Gerhard Flatz, the general manager of an Austrian factory in China that makes high-end skiwear for European brands, has a problem. He cannot find enough skilled seamstresses even though top performers can earn $1,500 a month, about eight times the local minimum wage in Heshan.
在位于中国广州西南部的鹤山市，一家奥地利公司设立了一座为欧洲品牌制作高端滑雪服的工厂，格哈德•弗拉茨(Gerhard Flatz)是这家工厂的总经理。弗拉茨现在遇到了一个问题。他找不到足够多的熟练女缝纫工，即便他为技术最好的工人开出了1500美元的月薪——这大约是鹤山最低工资水平的8倍。
“China has a shortage of skilled labour,” says Mr Flatz during a tour of the Heshan factory southwest of Guangzhou.
弗拉茨在视察鹤山工厂期间表示：“中国缺少熟练技术工人。”
As he walks past the pattern room where his most talented employees work, the garrulous Austrian explains that he is careful not to reveal their names to prevent poaching.
在走过纸样间时——他最有才华的员工就在里面工作——这位有些唠叨的奥地利人解释说，他会注意不透露他们的名字，以免被人挖墙脚。
“This is like the NSA”, he says with a smile, referring to the most secretive branch of the US intelligence services.
弗拉茨笑着说：“搞得像NSA似的。”他指的是美国最秘密的情报部门——美国国家安全局(NSA)。
Heshan is just one of the many cities in Guangdong that has transformed the province into the factory of the world. Shenzhen, the home to companies such as Huawei and Tencent, is another.
就是靠众多像鹤山这样的城市，广东省如今成了“世界工厂”。另一座这样的城市是深圳——华为(Huawei)和腾讯(Tencent)等公司的总部所在地。
When Christina Zhang moved to Shenzhen in 1983, the rural fishing county was a far cry from the booming city it has become in the three decades since Deng Xiaoping created China’s first special economic zone .
1983年，Christina Zhang来到深圳的时候，那里还是一个偏僻的小渔村。邓小平在深圳设立了中国第一个经济特区，如今30年过去了，深圳已发展为一座繁华的大都市。
“Most of the area was paddy fields,” says Ms Zhang, who works at PCH International, a logistics company. “I learnt how to ride my bicycle on Shennan Road. There were no cars [but] now it is the main road.”
在物流公司PCH International工作的Christina Zhang表示：“当时这里大部分地方都是稻田。我在深南路上学会了骑车。当时那条路上没有一辆汽车，但现在那已是条交通主干道。”
Since Deng launched his economic reforms in 1979, Shenzhen has changed from a tiny county of 30,000 people across the border from Hong Kong to a metropolis of 10m with one of the highest per-capita incomes in China.
自邓小平在1979年启动经济改革、创立深圳经济特区以来，深圳从一个与香港毗邻的3万人口的小镇，逐渐发展为如今的大都市，拥有1000万人口、人均可支配收入为全中国第一。
Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Foshan and other regional cities form the heart of the Pearl River Delta, a region of 56m that is vital to the world economy because it produces everything from bicycles to jeans and sex toys to iPads.
深圳、广州、东莞、佛山以及其他区域城市构成了珠江三角洲的核心。人口总数达到5600万人的珠江三角洲对世界经济至为关键，因为从自行车、牛仔裤、性玩具到iPad，各种产品都在这里生产。
Dongguan alone made about 30 per cent of the toys delivered over Christmas around the globe. Yao Kang, deputy Communist party secretary of the city, says it also makes 20 per cent of the sweaters and 10 per cent of the running shoes worn by consumers. As locals say: “When there is a traffic jam in Dongguan, the world runs out of supplies.”
仅东莞一个城市制造的玩具，就占到圣诞节期间全球玩具总出货量的30%。东莞市委副书记姚康表示，全球各地消费者穿的运动衫和跑鞋，也分别有20%和10%是在东莞生产的。正如东莞当地人所说：“东莞来一场堵车，全世界都会断货。”
Underscoring its phenomenal growth, Guangdong last week estimated that its economy grew 8.5 per cent to Rmb6.33tn ($1.05tn) in 2013, which would sandwich it between South Korea and Indonesia.
广东省不久前的一项估算，突显出该地区经济增长的非凡成就：2013年广东省经济同比增长了8.5%，GDP达到6.33万亿元人民币（合1.05万亿美元）——这一数字介于韩国和印尼的GDP数字之间。
The PRD has managed to produce cheap goods for so long because millions of migrants have been willing to work in factories making products they can rarely afford. In Shenzhen, authorities plan to raise its minimum wage by 13 per cent to Rmb1,808 next month. Although the city has the highest minimum wage in China, it would take a worker two months to earn enough to buy an iPad Air.
珠江三角洲之所以能够如此长期地生产廉价商品，是因为数百万农民工一直愿意去工厂里工作，制造他们几乎买不起的产品。在深圳，当地政府已宣布从2月1日起将最低工资提高13%，至1808元人民币。尽管深圳的最低工资水平是全中国最高的，但一名工人仍需要拿出两个月的薪水，才能买得起一台iPad Air。
But the system is coming under strain in ways that affect everyone from London shoppers to young Chinese in Guangdong: workers are harder to find, wages are rising rapidly, raw material and land prices are going up, the renminbi is getting stronger and other regions are becoming increasingly attractive for manufacturing.
