The Next Factory of the World Quotes

“The flying geese theory, and historical experience in America, Asia, and Europe, predict that as factories accumulate in a developing country, locals will eventually take over ownership and become the next wave of manufacturing moguls. There is reason to believe that this will happen in Africa as well. Some countries, perhaps most famously Ethiopia, have policies to encourage local ownership in manufacturing. Many government tenders advantage local manufacturers, and financing by country-level development banks is often available only to locals.”
― Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa

“As Alexander Gerschenkron, the great Ukrainian-born scholar of European industrialization, put it: Although “the cheapness of labor in a backward country is said to aid greatly in the process of industrialization … the overriding fact to consider is that industrial labor, in the sense of a stable, reliable, and disciplined group that has cut the umbilical cord connecting it with the land and has become suitable for utilization in factories, is not abundant but extremely scarce in a backward country. Creation of an industrial labor force that really deserves its name is a most difficult and protracted process.”36 The lesson of history is that industrial labor, as distinct from merely cheap labor, is often in short supply in unindustrialized economies, and factory owners in the first throes of industrialization have always complained bitterly about this fact.”
― Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa

“Owing to this world-class cost structure and disciplined pricing policy, the Lee Group’s flip-flop business is thriving. A couple of years ago, it was paid the ultimate compliment when Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, came calling. Walmart wanted to know whether the Lee Group would consider becoming its flip-flop supplier. The Lee Group said no. The company has long sold all its flip-flops at its factory gates to local wholesalers, who take the shoes to every corner of Nigeria and into surrounding countries in West Africa. It has never had any trouble selling its entire output and didn’t see the point of disappointing long-standing distributors in order to serve Walmart. It didn’t need the business of the largest retailer in the world because it had found a more efficient production model to serve an even more price-conscious consumer. In some sense, it had outWalmarted Walmart.”
― Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa

“Here is where the individual answer matters. Structural forces are suggestive, but not decisive. Personal commitment and company-level ingenuity still count. That’s not to say that structural explanations aren’t valid, but instead to acknowledge that even the best of conditions require individuals willing to bet their livelihoods that they can make it work. Progress results when individuals meet a context, act to change it, and are changed in the process.”
― Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa

“The flying geese theory is not only a theory about manufacturing, but also about how development happens—and what it means. Development is not just about a lucky few getting fabulously rich; it’s about ordinary people experiencing lives that are easier and more comfortable in a thousand small ways. As such, it affects not only people directly involved in factories, but all the rest of us as well.”
― Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa

“The flying geese theory has a second dimension: the V’s describe not only the movement of manufacturers from country to country, but also a process of industrial upgrading from product to product within each country. According to the theory, first a few firms will show up to try their hand at making a certain product. As they learn, their profits will attract other companies that also try to manufacture that product. But as the field becomes crowded, intensifying competition and thinning profits, some firms will look for a different product. Over time, they’ll be pushed to try something slightly more complicated, something that’s harder for others to copy. The process will then repeat itself, and countries that started out by copying and learning end up inventing and teaching a mere generation or two later. Mr.”
― Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa

“We want simple stories, with pure heroes and pure villains, and our minds rebel at the notion of bad outcomes arising from good deeds.”
― Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa