Fred Brooks。 （鍾翠玲整理）
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但見新人笑那聞舊人哭 工程師的心聲
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上網時間：2005年09月23日
列印版 推薦給同仁 發 送 查 詢
如果連續幾年公司既沒有調薪也沒有發獎金，但仍要你積極努力投入工作，你會如何？如果老闆要你24小時待命，電話、email隨傳
隨到，你又會如何？凌晨三點，地球另一端的同仁要你解決產品問題，你覺不覺得苦？新興國家的勢力，一波波的衝擊美歐日的工程
師，有人坦然處之，有人積極自保。這波浪潮是不是已經波及台灣？懂中文的工程師就略勝一籌嗎？許多看似別人的問題，其實也有
值得我們玩味之處。
在駛離85號高速公路旁的一個咖啡館中，聚集著許多以筆記型電腦免費使用Wi-Fi連線的人們。其中一位名叫Ken Martin的工程師正
低頭啜飲著一大杯的脫脂拿鐵咖啡，來舒緩一點他在搭機後因時差所造成的不適。兩天前，他才從中國大陸的深圳和上海搭機返國。
「中國讓我回想起美國在20年前的產業情況，」Martin說，「人們當時都還年輕，對於未來會發生什麼都感到無比的熱衷與好奇，而
現在卻再也見不到這樣的景象了。」
Martin引用的統計資料，更讓埋首於矽谷工作的人們感到沮喪與氣餒。目前的就業率仍停留在1995年的時的水準，商業地產業者也估
計辦公大樓的空屋率約有33~53%。一向是灣區精神象徵的惠普與甲骨文兩家公司在上月所發佈的裁員人數已累積達兩萬人。
面對難以預料的未來，Martin利用業餘時間在網站上成立了一個部落格(blog，www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com)，並指出矽谷將會
成為下一個「衰退地帶」(Rust Belt)。這位任職一家半導體製造商的46歲工程師表示，他將設立部落格一事視為「情緒發洩及嘲諷
媒體過度樂觀報導的園地；而就某部份來看，也是萬一我失去工作時的準備。」
「我過著也許明天可能就會失去工作的生活。我目前沒有借貸，投資理財也很謹慎保守，即使租屋也只一次簽約半年，」Martin表示
，「我認為矽谷有些人越來越富裕，但目光卻越來越短淺了。」
沒有獎金、沒有調薪 仍要積極
事實上，隨著2001年時dot-com公司網路泡沫化的破滅，對於工作的安全感也隨之瓦解。現在，由於行動電話與筆記型電腦的普遍與
易於操作，使得工程師與遍及美國、亞洲與歐洲的同事和客戶間的關係緊密相連，更讓工作與個人生活間的平衡如在微風中飄搖般的
不定。
在EE Times所作的「2005工程師地位調查」中，工作/生活的平衡與委外制度密切相關，這一點是目前工程師最為關切的議題，其次
則是薪資所得與工作安全感的問題。這是由於許多因素所造成的。
半數的美國工程師指出，每週的平均工時已經增加到了47.1個小時；然而，儘管有39%的工程師每年擁有的年假天數長達四週以上，
但實際上只有20%的工程師真正享受到了這麼多天的年假。
同時，晉升的機會變得更少。只有24%(較去年所統計的28%減少)的工程師表示去年職等升級，而五年多來從未有過升遷機會的工程師
，則由18%的統計數字提高到了24%。
56%的受訪者表示所任職的公司中普遍存在著工程師短缺的現象。許多人工作於充斥著裁員與暫停工作的威脅中，而關於「新進人員
」這樣的字眼不是未曾聽說，要不指的多半就是在印度或中國的新同事。
「我在Nortel工作，我們公司已經五年內都未曾雇用新工程師了。」對於這位工程師的說法，至少有24位受訪者均表達出相近的看法
。另一位更明白指出：「過去四年來，我們公司僅裁撤人員。」另外一位也說：「所有的新進人員均來自美國本土以外的市場。」
Intel公司位於奧勒崗州Hillsboro市實驗室的一位工程師則指出，該公司最近縮小了辦公室的大小，這似乎可說是一種公司「適型化
」的警訊。
「過去四年來，公司不曾作過調薪或發過獎金，員工已難維持一種積極的工作態度；公司卻還希望你能用團隊中更少的人力產出更多
的產品，」另一位要求匿名的Intel工程師表示。「藉著任意降低開銷與員工薪資，來設法維持一個股票交易價，可說是這個產業的
一種傷害。」
24小時待命 手機、email隨傳隨到
雖然目前景氣低迷，參與本調查的工程師中，68%的人仍表示大致上還算滿足其雇主與職業。而88%的人表示非常滿意工程師的工作，
原因很多，其中包括電子工程師的技能使他們得以持續一個積極正面的人生態度。
僅有1/4的人表示他們必須日以繼夜隨時待命。而有將近400位受訪者例舉雇主如何使他們持續緊密地受制於全球的客戶、設計團隊或
製造廠。「我被要求隨時隨地攜帶著行動電話，以便在發生任何問題時，他們都可以隨時聯絡我，並且得到回覆。曾經還有人因為未
能回覆電話而遭到解雇呢！」一位受訪者表示。
其它人則表示，他們必須回覆行動電話，而且「即使是在假期中也要持續以email聯絡。」「我曾經在晚上八點去看眼科醫師，」另
一位受訪者說：「但就在我一回到家時，我太太告訴我，由於公司的一點小問題，我的主管曾打電話找我，而且對於我沒在家中接他
的電話感到不悅。」
所謂的緊急的狀況，可能來自於一個軟體的錯誤而困擾了一個在印度的設計團隊；一個因製程上的缺陷而影響在中國的一個製造廠，
或者是在以色列的一項EDA工具的缺失，甚至是歐洲或日本的客戶當機情形。
「像我們這一家擁有全球客戶與工程師團隊的全球性公司，要適應並管理不同的時差，並被要求必須隨時隨地都待命，甚至必須在週
日回覆email或行動電話，以因應其它有些國家12小時以上的時差。」一位受訪者說。
「我負責帶領一支分別位於歐洲、美國與亞洲的全球性研發與生產團隊，我們通常會在此地的早上六點、晚上五點或晚上11點召開網
路會議，每次團隊會議通常長達兩個小時以上。尤有甚者，我還被要求必須在24小時可隨時作好到國外出差長達一個月以上的準備。
」另一位受訪者說。
還有兩位受訪者表示，他們曾經參加過安排在凌晨三點的視訊會議。另一位工程師表示，每週七天/每天24小時隨時待命的工作並非
公司所指派的，而是「一群更有野心抱負的人共同努力工作所自然形成的結果。」
文化衝擊、新人難帶 老鳥苦
許多受訪者表示，工作處於地理疆域消弭的多文化團隊下，溝通的技巧逐漸變得更具關鍵性。「這是我的工作中最有趣，也最令人受
挫的部份，」任職於一家日本公司的一位汽車電子工程師表示。「在從事多年的國際性工作後，我學到了各地區不同的設計哲學。」
有時，即使是簡單而些微的地區之差也可以為共同的會議帶來一些有趣的變化，一位印度工程師發現，「就像在我們的文化中，左右
搖頭表示他們贊同你的意見，而非否定。」
有些工程師指出，大學教育在塑造工程師成為團隊成員的方面還需要更大的努力。「大部份剛畢業的年輕人在技術上都十分有才能，
但卻無法在團隊環境中表現得很好。我認為這是因為分派到實驗室中的專案計劃較少是需要團隊共同合作完成的。」一位受訪者表示
。
約有一百位受訪者認為工程師在面對客戶時的文字書寫、語言表達與簡報的能力仍有待提升。
全球網路環境的多元化正與日漸複雜的基礎科技並駕齊驅。受訪者表示，在面對從商業市場所延伸到兼具服務、系統、軟體與矽晶的
電子產業中，新進工程師最欠缺的一項能力特質便是如何在交互相關的整體電子產業鏈中作全面性的評斷。
這樣的批評可從許多方面看出來。有些人指出菜鳥工程師欠缺晶片驗證與測試難度的正確判斷力；有些則發現他們缺乏封裝、類比與
RF設計技術。也有幾位受訪者說新一代的工程師忽略了軟體的重要性。「新進工程師缺乏對於矽晶的直覺判斷力似乎是很平常的。他
們都是很棒的軟體作業人員，但卻往往不知道實際發生於底層的基本原理為何，使得矽晶除錯對他們來說變得相當困難。」一位受訪
者說。
「隨著軟體工程師人才庫逐漸增加，硬體與系統工程師的品質似乎也逐漸下降了。」另一位補充道。而即使是在軟體領域中，許多受
訪者也發現年輕工程師欠缺某些能力。許多工程師說這些新手們太過於專注在個人電腦，而缺少嵌入式軟體的技能。其它的人則指出
軟體設計幾乎在每一方面都相當短缺，無論是XML、Perl與scripting語言等高階的網頁程式碼，或是C++、Linux等組合語言。
新加入的工程師並不明白「僅僅執行一小部份軟體與真正商品化之間的差異；他們也不瞭解這種差異在現實世界中的重要性，」一位
工程師說。其它工程師還指出，新聘用的人員並不瞭解「以現成的軟體來完成大部份的工作與從頭開始做起的結果往往會是相反地。
」
下班後 劃清界線還是積極充實？
面對這些挑戰，仍要致力於維持積極的工作態度，有些工程師便表示，會藉由下班後的休息時間來做調適。「錯過私人教練給我每週
三次體能訓練課程的唯一理由便是出差，」一位大型網路公司的經理表示。「而且，每個週末至少一天的時間花在砍樹或到樹木茂盛
的林子裡清理灌木叢。這種直接又簡單的快樂感，讓週一的上班日也變得較為順利。」
工程師Chris Haidinyak同意此一說法，並補充道，「至少發掘出一種可每日執行的重要活動，並且儘可能找到有趣的新鮮事，常常
笑一笑。」其它的受訪者則說他們只需要每天工作結束後，下班回家，就在家門口與工作劃清界線。「通常我回家後，就完完全全地
離開我的工作，避免在家中再使用電腦收發email，或作任何與工作有關的事。」一位受訪者說。
新興公司Engenio資訊科技的總工程師Ed Jackson建議，「晚上不要在家用筆記型電腦工作，也不要把你的行動電話號碼給工作上相
關的人。如果是工作時用的行動電話，就把它關機吧！」
文章一開頭時所提到的那位網路系統公司的經理Ken Martin則是，由於網站建置的完成與成長帶給他不少的信心，Ken Martin這位對
矽谷發展質疑的部落客(blogger)，對於矽谷的長期觀察，他仍抱持樂觀態度。儘管矽谷可能會逐漸陷於困境，但整體產業仍有其遠
景。
「我正在學說一點兒中文，」Martin品嚐了一口拿鐵咖啡，並以中文如此說。過去九個月來他已經持續地在Los Altos與Fermont的上
班通勤中聽語言CD學中文。「和一般人喜歡在地鐵上收聽廣播節目比起來，我覺得學中文更好，」他略有所思地笑著並望向東方，且
坦誠道：「但要能在上海搭地鐵時用中文交談，應該還差一大截吧！」(原文連結處：Working harder in tough times，原文附有五
張統計圖表可供讀者參考))
(Rick Merritt)
Working harder in tough times
Rick Merritt
(08/22/2005 10:00 H EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=169400372
In a cafe off Highway 85, overgrown with laptops sucking in the free Wi-Fi access, an engineer-let's call him Ken
Martin-sips his large, nonfat latte to cut the edge of his jet lag. He's two days back from a tour through Shenzhen
and Shanghai.
