China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that law enforcement officials of Futian District market supervision bureau check counterfeit luxury watches at a timepiece market in Huaqiangbei on Monday.

More than 200 law enforcement officials checked Nanyuan and Bagualing areas and confiscated 277 counterfeit mobile phones and 290 counterfeit luxury watches. Xi Jian

China Watch Blog has learnt that Hong Kong-founded manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region report a 10 percent hike in average wage this year compared with last year’s 11 percent, a study by Standard Chartered Bank shows.

The China Daily reported that wages are still on an uprising trend in the manufacturing heartland on the mainland in 2012, albeit the pace is at a slower pace over last year. After speaking with 204 Hong Kong manufacturers who operate their business on the adjacent PRD region in January, Standard Chartered said more than half of the respondents have already lifted the wages an average of 10.4 percent for the year.

About 30 percent of companies surveyed indicated that they will raise the wages some time in 2012 by an estimated 9 percent, while the remaining 12 percent did not plan any wage adjustment this year.
Kelvin Lau, the region’s senior economist from Standard Chartered said the wages growth rate among mainland-based Hong Kong manufacturers in the survey is also slower than the minimum wages in many PRD cities.

Effective from this month, Shenzhen’s minimum wage has been lifted to 1,500 yuan per month, up 13.6 percent from 1,320 yuan per month in the past. Some Guangzhou news reports said that the city’s minimum income is expected to reach 1,470 yuan per month this year, up 13.1 percent from the current 1,300 yuan per month.

“In line with the still-evident wage pressure, only 30 respondents considered it less difficult to find workers compared with the same time last year,” Lau added.

Stanley Lau, deputy chairman of Federation of Hong Kong Industries, said earlier that 30 percent of the mainland-based Hong Kong manufacturers may be eliminated by the year end given the rising material cost as well as the wage hikes.

“To these 50,000 to 60,000 Hong Kong small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the PRD region, it means around 15,000 to 18,000 companies will contract, or close down their businesses this year,” Lau said, adding that these labor-intensive and low value-added businesses are among the high-risk group.

However, a majority of companies said higher productivity would help offset the rising labor cost as output per worker has risen faster than wage increases, according to the survey.

The business outlook for the next six months is also not too bleak for these manufacturers as over half of the respondents saw added orders in the first half this year, despite major importers, including the US and the Europe not seeing much economic improvement.

China Watch Blog has learnt that there have been a spate of fraud cases in Shenzhen where residents have been ripped off hundreds and thousands of dollars to fraudsters.

One recent case involved fraudsters sending Shenzhen residents a text message saying they are entitled to a social security subsidy. The city’s social security bureau said it had never sent such a message.
Police in Shenzhen and other cities have received reports of similar fraudulent text messages.

On Feb. 17, a man in Luohu District was cheated out of 5,740 yuan (US$903) while trying to receive the “subsidy” via an ATM, police said.

The man, only identified by his surname Deng, received a text message Feb. 17, saying he was entitled to a social security subsidy.

Deng called the number given in the message and the person on the other side of the line, a woman surnamed Li, asked him to call a number which she said belonged to the financial bureau.

Deng then called the number and contacted a woman surnamed Huang. Huang told Deng to bring a bank card to an ATM and follow her instructions.

Deng transferred 5,740 yuan to an account provided by Huang, who then disappeared, police said.

In a separate incident on Feb. 18, a man was cheated out of 8,988 yuan by a text message sent by somebody posing as a hospital worker.
In the message, the man was told that he could get a 3,000 yuan subsidy from the hospital after the birth of his child.

Following the swindler’s instructions, the man went to an ATM and transferred 8,988 yuan to their account.

In a separate incident on Feb. 16, a man was told by swindlers posing as post office workers that he had a mail package with medicine and bank cards inside.

The swindlers then told the man to put his money into a “safe account” because his personal information had been leaked. The man transferred 50,300 yuan into the bank account of the swindlers.

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