China’s emergence as the world’s workshop over the past two decades has rested in large part on its small manufacturing towns, where hundreds or in some cases thousands of factories specialise in one type of product, underpinned by a steady supply of cheap migrant labour.
However, such small factories are facing significant stress as they struggle to remain competitive amid slowing demand, rising labour costs and a glut of capacity.
Their distress is underscored by a recent survey of 48 owners of small and medium sized factories - defined as those with 20 to 2,000 employees and annual revenues of Rmb20m to Rmb400m ($3.2m to $64.4m) - in 13 towns nationwide by FT Confidential Research, a research service from the Financial Times.
您已阅读19%（736字），剩余81%（3045字）包含更多重要信息，订阅以继续探索完整内容，并享受更多专属服务。