"China reminds me of what this business was like in the U.S. 20 years ago," said Martin. "People are young,
enthusiastic and curious about what will happen next. You don't see that so much here anymore."
Martin ticks off statistics that inform the bleaker moods rising up from Silicon Valley's cubicles. Employment rates
are stuck at 1995 levels, commercial realtors report vacancy rates from 33 to 53 percent. And Bay Area icons
Hewlett-Packard Co. and Oracle Corp. last month announced layoffs totaling 20,000 souls.
Martin mines the Web for those kinds of hard figures for his sideline-publishing a blog
(www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com) that has suggested the Valley could be the next Rust Belt. The work is "mainly a way
to vent and counter the cheerleading that goes on in the press, and part of it is a backup-in case I lose my job,"
said the 46-year-old rep for a major semiconductor maker.
"I operate as though I could lose my job tomorrow. I have no debt, my money is invested conservatively and I am
renting on a six-month lease," said Martin. "My view is [that] the segment of people getting rich in Silicon Valley
will keep getting more and more narrow."
Keeping a balance
Indeed, job security crumbled in the dot-com bust of 2001. Now the balance between work and personal life is
swinging in the breeze for cell phone- and laptop-wielding engineers tied to colleagues and customers spread across
the United States, Asia and Europe.
In EE Times' "2005 State of the Engineer Survey," work/life balance tied with outsourcing as a top concern for
engineers, right behind salaries and job security. There are plenty of reasons why.
The average U.S. engineer reports that the work week has stretched out to 47.1 hours. However, only about half of
the 39 percent of U.S. engineers who earned four weeks or more of annual vacation actually took it.
Meanwhile, promotions have become scarce. Only 24 percent of engineers said they had a promotion in the past year
(down from 28 percent in 2004), while the number who have seen no promotion in more than five years rose from 18 to
24 percent.
Topping it off, 56 percent of respondents said there is a shortage of engineers at their company. Many are living in
an environment of layoffs and job freezes, where the words "new hire" either go unspoken or refer to new colleagues
in India and China.
"I work for Nortel. We haven't hired new engineers in five years," said one of more than two dozen respondents
expressing similar views. "We've only laid off workers the last four years," said another. "All new hires are from
non-U.S.A. markets," said a third.
Symbolic of the squeeze, one engineer in Intel Corp.'s Hillsboro, Ore., labs reported the company recently shrank
the standard cubicle size.
"It is hard to maintain a positive attitude when there are mediocre to no raises and mediocre bonuses for the past
four years, yet the company expects you to produce more with fewer people on the teams and more products in
parallel," said another Intel engineer who asked to remain anonymous. "Trying to prop up the stock price on the
backs of employees, by reducing discretionary spending and salaries, is taking its toll in the industry."
Did you get the e-mail?
Despite tough times, 68 percent of engineers who took our survey said they are generally satisfied with their
employers and careers. A whopping 88 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with engineering
overall-thanks to a wide variety of reasons, including techniques the EEs use for keeping a positive attitude.
Only about a quarter said they need to be available 24/7. But that roughly 25 percent is a very vocal group. Nearly
400 respondents provided examples of how employers keep them on a tight electronic leash to customers, design teams
or manufacturing sites around the planet.
"I am required to carry a cell phone 24/7. I am called any time there is a problem, and expected to answer. We have
had people terminated for not answering phones," said one respondent.
Others said they are expected to respond to cell phone calls and the "constant e-mail traffic, even on vacation."
"I went to an optometrist appointment at 8 p.m. one evening," said another respondent. "[When] I returned, my wife
told [me] my supervisor's supervisor called about a problem and was unhappy that I was not at home to take the
call."
That urgency might stem from a software bug troubling a design team in India, a manufacturing flaw in a plant in
China, an EDA glitch in Israel or a customer crash in Europe or Japan.
"We are a worldwide company with customers and engineering staff all over the world," said one respondent. "To
accommodate and manage the time zones, I am expected to make myself available at any time. [For example,] answering
e-mail and phone calls on Sunday to accommodate the 12-hour time difference in other countries is expected."
"I lead a global development and production team located in Europe, the U.S. and Asia," said another respondent. "We
regularly hold Net Meeting conferences at 6 a.m., 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. local time. These team meetings often last two
hours or more." On top of that, "I am expected to be ready for international travel within 24 hours for durations of
one month or more," he added.
Two respondents said they have participated in conference calls scheduled for 3 a.m.
Another engineer said the 24/7 workday was less a corporate mandate and more "a natural consequence of ambitious
people working hard together."
Nod for no?
It's no surprise, then, that many respondents said communications skills are becoming increasingly key for working
in today's geographically dispersed, multicultural teams.
"This is both the most fun and most frustrating part of my job," said an automotive engineer working for a Japanese
company. "Having done international work for many years, I have known about different design philosophies of various
regions."
Sometimes even simple regional nuances can give meetings an interesting twist. One respondent discovered that for
engineers from India, "shaking their head side to side means they are following what you are saying, not saying
'no,' like in our culture."
A few engineers said universities need to do a better job in shaping engineers into team players.
"Most young kids just out of college are very competent technically, but they don't work well in a team atmosphere.
I attribute that to having too few labs where projects are assigned and graded as a team effort," said one
respondent.
As many as 100 respondents commented on the need for better writing, speaking and presentation skills as engineers
deal with one another and with customers.
Layers within layers
The diversity of the global networked environment is matched by the increasing complexity of the underlying
technology. Respondents who did have experience with new hires said one characteristic they most lack today is a
broad appreciation for the whole chain of interrelated links in an electronics industry that stretches from the
business issues down to the services, systems, software and silicon.
This criticism took many forms. Some pointed to a lack of appreciation for the difficulties in chip verification and
test; others found skills lacking in packaging, analog or RF design. Several respondents said the new crop of
engineers is too narrowly focused on software.
"It seems more common now that new engineers lack a gut-feel understanding of silicon. They are fantastic software
operators, but often don't know what's really happening underneath, making silicon debug difficult for them," said
one respondent.
"There seems to be a decreasing pool of quality hardware and systems engineers, while the software engineering pool
continues to grow," added another.
Even in the software arena, many respondents found young engineers wanting. Many said the newbies are too PC-focused
and lacked embedded-software skills. Others pointed to shortcomings in nearly every aspect of software design, from
high-level Web code such as XML, Perl and scripting languages to C++, Linux or deep-in-the-trenches assembly
language.
New engineers lack an "understanding of the difference between a mere piece of running software and a commercial
product; and the understanding that this difference is hugely important in the real world," said one engineer.
Others said that new hires don't have an "understanding of working with existing software systems-which comprise the
vast majority of software work in the industry-as opposed to always starting from scratch."
Hit the gym
In an effort to keep a positive attitude at work in the face of these challenges, some engineers said they
religiously take out time for working out.
"The only excuse for missing my 3x-per-week workout with a personal trainer is being out of town," said a manager
from one large networking company who asked to remain anonymous. "At least one day of each weekend is spent cutting
down trees and/or clearing bushes on a large wooded lot. The pleasure of immediate accomplishments and a simple,
consistent tool set make Monday mornings bearable."
Engineer Chris Haidinyak agrees and adds, "Find at least one measurable activity to perform every day-[and]
something to laugh at as often as possible."
Other respondents say that they just need to draw a hard boundary at their doorstep at the end of the day. "Usually,
when I go home, I check out from work. I avoid checking e-mail or doing any work-related stuff at home," said one
respondent.
Ed Jackson, a principal engineer at startup Engenio Information Technologies Inc. (Boulder, Colo.), makes that a
general prescription. "Don't take your work laptop home at night. Don't give out your cell phone number to
associates. If it is a work cell phone, turn it off, unless you are on call as part of your job function," Jackson
advised.
No doubt the networking-systems manager spoke for many when he said his greatest motivation comes from pride in
having a hand in accomplishments such as the establishment and growth of the Internet. "This clear contribution to
society from my team's products overcomes the daily wear and tear of herding cats and overcoming office politics,"
he said.
For his part, Ken Martin, the skeptical Silicon Valley blogger, is stoking optimism by taking a long view. Silicon
Valley may be getting squeezed, but the industry still holds promise.
"I am learning to speak a little Chinese," Martin says in Mandarin over his latte. For the last nine months he has
been listening to language CDs on his 30-minute commute between Los Altos and Fremont.
"Rather than surf the radio, I thought it would be better to learn Chinese," he said, looking East with a slight
smile. "I've got a long way to go before it's useful on the subway in Shanghai," he confessed.
====================================================
Will 21 Century Become the Chinese Century?
====================================================
By Ted C. Fishman
Nightly view of Shanghai
China used to be far away, the country at the bottom of the world. Certainly that must be how it seemed just 20
years ago in a place like Pekin, Ill., a city of 34,000 residents on the Illinois River that took its name from the
Chinese capital in the 1820's. According to local legend, Pekin is directly opposite Beijing on the globe. The
high-school teams there were still called the Chinks until 1981, when they were renamed the Dragons.
A smart and forward-looking decision, it turns out: as is happening throughout the United States, the Pekinese have
in their own local ways grown inextricably linked to the Chinese of today. They are now connected not by an
imaginary hole through the earth but by the world's shipping lanes, financial markets, telecommunications networks
and, above all, the globalization of appetites.
Follow the corn, for example. Trade deals struck between the U.S. and China in April will, farmers around Pekin
hope, lead China to lower its import barriers and buy half a million metric tons of American corn this year.
Illinois corn farmers get higher-than-usual prices for their exports because they have ready access to river
transportation and in turn to big ports.
Pekin is also home to the plant of Aventine Renewable Energy, the nation's second-largest producer of ethanol, a
fuel derived from corn. (Ten percent of the American corn crop is converted to fuel.) China recently passed Japan as
the world's second-largest consumer of petroleum, and growing Chinese demand has lately been pushing up oil prices
worldwide. That makes ethanol an increasingly attractive alternative. And, indeed, ethanol prices climbed 40 cents a
gallon this spring, dragging up U.S. corn prices as a result, a boon to Pekin's farmers and industry.
Then there's Excel Foundry and Machine, a local factory that makes parts for machinery used in heavy construction
and mining operations. Doug Parsons, the current head of this family-owned business, has already relocated 12
percent of the company's production to China in order to hold onto business that would otherwise be lost to China's
huge, cheap foundries; during the next decade he may well have to move much more of his production offshore.
Parsons has China on his mind for other reasons too: over the past few months, the prices of copper and iron, like
those of oil, have skyrocketed in response to Chinese demand, driving up Excel's costs as a result. At the same
time, however, his international mining customers have been buying more Excel products in order to feed that same
Chinese appetite for commodities.
And Parsons himself recently started a new company that he says will build and service advanced rock-crushing
machines — in part to take advantage of the frenzied construction boom under way in China. (One measure of just how
big this boom is: China currently has more than 15,000 highway projects in the works, which will add 162,000
kilometers of road to the country, enough to circle the planet at the equator four times.)
Even something as all-American as Pekin's new Wal-Mart Supercenter spreads China's influence around town. Because 12
percent of China's exports to the U.S. end up on Wal-Mart's shelves, and because Wal-Mart's trade with China
accounts for 1 percent of that country's gross domestic product, the company exerts tremendous downward pressure on
prices. Its buying power enables it to dictate, in effect, what a Chinese manufacturer will get for producing goods
that American consumers want.
Shift change at a shoe factory in the Guangdong Province. Edward Burtynsky
By selling Chinese-made portable DVD players with seven-inch L.C.D. screens for less than $200, for instance,
Wal-Mart helped to cut the price of these trendy devices in half over the last year. Competitors have to match the
chain's prices or go under. Nearly every shopper in Pekin will therefore save money by shopping at Wal-Mart — which
is to say he or she will profit from the retailer's China connection. Of course, this very connection may also
contribute to Wal-Mart's ability to drive other Pekin-area stores out of business.
In short, Pekin, Ill., is not so different from lots of American places. China is everywhere these days, influencing
our lives as consumers, providers, citizens. It has by far the world's most rapidly changing large economy, and our
reactions to it shift just as quickly. China is at one moment our greatest threat, the next our friend. It siphons
off American jobs; it is essential to our competitive edge. China is the world's factory floor, and it is the
world's greatest market opportunity. China's industrial might steals opportunities from the developing world, even
as its booming economy pulls poorer countries up (lately it has been getting credit for helping Japan out of its
slump too).
China exports deflation; it stokes soaring prices. China will boom; it will bust. Or perhaps the country's economy
is feeling its way right now to the soft landing that will prevent another Asian economic crash, and all the recent
record numbers on trade, industrial output, consumer spending and debt are simply now in scale with China's size.
The truth about China is that, like all big countries, it is full of real contradictions.
Another truth is that the current feelings about China do not fully reflect today's reality. The U.S. economy is
about eight times the size of China's. Our manufacturing sector is bigger than the entire Chinese economy.
Americans, per capita, earn 36 times what the Chinese do. And there is no shortage of potential roadblocks in
China's path, either. Its banks may collapse. Its poor and its minorities may rebel. Uppity Taiwan and lunatic North
Korea may push China to war. The U.S. could slap taxes on everything China ships to us.
Still, barring Mao's resurrection or nuclear cataclysm, nothing is likely to keep China down for long. Since 1978,
its gross domestic product has risen fourfold; in straight dollar terms, China's economy is the world's
sixth-largest, with a G.D.P. of around $1.4 trillion. It has gone from being virtually absent in international trade
to the world's third-most-active trading nation, behind the U.S. and Germany and ahead of Japan. Tom Saler, a
financial journalist, has pointed out that 21 recessions, a depression, two stock-market crashes and two world wars
were not able to stop the U.S. economy's growth, over the last century, from $18 billion ($367 billion in 2000
dollars) to $10 trillion. In constant dollars, that is a 27-fold increase.
China is poised for similar growth in this century. Even if China's people do not, on average, have the wealth
Americans do, and even if the United States continues to play a strong economic game and to lead in technology,
China will still be an ever more formidable competitor. If any country is going to supplant the U.S. in the world
marketplace, China is it.
Mao as Proto-Capitalist
Mornings at Wanfeng automotive factory outside Shanghai begin with a neat line of employees doing calisthenics to
martial music broadcast over a P.A. system. The blue-uniformed workers, nearly all of them young men, make for a
clean-cut, well-pressed company line.
Chariman Mao Zedong in a relaxing moment on Lushan mountains, Jiangxi Province in 1976
The Japanese introduced courtyard exercises and company songs to the world back in the 70's, when that nation
appeared to have the world's best industrial jobs. Today, Japan is just stumbling out of a long malaise, and its
dwindling pool of young laborers seem to lack the compulsion to work like hell.
But the striving Japan of old still sets a good example for would-be worldbeaters, as Wanfeng's management knows —
only the Chinese manufacturer goes one better. Its employees regularly have their spirits revved at company boot
camps run by People's Liberation Army drillmasters who inculcate the twin virtues of patriotism and hard work. The
results are impressive.
Ten years ago, Wanfeng was hammering out motorcycle wheels by hand in a Chinese garage; a few years later it was the
No. l seller of aluminum-alloy motorcycle wheels, first in China and now in Asia. The company soon became a top
national and global seller in alloy automobile wheels too.
Wanfeng may have received some breaks on the way up: the company-produced video that describes its rapid ascent does
not identify the early contracts that enabled Wanfeng to grow so fast, nor whether Wanfeng had insider connections
to state-run companies in the motorcycle and car businesses.
There is nothing in the company literature about how the private company secured its financing, either. Nonetheless,
Wanfeng today is still scrappy, aggressive and capable. It now turns out about 60,000 vehicles a year that, if you
squint just a little, appear to be remarkably like Jeep Grand Cherokees. They look great, come with every modern
luxury, including leather seats and DVD video systems, and purr when driven.
Still, it's not only cheap labor that drives China's economy. "If you look just at low wages, you overlook the
talents of Chinese manufacturers to drive their costs down," Weingrod says. The best operations are as efficient and
as responsive as the world's elite manufacturers.
China's miracle economy can come at you in a lot of ways. By now most of us know that China is the factory floor of
choice for the world's low-road manufacturing: it assembles more toys, stitches more shoes and sews more garments
than any other nation in the world. But moving up the technological ladder, China has also become the world's
largest maker of consumer electronics, like TV's, DVD players and cellphones.
And more recently, China is climbing even higher still, moving into biotech and high-tech computer manufacturing. No
country has ever made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once. Behind China's rapid
economic ascendancy over the last 25 (and especially last 10) years is the basic fact of China's huge population.
A workers' domitory in Dongguan District Gaobu Town, China. Edward Burtynsky
China is home to close to 1.5 billion people, probably, which would make the official census count of 1.3 billion
too low by an amount equal to roughly the population of Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined.
China has 100 cities of more than a million people. Since economic liberalization began in 1978, under Deng
Xiaoping, the Chinese have started tens of millions of businesses. The number of Chinese who have left farms and now
trawl the cities for work probably exceeds the entire work force of the United States.
China is not home to the cheapest work force in the world. Even at 25 cents an hour, Chinese workers cost more than
laborers in the poorer countries of Southeast Asia or Africa. In the world's miserable corners, children carry
rifles and walk mine fields for less than a dollar a day. China is the world's workshop because it sits in a
relatively stable region and offers manufacturers a reliable, pliant and capable industrial work force, groomed by
generations of government-enforced discipline.
The other great contributing factor is the migration of hundreds of millions of peasants from the countryside now
that the government makes it easier for them to leave. Indeed, the country's embrace of market capitalism over the
last decade and the government's insistence that farmers fend for themselves are combining forces to all but evict
peasants from the land.
The plots allotted to farm families are on average 1.2 acres but can be as small as an eighth of acre; in hundreds
of millions of cases these farms fail to generate enough money for a family. Average city incomes, according to the
Chinese government, are $1,000 a year, which is three times what they are in the countryside. That disparity has set
in motion the largest human migration in history. By 2010, nearly half of all China's people will live in urban
areas.
What these numbers mean is that China's people must be regarded as the critical mass in a new world order. The
productive might of China's vast low-cost manufacturing machine, along with the swelling appetites of its
billion-plus consumers, have turned China's people into probably the greatest natural resource on the planet. How
the Chinese (and the rest of the world) use that resource will shape our economy (and every other economy in the
world) as powerfully as American industrialization and expansion has over the last hundred years.
We Have Created a Monster
In the political debate over trade and jobs, China is the place where the world's companies choose to exploit
low-cost manufacturing. The framing of this debate implies that American consumers and businesses have strong
choices in the market; in fact, China, supplying ever more goods as it does, in ever more varieties and at ever
better prices, is straitjacketing the choices of American businesses. China's size does not merely enable low-cost
manufacturing; it forces it. Increasingly, it is what Chinese businesses and consumers choose for themselves that
determines how the American economy operates. The American political debate on China's economic threat overlooks
this dynamic entirely.
The experience of Motorola, the U.S. telecommunications giant, offers a lesson in how China's size changes the rules
of competition and consumption there and everywhere else.
Every month, five million new subscribers sign up for mobile-phone service in China. The country's 300 million
mobile-phone users make China by far the largest such market in the world (and hundreds of millions more accounts
are up for grabs). Hence the world's makers of handsets need to be in China. It gives them a chance to grow at a
time when the big European and U.S. markets are saturated. Not that it's a seller's market: for equipment makers,
China is also the most competitive and protean environment in the world.
New manufacturers appear out of nowhere; new phones materialize daily at big-city stores. There are 800 current
handset models to choose from. Young urban consumers change phones on average after only eight months — they sell
them to someone else or pass them to family members. Mobile phones in the hands of migrant construction workers,
whose annual wages might not cover the cost of a phone, are a common sight in Shanghai and Beijing.
And this mobile-phone market in China is one that Motorola invented.
For Robert Galvin, the company's former and longtime chief executive, China in the early- to mid-80's promised a
market that could more than make up for Motorola's having been foiled in Japan for years. But first the company had
to develop a top-drawer telecommunications infrastructure. In an unscripted bold stroke at a dreary state ceremony
during a tour of the country, Galvin turned to the minister of railroads and asked him whether he wanted to do a
good job as minister and be done with it or whether he wanted to create a world-class society. In doing so, Galvin
tapped a thick vein of economic patriotism.
Mobile phone users in China
Motorola's company archives on its move into China are deep and open. They show that Galvin and his team knew that
eventually the transfer of technology to China would sow formidable Chinese competitors. Nevertheless, Motorola
decided its best strategy was to get into China early. Before long, Motorola's reports to China's political leaders
— infused with the same missionary vocabulary on industrial quality that had made the company a model for American
manufacturers — were soon parroted by China's leadership. Galvin also brought Motorola's best technology to China.
The proof today is in the size and efficacy of the country's mobile communications network: calls get through to
phones in high-rises, subway cars and distant hamlets — connections that would stymie mobile phones in the U.S.
What no one at Motorola saw was that the Chinese market would become the most competitive one of all. Nokia and
Motorola now battle for market share in the Chinese handset business. German, Korean and Taiwanese makers figure
strongly. And all these foreign brands are now facing intense competition from indigenous Chinese phone makers.
"Competition goes through a cycle in China," says Zirui Tian, a researcher at Insead, the French business school.
"At first the foreigners can make things at much lower cost than the Chinese. But as local companies come along to
supply the multinational companies, the supply network expands very fast. Then local Chinese manufacturers can start
to source their parts in China and drive the prices of their products far lower than the multinationals."
One of Motorola's most important suppliers is the battery maker BYD Company Ltd., based in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.
In only a decade, the private company has gone from virtual invisibility to owning more than 50 percent of the
global market in mobile-phone batteries. Before BYD, phone batteries were made in highly automated plants, like
those run by Sanyo and Sony in Japan.
But BYD, like Wanfeng, stripped robots and other machines out of the manufacturing process and replaced them with an
army of workers. By paying for Chinese salaries, and not for million-dollar American, German or Japanese machines,
BYD slashed the price of batteries.
Initially the company could not meet Motorola's quality demands, but the American company sent a team of engineers
to work with the upstarts, and six months later BYD earned a Six Sigma certification, a universally recognized badge
of quality (which Motorola itself invented). The fact that in China machines can be replaced by people for huge cost
savings and without sacrifice in quality changes the competitive landscape of the global marketplace. When Motorola
and Nokia were pressed to lower their prices by Chinese competitors, they turned to BYD.
One of the biggest challenges facing Motorola and other global manufacturers is that Chinese suppliers are getting
too good. Their quality, low-priced parts have helped create new, homegrown and extremely aggressive competitors.
More than 40 percent of the Chinese domestic handset market now belongs to local companies like Ningbo Bird, Nanjing
Panda Electronics, Haier and TCL Mobile. Ningbo Bird will produce 20 million handsets in 2004 and is likely soon to
nudge its way into the ranks of the top 10 mobile phone makers in the world.
A Western couple pose for a camera in front of Chairman Mao Zedong's image in Tiananmen Square in Beijing
Yet Motorola can't exactly exit the Chinese market. If it did, says Jim Gradoville, Motorola's vice president of
Asia Pacific government relations, the Chinese companies that emerged from the crucible of their market would be the
leanest and most aggressive in the world, and a company like his would have no idea what hit it. So Motorola stays.
Already the largest foreign investor in China's electronics industry, Motorola plans to triple its stake there to
more than $10 billion by 2006.
More Power to the Chinese Consumers
Generalizing about Chinese business always raises exceptions. The country's crazy quilt of state-owned,
village-owned, private and hybrid businesses was stitched together over 25 years of rocky reforms. Peasant
entrepreneurs, opportunistic officials, government planners, new urban sophisticates and foreign investors all
created operations that best fit the moment they stepped into the evolving market economy. And yet, looking at the
marketplace from the broadest perspective, one overwhelming fact stands out. Ninety percent of everything made in
China is in oversupply; in other words, nearly every manufacturing industry has surplus capacity. And instead of
using cheap labor to push their profit margins higher, Chinese companies use cheap labor to drive down prices to the
sweet spots for the great mass of Chinese consumers.
A Chinese family can live a life comfortably close to that of the American middle class for a fraction of the cost.
Though China claims urban per-capita income is $1,000, "the government numbers on incomes don't tell nearly the
whole story on the consumer class, especially not in the eastern cities," says Merrill Weingrod of China Strategies.
Weingrod, working with Linsun Cheng of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, surveyed incomes in Shanghai
and several other cities in industrial centers. "People tend to have two and three jobs, with many taking in
short-term assignments here and there," he says. "Real income in Shanghai, for instance, is close to $2,500 per
capita, $5,000 per household."
The Chinese can, on average, buy nearly five times in goods and services per dollar what an American can with the
same dollar in the U.S. "If you multiply income against China's purchasing power parity," Weingrod says, "Chinese
urban incomes approach the buying power of Americans making $12,500 a year. For working couples, that's the equal of
$25,000. Do the math, and you can understand why Shanghai looks as prosperous as it does and why it seems like
everyone is out shopping all the time."
Chairman Mao Zedong
According to Weingrod's and Cheng's research, China now has 100 million people who are comfortably middle class.
They buy (in reduced measure) what the American middle class buys. The allure of China's market is obvious: the huge
volumes of potential sales mean even products with the most modest of margins can earn lots of money.
Wilf Corrigan, the chairman and C.E.O. of LSI Logic, an American company in the Chinese video player market, says
that Chinese manufacturers have short-circuited one of the most predictable trends in consumer electronic
manufacturing. "Typically," he says, "a new technology would be released at $1,000 in Japan, and it would take two
years to drop below $1,000 and make it to the U.S. and Europe, and it would take a total of five to seven years for
it to make it into the mass market." As features were added, prices rose. Now China's low-cost labor and the
vastness of its consumer population are combining to bring bargain electronics into homes in record time. Chinese
companies build sophisticated goods with components produced locally and rush them by the millions into their huge
domestic market. New companies arise. Competition shrinks the time it takes for new products to appear. New features
are added while prices are likely to drop. Anything to pump sales.
Corrigan's company is now supplying Chinese consumer electronics manufacturers with the chip sets they need to make
digital video recorders, machines that record DVD's and that are displacing VCR's on retail shelves. Currently, the
Japanese and Korean brand-name giants have consumers' attention. Corrigan, however, sees no reason DVR's won't go
the way of DVD players, plummeting in price as the Chinese enter the competition. Expect the recorders to be on sale
for $100 within the next two years.
Collective I.Q.
"Look, China is the most exciting place in the world right now to be a manufacturer," says Mark Wall, president of
the greater China region for G.E. Plastics. His operation sells the plastic pellets used to make everything from
DVD's to building materials. Within two years G.E. will sell $1 billion in advanced materials, including plastics,
in China. Wall, who came to China from G.E. Plastics, Brazil, describes a country in love with manufacturing like no
other, where engineers come in excited and readily work long days. Where university students clamor to get into
engineering and applied sciences.
Great Leap Forward
Like many American manufacturing executives in China, Wall talks about working in China with the delight that young
computer whizzes felt when they found cool in Silicon Valley. There's no going to a cocktail party and then trying
to talk around the fact that you make things in factories. Wall says he feels at home. He loves it. G.E. has every
plan to capitalize on the local zeal for manufacturing. It recently opened a giant industrial research center in
Shanghai, and by next year will it employ 1,200 people in its Chinese labs. The company has also set up scholarship
programs at leading Chinese technical universities. It will have no shortage of good candidates.
The government is pouring resources into creating the world's largest army of industrialists. China has 17 million
university and advanced vocational students (up more than threefold in five years), the majority of whom are in
science and engineering. China will produce 325,000 engineers this year. That's five times as many as in the U.S.,
where the number of engineering graduates has been declining since the early 1980's. It is hard to imagine
Americans' enthusiasm for engineering sinking lower. Forty percent of all students who enter universities on the
engineering track change their minds.
The case for the ability of American industry to stay ahead of its international competition rests on the national
gifts and resources that the U.S. devotes to innovation. Certainly, the confidence of big American companies like
Motorola, General Motors and Intel, all of which have billion-dollar-plus stakes in China, is based on the
brainpower they have at home. The research gap between the U.S. and China remains vast. In December, Washington
authorized $3.7 billion to finance nanotechnology research, a sum the Chinese government cannot easily match within
a scientific infrastructure that would itself take many more billions (and years) to build. Yet, when it comes to
more mainstream, applied industrial development and innovation, the separation among Chinese, American and other
multinational firms is beginning to narrow.
Last year, China spent $60 billion on research and development. The only countries that spent more were the U.S and
Japan, which spent $282 billion and $104 billion respectively. But again, China forces you to do the math: China's
engineers and scientists usually make between one-sixth and one-tenth what Americans do, which means that the wide
gaps in financing do not necessarily result in equally wide gaps in manpower or results. The U.S. spent nearly five
times what China did, but had less than two times as many researchers (1.3 million to 743,000).
Guards in ceremonial uniforms of the People's Liberation Army
For now, the emphasis in Chinese labs is weighted overwhelmingly toward the "D" side — meaning training for
technical employees and managers. Nevertheless, foreign companies are quickly moving to integrate their China-based
labs into their global research operations. Motorola has 19 research labs in China that develop technology for both
the local and global markets. Several of the company's most innovative recent phones were developed there for the
Chinese market.
Motorola's newest research center is located 40 minutes from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, a province in
southwestern China. Sichuan is slightly larger than California, but three times as populous. There are around 90
million people in the province, 43 universities and 1.2 million scientists and engineers. Sichuan's fragmented
transportation system prevents Chengdu from rivaling the eastern powerhouses as a manufacturing center, but the city
is promoting the advantage of its plentiful, relatively low-cost brain pool with its new research corridor, the West
High-Tech Zone. And Motorola regards its building — subsidized generously by the development zone — as a world
center for software engineering. The company now employs more than 150 developers there and has plans to add
hundreds more. That will pit it against a growing number of the world's top research-driven enterprises taking
advantage of Chengdu's largess: Intel, Ericsson, D-Link, Siemens, Alcatel, Mitsui & Company and Fuji Heavy
Industries of Japan and more than 200 other firms in one of the area's special tech districts.
In all, foreign companies have been involved in establishing between 200 and 400 of their own research centers in
China since 1990. China's People's Daily has reported that 400 of the world's transnational corporations have set up
research and development projects in China. In part, tax incentives attract such financing. But the biggest
incentive of all, of course, is access to China's consumers. The Chinese government knows that foreign tech
companies can be coaxed into sharing technology and training in exchange for easier access to the Chinese
marketplace. The World Trade Organization forbids formal bargains that demand international tech transfers, but it
does not police winks and nudges.
The likely outcome of all this R.&D. investment in China? Even more overcapacity. Just as China's abundant unskilled
workers feed the world more shoes and more gadgets than it needs — or at least more than it can absorb without
forcing prices down — China's abundance of newly skilled industrialists threatens to swamp the world's most highly
prized, high-tech markets. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that in the past three years foreign
investors have invested or pledged $15 billion to build 19 new semiconductor factories.
China imports 80 percent of the semiconductor chips it needs, $19 billion worth, and the government has made it a
point of national pride to end the country's dependence on foreigners. Industry observers seem to agree that China
will be able to compete with the world's leading semiconductor makers in a decade, but even before that it may exert
strong downward pressure on chip prices. Will there be a 2005 recession in the chip market? Morris Chang, the
influential founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor
foundry, asked an industry gathering last September. "Yes, I think there will be," he said. And who will cause it?
China, thanks to all the capacity it's building.
The China Price
China now offers the world a labor supply with depth unlike anything ever seen. In a recent policy brief for the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sandra Polaski, a former State Department special representative for
international labor affairs, writes that to put things in perspective, "if all U.S. jobs were moved to China, there
would still be surplus labor in China." That fact highlights what is most sobering about China's booming economy: it
can force down the value of work in any job that is at all transferable.
In American business this is called the "China price." It is the price American suppliers to other American
businesses have to match to keep their customers. It is the price at which Chinese manufacturers can deliver the
same goods and services. Last November, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank noted the complaints that "automakers have
reportedly been asking suppliers for the 'China price' on their purchases." It also observed that U.S. suppliers had
been asked by their big customers to relocate production to China, or to find subcontractors there.
The bellwether of American industry may very well be its foundries. Casting is one of those unsexy industries that
rarely get top mention in personal ads. But no amount of buzz could overstate its importance. Without metal casting,
the United States would boast hardly any industry at all. The U.S. Energy Information Administration of the
Department of Energy notes that more than 90 percent of all manufactured goods and capital equipment use metal
castings, or are made with equipment that uses them.
The American casting industry is the world's largest, with more than $25 billion in annual sales. Nearly 3,000
foundries are spread across the country, and are especially concentrated in the Midwest. Most are small businesses,
with fewer than 100 employees who, on average, outearn their counterparts everywhere else in the world. The
metal-casting industry once had generous trade surpluses with the rest of the world, but imported castings have
increased their share of the American market by 50 percent since the mid-1990's; they now have 15 percent of the
market. Imports from China are growing at between 7 and 10 percent a year, and worldwide by volume China is now the
top producer of castings. The effect has been severe pressure on American foundries, 140 of which closed their doors
in 2002, the last year for which the American Foundry Society has figures.
Bob Schuemann is executive vice president and part owner of Signicast Corporation, a privately held casting business
located at the edge of Hartford, Wis. Hartford is one of the state's many midsize towns whose roads are shared by
farm tractors and semitrailer trucks making their way to the loading docks of manufacturers that since the 1970's
have stayed competitive by migrating out of the urban Midwest and into the more economical countryside. Schuemann,
like many, now lives under the sword of the China price.
His company owns proprietary technology for producing metal machine parts with extremely high precision. Yet the
network effect means that the company's fate is tied in part to the economic vitality of its business community.
Wisconsin lost roughly 90,000 of the 2.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs that disappeared over the last four years.
Signicast survived with automation. Robots fill its factory, moving everything from thumb-size precision parts to
the boxes in the warehouse. Workers are scarce. Walking through the plant is a lesson in how the hardware business
has become a software business. The whole plant seems to be run by smart ghosts.
Even so, the company feels the gravity of China's growing influence in manufacturing. Schuemann says some of his
corporate customers also want the company to make the move to China and have offered to help cover the costs of
doing so. The company won't move. Schuemann fears the Chinese will usurp Signicast's processes and thus its
strength. Schuemann knows too that his company's selling points evaporate quickly when overseas investment casters
drastically undercut the price of its parts. "We don't need to match the China price dollar for dollar," he says.
"If we stay within 20 percent of their price, our customers will stay with us." It's getting harder to keep them
anyway, however. The company used to have livelier business with a big local power tool maker, but the customer
moved production to China and found jerry-built substitutes for Signicast's high-quality parts. "Our part was one
sturdy piece, and their new one is two inferior pieces," Schuemann says. "Theirs will break more easily, but it's a
lot cheaper."
The business cards of executives at Milwaukee Valve Company Ltd., located in Wuxi, a city of more than four million
outside Shanghai, list the company's address at "End of Guangrui Road." By the outward appearance of the trio of
decades-old, corrugated-tin roofed industrial buildings that make up the small factory, "end of the road" might seem
an apt description. Along the interior of a wall at the back of the factory yard is a pile of wooden kindling that
is used to stoke the factory's large furnace when the local electric grid is out of power, which lately has been
often. Inside one of the barns, the furnace's orange glow heats and dimly lights a shop that looks little different
than that of a foundry early in the last century. Sandboxes with molten brass are assembled manually and set end to
end in the black earth floor to cool.
While the method looks primitive — the Chinese have been making castings for 2,500 years — workers in Wuxi manage
to produce quality castings comparable to those made in spiffier factories in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Milwaukee
Valve is a family-owned company whose manufacturing is still anchored in the United States. Its management entered
China 20 years ago, soon after economic liberalization began. The company's valves are critical components in
pipelines used in many industries. A faulty valve produced by one of the company's Chinese suppliers several years
ago nearly ended the relationship with China. But that mistake, according to the company's management, is what made
this Chinese manufacturer a "world-class operation." Engineers from both countries redesigned the valve and changed
the production process.
Great Wall of China
Since then, Milwaukee Valve has stationed five Chinese quality-control engineers as roving inspectors at all of its
factories in China. Apply this learning-curve experience at the Wuxi plant to China's manufacturing economy
generally, and you get a sense of how the country is moving up the manufacturing feeding chain so quickly. (Of
course, no one would be interested in seeing the Chinese improve if the cost of high quality were not still a
bargain.)
Out in front of the valve factory is another telling symbol of China's competitiveness. It is a small $2,000 truck,
a circus car of a truck, and one of many quaint but operable models still turned out by China's state-owned vehicle
factories. In the U.S., cheap trucks prone to failure and always in need of new parts would wreck production and
delivery schedules by causing down time and burden bottom lines with $50-an-hour mechanic bills. But in China,
mechanics can tend such cheap trucks the way pit crews tend Indy cars — and for less than a dollar an hour. Chinese
factories can take advantage of all sorts of machinery that is one, two or three generations past its usefulness in
more expensive economies, because the Chinese can afford to run them and fix them. Thus China wrings further cost
savings from the manufacturing process, and American companies are forced to go there to get them.
"First there was the wholesale price, then the retail price and now there is the China price, and it is very real,"
says Oded Shenkar, a professor at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. Big manufacturers,
Shenkar says, come into their American suppliers with the China price in hand and present ultimatums, often veiled,
that the price be met.
The China Savings
No politician declares it. There is no Association of Big Box Store Customers beating the drum. But, as nearly any
shopping trip in America will teach you, China saves American consumers enormous amounts of money.
The worry that Chinese producers are hurting American businesses and eliminating American jobs misrepresents the
problem — at least geographically. While the U.S. trade deficit with China is growing, most of the goods from
China, between 60 and 75 percent of them, simply would have been imported in past years from other countries. Still,
because the China price forces manufacturers the world over to drop their own prices, the jobs that have not moved
have been shaken up all the same, in the U.S. and in other countries. In Mexico, for example, which has lost nearly
half a million manufacturing jobs and 500 maquiladora manufacturers, workers earn four times what their Chinese
counterparts do. So for Mexican factories to stay competitive, they must get by with fewer hands or smaller profits.
Great Leap Forward
Americans who would demonize China also have a local problem: the China price is a boon to American consumers. Gary
Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, has done some rough math that shows how.
"From time immemorial," Hufbauer says, "most American and Japanese businesses have been reluctant to move their
manufacturing to new locales unless they can save at least 10 to 20 percent with the move." For the $152 billion
worth of goods coming in from China last year, those savings have already been realized.
The multiplier effect on the rest of the world's manufacturers, however, dwarfs the savings that come directly from
China. Hufbauer figures some $500 billion in goods come from countries that are China's low-wage competitors, and
another $450 billion in goods come from China's American and Japanese competitors. That means savings on nearly a
trillion dollars of goods. If the savings on that non-Chinese trillion dollars' worth of trade are just 3 to 5
percent, rather than the 20 percent the Chinese can deliver, Hufbauer calculates further savings starting at $500
for the average American household. And people who spend more, get more back. Have a drawer full of $3 T-shirts, a
DVD player in every room, a Christmas tree annually encircled with piles of toys? You probably have tons more stuff
— and additional savings — thanks to the China price.
This inexorable downward pressure on prices now shows up even when the prices of raw materials rise, costs that in
the past were hurriedly passed on to consumers. The Chinese industrial boom has, for example, pushed up the cost of
copper, aluminum, nickel, plastics and nearly every other important industrial commodity. Chinese demand has caused
the price of steel to rise 20 percent this past spring. (China is now the world's top steel producer, by the way,
while the U.K. has dropped out of the top 10.) Nevertheless, the price of cars, which reflect nearly the entire
commodity index, has been weak. In April, cotton climbed to its highest price at this time of year in seven seasons,
but the price of clothing declined.
American firms can find it hard to compete. "China hits domestic U.S. manufacturers twice," Oded Shenkar says. "They
drive down the price of goods, but they drive up the price of raw materials. It's a wholly different environment."
And yet it's a good one for Americans too.
The efficiencies forced on the market by Chinese factories also hold U.S. inflation in check. Lower inflation means
the Federal Reserve can keep interest rates low, making money more freely available for investment in new and
stronger industries. Chinese competition forces American businesses — Signicast, for example — to use capital as
efficiently as possible. And to run their plants full tilt. And to find ways to save on labor costs. The Americans
who lost manufacturing jobs over the last three years, and the millions more who are expected to see their
white-collar jobs migrate overseas, may have not only China to blame, but also the very economic benefits that China
has provided for them.
Statue of Chairman Mao
And that's to say nothing of what happens once the Chinese countryside, thinned of its oversupply of farmers, turns
into efficient farms. Already the Chinese have their eyes on cash crops. Though it has only recently begun exporting
apple juice, China already produces seven times as many apples as the U.S., enough to cause a depression in the
price of apple juice worldwide. Whole apples for exports are individually wrapped by hand in a foam sock. Given the
country's wealth of manual labor, it can assert dominance in crops that must be tended by hand.
In a stable China, where its great resource, its people, are allowed to work and spend money in a reasonably well
functioning market economy, the growing place of China in a global economy cannot be legislated away with tariffs,
quotas or tax incentives for struggling industries. China's strengths cannot be altered by changes in the value of
its currency or by restricting the flow of foreign investment into the country. By having changed itself, China is
changing the world.
That doesn't necessarily mean things will be worse for Americans as the century — the Chinese century — unfolds.
Following World War II, the nations of Western Europe, Japan and the so-called tiger countries of Asia rose from the
ruins, aided, not thwarted, by the strength of the American economy. In turn, those economic booms fed our own.
So perhaps we will be as Europe is to us today, and China will be our America.
Imagine Pekin, Ill., a few decades from now. It may, like innumerable small Chinese cities today, be accustomed to a
stream of foreign business managers. Perhaps the regional boss for a Wanfeng Automotive dealership is there to be
host of a "dig to China contest": the team that gets closest in 40 minutes might win one of the company's hot new
red-and-gold Lucky 8 hybrid sports coupes, worth $4,000. As a promotion, Wal-Mart's new World Store is rolling
prices back to 2004 levels for the day — shoppers are grabbing the steaks and fish, whose prices Chinese consumers
have driven up fourfold since then. Wal-Mart might have competition, however, perhaps from a new giant outpost of
Homeworld, a Chinese retail giant that has learned to exploit its proximity to Chinese suppliers and beat Wal-Mart
on price. A big event scheduled for the evening might get knowing smiles from the town's old-timers. The Foreign
Devils, a high-school basketball team from Manhattan, a new suburb of Beijing, is due in for an exhibition game.
Provided its flight, on an all new Chinese jumbo jet, arrives on time.
Ted C. Fishman, a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine, is writing a book about China's place in the world.
This is his first cover article for The Times Magazine.
The above article is from The New York Times.
====================================================
我不該長壽...未料自己走向百歲 巴金曾數度要求安樂死
====================================================
記者莊雨琳／綜合報導
大陸在前年為巴金歡度百歲，其實當時也傳出巴金其實已經因為久病而厭世。據強調，巴金曾經數度向家人、向醫生，甚至向記者提
出希望安樂死的請求。
大陸瞭望東方週刊報導，從1995年就住進上海華東醫院的巴金，目前已經不能講話也不能寫字，也謝絕與外界的聯繫，而曾經說出「
長壽是一種懲罰」的巴老，面臨百歲大壽的心境是喜是悲？也無人知曉。
巴金首度要求「安樂死」是在1994年，當時已經91歲高齡的他，飽受胸椎骨折的痛苦，於是向家人提出安樂死的要求。
而巴金第二度要求安樂死，則是在1995年看到老友夏衍去世前，家人不忍心看到夏老受苦主動要求醫院停止搶救。而在一旁默默聽著
的巴金，則忽然對女兒小林說，「我以後也要這樣，不要搶救，安樂死。」
第三度談到有關安樂死的話題，則是巴金1999年2月再次病重時，醫院決定在他喉部動氣切手術，但巴金手術前對醫生說：「不要用
藥了，讓我安樂死吧。」無法如願的巴金隨後沉重第向身邊人說，「從今天起，我爲你們（指他周圍的人們）活著。」
在此之後，據了解巴金又多次對女兒李小林說他要安樂死。報導說，巴金甚至還曾經為了要求安樂死而發起脾氣，說女兒不聽他的話
，不尊重他，不把他當人看，不讓他安樂死。
晚年的巴金多病多磨，常常會抱怨「自己是一個廢物」，甚至還多次對家人和朋友說，「長壽是一種懲罰」。
巴金年輕時曾在文章表示，自己應該不是個長壽的人，詎料巴金不但走向21世紀，還活過百歲笑傲文友。以青春生命寫作的巴金，儘
管老邁，等身的著作給這一代中國人的，依然是不滅的熱情。
中國文壇巨匠隨風而逝 巴金病逝 享年101歲
2005/10/18 07:03
中國大陸文壇巨匠巴金病逝，享年101歲。他也是五四運動以來，百年來中國最具影響力的作家之一。圖為巴金的畫像。
大陸新聞中心／綜合報導
中國大陸文壇巨匠巴金，17日晚上7點在上海華東醫院病逝，享年101歲。原名李堯棠的巴金，小說作品「家」、「春」、「秋」、「
寒夜」，已成為中國近代文學的經典。
大陸官方媒體新華網17日晚間第一時間刊出巴金過世的消息，巴金除了是聞名華人世界的作家外，也是大陸全國政協副主席，中國作
家協會主席。
巴金生於1904年11月生，四川成都人，生平並未加入任何黨派，1921年於成都外語專門學校肄業。1927年至1929年赴法國留學。1929
年回國，從事文學創作。
新華社報導指出，大陸國務院在2003年11月授予巴金人民作家榮譽稱號，不過，當時巴金已經住進醫院多年。晚年的巴金提倡「講真
話」，在《隨想錄》中深入反思文革和歷次政治運動所造成的傷害。
報導說，巴金患有帕金森氏症、慢性氣管炎、高血壓和低血壓等多種疾病，在華東醫院留醫已經六年，無法言語。前幾天，巴金的血
壓急劇下降，心跳也相當不正常，院方隨即向上海市高層及巴老的家屬報告，並讓他們做好準備。
據強調，中共高層稍早也十分關注巴金的病情，要求院方全力搶救。巴金住院期間，中共政協主席賈慶林曾前往醫院探望，並對他的
女兒表示，「巴金是五四運動以來最有影響力的作家之一，由於巴金半世紀以來的文學創作，奠定享譽世界崇高聲望，曾獲提名2001
年諾貝爾文學獎。
一生摯愛不悔～ 巴金要求死後海葬 隨愛妻蕭珊守望大海
2005/10/18 07:38
記者莊雨琳／專題報導
巴金的文學讓人感動，巴金的愛情更讓人動容。有別於中外浪漫文學家的艷史不斷，巴金不但從一而終，而且還在愛妻死後心心念念
數十載，甚至要求隨愛妻腳步，把骨灰灑向大海。
身不得相守，心靈也要在一起，巴金對蕭珊，可說是愛情到極點的衝分展現。誰說老夫老妻的愛情會退色，誰說憂患苦難的愛情會溶
解，巴金愛蕭珊，至死不渝。
一直守在巴金身邊的家人說，巴金很懷念妻子蕭珊。1998年11月13日，巴金在華東醫院病房裏說，「我的心願是，死後與蕭珊在一起
，骨灰撒大海。」
巴金愛妻蕭珊在1972年病故，巴金也獲准返回上海。次年獲得四人幫解禁，允許巴金從事翻譯工作，6年未提筆的巴金，埋頭重譯屠
格涅夫的《處女地》。愛妻的死在巴金心上烙下苦印，卻讓巴金有機會重回中國文壇，結束了文革這段時間以來的困頓。
蕭珊是巴金的妻子，也是唯一的愛人，對巴金，蕭珊以全力支援相待，而對蕭珊，巴金則以無悔的愛澆灌。
2005年10月17日，巴金走了，華人用遺憾相送，不過，已經在天堂佈置愛巢37年的巴金夫人蕭珊，正在歡喜地迎接這位深情漢。
撐了6年～ 中國現代文學館長舒乙：巴金活著是為了我們
2005/10/18 07:15
記者莊雨琳／綜合報導
大陸文壇巨擘巴金17日晚間病逝，其實，多年來有關巴金病危或是病逝的消息不斷，中國大陸全國政協委員、著名作家老舍的兒子、
中國現代文學館館長舒乙2003年年底就特別為巴金提出澄清，舒乙強調，巴金的家人和朋友都捨不得他這樣活著受盡折磨，但他也引
述巴金表示，活著是為了大家。
舒乙以政協委員的身分出席2003年3月在北京召開的年度政協大會，由於巴金身為政協副主席，有關他的身體健康近況就成了政協彼
此聞問的焦點，甚至有謠言傳出，巴金老人已經離開人間。
為文壇著力甚深的舒乙，聽聞這些傳聞時相當反感，也駁斥巴金已經過世的消息。舒乙指出，巴金已經年逾百歲，身體的各種功能都
不行了，但他的生命力很頑強，有好多次得肺炎，生命垂危，都被搶救了回來，甚至也報病危好多次了。舒乙說，國家非常珍惜他，
非常尊重他，派了最好的大夫，給了他最好的醫療條件，來延長他的生命。
舒乙相當不捨地表示，巴金住院後已經失語多年，在一次搶救中，為了吸痰，把氣管切開了，切開後，為了防止以後還有痰，沒有縫
合起來，這樣他就不能說話，不能表達自己的意思，這樣已經有4年多了。他的頭腦非常清楚，但只能點頭、搖頭、做手勢，無法與
別人交流，那是非常痛苦的。
對於巴金多次傳出病危，舒乙表示，「巴金曾說，我活著是為了你們。事實上，他自己、包括他的家人，都不願意他太痛苦。」
====================================================
投資停看聽／當全世界的房東 REITS一股難求！
====================================================
南加州房價高，華人買屋買地投資熱。
記者胡秀珠／專題報導
你想當全世界的房東嗎？不動產證券信託基金（REITS）正火紅！強調穩定報酬的不動產證券信託基金，鐵定仍是年底前最熱門的金
融商品，包括富邦、國泰及新光等大型民營金控業者REITS商品一檔檔端出，投資人惜售，REITS一股難求，標榜4%以上的獲利率，成
為最受歡迎的金融商品。
以喜來登飯店為標的之ㄧ的國泰1號10月3日問世，以報酬率高達4.15%的條件，在市場狂銷；而趁著富邦一號超額認購的趨勢，富邦
二號REIT趁勝追擊，正式送件至金管會審查，也打出高報酬率牌，預估年報酬率為4.25％至4.5％。
而國內另一家擁有龐大不動產資產的新光金控，規劃長達一年的REITS內容，近日正式送件，據了解，其內容將由台証金融大樓、新
光國際商業大樓、新光天母傑仕堡大樓及新光三越台南店，共同組成，規模高達111億元。
本土REITS商品是在今年初，才開始在台問世，但國內各大不動產地主競相推出自有不動產包裝出售，除了本土REITS外，國內也掀起
一陣全球不動產信託基金熱潮。
富邦投信總經理丁予嘉就說，REITS是固定收益型投資工具最佳的一種，由於其財務完全透明化、同時，對於依照規定，75%的股利應
以現金型態發放，收益較定存佳，稅負採取6%分離課稅，也提高投資人投資意願。
丁予嘉說，除了本土REITS外，富邦投信也發行一檔全球不動產基金，投資標的包括美國100棟大樓，大樓形式有住宅、商業大樓、飯
店、旅館等，租金收入穩定，且投資風險分散，是不錯的投資工具。
至於有投資人反應一股難求的情況，丁予嘉說，在募集資金之前，的確有超額認購、有買不到的情況，但REITS掛牌上市之後，投資
人應都可買到，對於REITS股價牛皮、漲不動的現象，丁予嘉則說，REITS絕非短期獲利的商品，可以作為長期資金規劃之用。
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◇英特爾一統零組件規格 打開NB組裝市場
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<記者曹正芬／台北報導>
英特爾結合筆記型電腦（NB）、面板和光碟機大廠，共推「英特爾共通性建構
基礎計畫（Common Building Block Program）」，一統筆記型電腦硬碟、光
碟機和面板三大零組件規格，解決現行互不相容的問題。此舉可望帶動NB通路
組裝需求，但可能影響全球NB品牌及零組件供應商權益。
英特爾這項落實模組化策略，降低NB業者備料風險，提升系統設計彈性，預料
個人電腦通路組裝業者將是最大受惠者。
英特爾行動事業群副總裁暨行動平台事業群總經理伊登（Mooly Eden）昨（17
）日表示，英特爾結合ODM和OEM業者華碩、仁寶、大眾、緯創、技嘉、微星、
建碁等，及光碟機業者如建興電、廣明與四家台灣面板業者，聯手統一NB共同
零組件規格。
現行桌上型電腦零組件規格已標準化，通路廠商或消費者只要取得零組件，即
可根據個別需求組裝桌上型電腦。但NB市場零組件規格分歧，各品牌廠商間零
組件相容程度低，以致市場過度仰賴NB品牌及OEM業者，NB通路組裝市場遲遲無
法打開。
英特爾企圖一統NB零組件規格，帶動NB通路組裝市場需求，未來通路廠商和消
費者可自行組裝NB，美國大型通路廠商包括沃爾瑪（Walmart）等對此策略都表
示肯定。但因此計畫不利品牌業者權益，戴爾、惠普等不願發表評論。
「英特爾共通性建構基礎計畫」針對NB三大零組件包括硬碟、面板、光碟機產
品進行認證，目前已通過面板認證的廠商包括友達、奇美、華映和廣輝，南韓
三星等面板業者尚未參與該項計畫，顯見台灣面板業者態度積極。
光碟機業者包括建興、廣明也通過該計畫認證，硬碟部分以外商公司為主，與
台灣關聯不大。英特爾主管表示，英特爾明年推出首款雙核心NB的NAPA平台，
即力促國內外NB業者根據已統一的三大零組件（光碟機、硬碟、面板）規格，
設計明年上市機種。
英特爾表示，英特爾的目標在於促進NB採納度，並加速NB產業成長，上中下游
必須合作，支援隨插即用的通用型元件。
英特爾這項計畫鎖定硬碟、光碟機和面板三大項目。一旦這三項零組件規格統
一後，消費者和通路廠商即可購買各零組件，自行組裝筆記本型電腦，不會發
生零組件互斥的情形。如同堆積木的原理，消費者可以堆出各種物體。這就是
英特爾提倡的模組化概念。
英特爾這項計畫一方面降低筆記本型電腦設計難度，另方面則免除NB業者庫存
風險，並且提高消費者選擇NB供應商的彈性。
由於筆記本型電腦的設計複雜度取決於個別元件的產品規格，因此英特爾與OD
M、元件供應商合作發展共通性建構基礎計畫。已有ODM廠商開始採用符合產業
標準的零組件，作為電子產品規格的共通性建構基礎，並為設計新型筆記本型
電腦的藍本，各家供應商的產品都需經過測試與組裝後的相容性測驗，才會裝
入支援共通性建構基礎的筆記本型電腦
【2005/10/18/經濟日報 】
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台系廠想爭取WiMAX商機！惟對英特爾接單越大，福禍難料？
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精實新聞 2005-10-18 13:47:21 記者 陳祈儒 報導
英特爾的代工策略，也牽動不少台灣電子業者的興衰。這一次英特爾又來台對WiMAX招商，想遴選不少台灣電子業者加入名單。不過
，除了華碩(2357)、鴻海(2317)這一種國際級產能公司，無需單一依靠英特爾訂單仍能生存的大廠，其餘小廠若入選並獲得大訂單，
就長遠來看，是福是禍，實難逆料。
英特爾(Intel)是國際級的晶片組大廠，在全球PC架構中，英特爾絕對有主導地位。在PC當紅的年代，英持爾與台系廠商間有過不少
恩恩怨怨，台灣電子業者對英特爾的愛恨情愁不是簡單三言兩語就能道盡。
過去，PCB大廠華通(2313)因接獲英特爾基板大訂單，業積大好，股價直飛衝天逾300元，是標準的英特爾概念股，卻因英特爾「開發
」新的供應商，讓華通的投資鉅資的大園廠形同虛設，自此華通的折舊攤提夢魘，就一直拖累了華通的業績，近年都出現鉅幅的虧損
，股價跌到不到10元。
無線網通廠正文(4906)也是標準的英特爾內建無線模組概念股，在英特爾的接單不少，但是近年來，英特爾也陸續開發出新的代工廠
，「分享」了正文的業績。這應該是正文董事長陳鴻文會去開發VoIP產品FreePP的網路語音軟體的重要原因。正文在無線網路模組之
外，另起爐灶發展網路電話事業，是要避免掉當初如華通一樣，只重押一家客戶所可能面臨的高風險。
這一次英特爾又想來台灣找WiMAX的的配合工廠，選擇正文為首家合作廠商，積極與國內八家業者接觸，英特爾月底前將從八家業者
選出四家作為WiMAX先期合作夥伴，如果一開始就採用分散夥伴的方式，對於台系廠的業績平穩，或許比較有利長期發展，若僅有數
家小廠獲得高比例的訂單，短期內業績暴增有望，但是長期而言，則不利個別公司的發展。
據悉，目前華碩、鴻海、啟碁（6285）、建漢（3062）等獲得出線的呼聲最高，中選者雖優先吃到WiMAX商機，但能吃飽多久，仍待
商榷。
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31檔股價跌破前低點且跌幅逾45%的個股名單
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台股17日長黑重挫142.8點，收盤指數為5826.27點，創下近半年來新低，5800點支撐近期將面臨考驗。
根據統計，目前已有616檔個股，股價跌破今年4月21日前波低點5565點位置，更有高達219檔個股股價比911事件發生時還低，顯示市
場投資信心低迷。
儘管台股指數17日創下近半年來新低，跌幅看似不深，但是許多個股股價早已提前破底。根據統計，將個股股價還原權值後，到17日
為止，竟有高達616檔個股股價，率先跌破今年4月21日前波低點5565點價位；更有219檔個股股價，跌破90年發生911事件後3411點時
價位，顯示目前台股市場信心有待提振。
值得注意的是，儘管近期高價股持續面臨殺盤，但是這些績優高價股個股目前股價都仍未破底，盤面依舊呈現「強者恆強」態勢；分
析師指出，近期高價股走勢將是盤面多空關鍵指標，只要高價股股價走穩、破底家數減少，待利空沈澱後，盤勢可望展開反彈。
根據統計，包括茂迪（6244）、聯發科（2454）、大立光（3008）、亞光（3019）、宏達電（2498）、可成（2474）、鴻海（2317）
、聯詠（3034）、裕日車（2227）、威剛（3260）、帝寶（6605）、陞泰（8072）等高價股，目前股價均較5565點時還高，其中宏達
電漲幅更超過一倍，茂迪漲幅也超過六成。
但是綠點、瑞儀、力特、今國光、必翔、創見、關中、大學光等股股價都跌破5565點時價位，法人認為，這類績優股股價破底的現象
何時止穩反彈，也是近期盤面多頭何時反攻的重要觀察指標。
雖然股市大跌，但是目前新台幣匯市並未出現大幅震盪，外資也未擴大賣超，本周繼力晶舉行法說會後，包括南科、茂德、威剛等多
檔重量級個股法說會也將登場，屆時第3季財報成為市場關心焦點，只要禽流感疫情不快速擴大，台股後續走勢可望回歸基本面。
德盛安聯投顧協理劉心陽指出，台股第3季季報，以及本周美國重量級公司公布財報如周一的IBM、花旗銀行；周二的英特爾、3M、摩
托羅拉、雅虎；周三的eBay；周四的BROADCOM與GOOGLE；周五的AT&T等財報，將左右台股10月下旬行情，基本面可望取代消息面成為
多空觀察依據。
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郭台銘增資配股市值近150億
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【陳建彰╱台北報導】鴻海（2317）董事長郭台銘雖已未參與員工分紅，不過，光是增資配股的金額就令人咋舌。由於鴻海今年配發
1.9577元股票，郭台銘的配股數量有10萬3963張，市值逼近149.71億元，居所有上市櫃公司老闆之冠。
首富身價
經過今年增資配股之後，郭台銘持有鴻海股票達63萬5007張，以昨天的收盤價計算，保守估計個人資產達914.41億元以上，穩居台灣
首富。
集團市值大幅成長
聯邦投顧總經理簡朝諒說：「由於鴻海在產業垂直、水平整合相當成功，競爭力十足，加上鴻海的籌碼大部分集中在外資手中，股價
得以維持高檔震盪；經過近幾年的增資配股之後，大股東身價自然水漲船高。」
鴻海已成為全球EMS（專業電子代工）大廠，鴻海家族近來快速崛起，包括鴻準、正崴、廣宇及首利等股價表現相對強勢，集團市值
大幅成長，成為台股最具競爭力的集團之一。
電子業近幾年來景氣興衰，不少個股股價暴起暴落，但是對鴻海絲毫未造成衝擊。最近幾年，鴻海股價都力守百元以上，營運競爭力
受到市場高度認同。
外資持股比率54%
簡朝諒認為，鴻海透過產業整合後，躍居電子代工大廠，在全球科技業景氣復甦下，成為最大受惠者。從鴻海的股價表現，最能看出
電子業景氣的變化。如果鴻海股價大幅回檔，即透露電子業的景氣即將陷入衰退。
元京投顧協理杜富蓉說：「鴻海屬於外資概念股，持股比率達54%，且業績成長性獲得市場認同，因此享有較高的本益比。隨著集團
在產業整合效益持續顯現下，明年獲利仍有成長20%的空間。」
雖然郭台銘未參與員工分紅，不過卻透過整併的動作強化鴻海競爭力，股價維持高檔，個人資產累積的幅度，遠高過於其他領取員工
分紅的科技業老闆。
以鴻海今年8月31日除權前的收盤價169元計算，當時郭台銘的資產約達897.46億元；經過此次增資配股後，郭台銘持股數量超過63萬
張，加上鴻海股價填權，個人資產增加近17億元。
王永慶配股達32億
除了郭台銘之外，台塑（1301）集團的王永慶同樣未參與員工分紅，但因手中持有台塑集團股票數量不少，光是參與台塑、南亞（
1303）及台化（1326）的增資配股金額就達32.75億元，配股市值可觀。
此外，股王茂迪（6244）董事長鄭福田、華碩（2357）董事長施崇棠及廣達（2382）董事長林百里，今年的增資配股市值都超過10億
元；至於聯發科（2454）、宏達電（2498）今年各配發1元及2元股票，董事長蔡明介、王雪紅的增資配股金額，也有8.89億及6.99億
元水準。
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