但这种体系眼下正面临压力，从伦敦的购物者、到广东的中国年轻人，各式人群都受到了影响：招工越来越难、薪资迅速上升、原材料和土地价格一天天上涨、人民币不断升值，珠三角地区对制造业的吸引力相对于其他地区的优势不断缩小。
The obvious challenge to the region is labour costs, with wages in Guangdong rising at double-digit rates each year. That is unlikely to change since China is targeting nationwide annual increases of 13 per cent in its 2011-15 five-year plan, as part of a push to spur consumption and reduce the economy’s dependence on investment.
珠三角地区显然面临劳动力成本上涨的挑战——广东的工资水平每年以两位数的速度增长。这种局面不太可能发生改变，因为中国在其“十二五”（2011-2015年）规划中提出了全国最低工资标准年均增长13%的目标，这是中国政府努力刺激消费并降低经济对投资依赖的举措之一。
Roger Lee, chief executive of TAL, a Hong Kong company with 11 factories in Asia that produces clothes for dozens of global brands, says wages have doubled over the past five years. In 2008 its Dongguan factories made clothes at half the cost of its facilities in Malaysia and Thailand but that gap has since disappeared.
香港联业制衣(TAL)行政总裁李国权(Roger Lee)表示，工人工资在过去5年里增长了一倍。联业制衣在亚洲建有11个工厂，为数十家全球品牌生产服装。2008年，该公司在东莞的服装厂的生产成本是马来西亚和泰国工厂的一半，但如今这种差距已经消失了。
Crystal Group, one of Asia’s largest apparel companies with 11,000 workers in Dongguan, says organic costs – including wages and the strengthening renminbi – have risen 10-12 per cent over the past five years. As a result, it has been forced to shift production of commodity items such as polo shirts and underwear elsewhere.
晶苑集团(Crystal Group)表示，内生成本（包括薪资和人民币的不断升值）在过去5年里增长了10%-12%。结果是，该公司被迫将保罗衫和内衣等商品的生产转移到其他地区。晶苑集团是亚洲最大的制衣公司之一，在东莞有1.1万名工人。
“Our strategy is to . . . produce them in cheaper countries like Vietnam or Cambodia,” says Dennis Wong, executive director. “That is why we are still surviving.”
晶苑集团行政总裁罗正亮(Dennis Wong)表示：“我们的策略是……在越南或柬埔寨等劳动力成本较低的地区进行生产。这就是目前我们仍然能生存的原因。”
While some companies such as Crystal are shifting production to southeast Asia, others are moving to cheaper parts of China. Samsonite, the luggage maker that outsources about 65 per cent of its production to Chinese companies, has seen many of its vendors move to provinces around Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta.
在晶苑集团等公司纷纷将生产转移到东南亚之际，其他一些公司则转移到了劳动力成本较低的中国内地。箱包制造商新秀丽(Samsonite)将65%的生产外包给中国公司，而近年来它的许多供应商已经搬到了位于长江三角洲的上海周边省份。
“About 80 or 90 per cent of the people we were working with were based in southern China,” says Tim Parker, chief executive of Samsonite. “Now probably the majority . . . we purchase comes from eastern China”.
新秀丽首席执行官蒂姆•帕克(Tim Parker)表示：“过去我们有大约80%或90%的合作伙伴是在华南地区，现在我们主要……从华东地区采购。”
Despite rising labour costs, any decision to leave the delta is not easy for foreign companies and their local manufacturers. Its ecosystem – everything from clusters of suppliers to road and rail infrastructure to access to ports in Shenzhen and Hong Kong – is hard to match elsewhere without sparking other cost increases.
尽管劳动力成本节节上涨，但对外国公司及其中国本地制造商来说，要想下决心离开珠三角地区并不容易。要在不引起其它成本增加的情况下，创建与珠三角相当的生态系统——从供应商簇群、到直通深圳和香港港口的公路和铁路基础设施——非常困难。
Nick Debham, Asia head of consumer markets at KMPG, says textile manufacturers, for example, can shift lower-skilled production to countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia relatively easily, although wages in those countries are also rising. But other industries, such as toy manufacturing, which is concentrated in south China, are less mobile as they rely on concentrated clusters of suppliers.
毕马威(KMPG)消费者市场亚洲区总裁尼克•德布哈姆(Nick Debham)表示，对纺织业（打个比方）等行业的制造商而言，将技术含量较低的生产转移到孟加拉国和柬埔寨等国相对容易一些，尽管那些国家的工资水平也在不断上升。但玩具制造业等行业就不那么容易转移了，因为这些行业的生存依赖集中化的供应商簇群。玩具业大多位于华南地区。
“There are so many ancillary bits and pieces that need to be in place, it is difficult to move the whole thing lock, stock and barrel out of China,” says Mr Debham.
德布哈姆表示：“我们需要零零散散地安装非常多的附属设备，很难把整套设备固定、打包并运出中国。”
For companies that are contemplating moving inland in China instead of overseas, the decision is no easier. Mr Lee of TAL says his company conducted a study five years ago that concluded that moving inland would cut labour costs by 15 per cent but that the level of infrastructure would not be as good as in Guangdong.
即便对只是考虑迁往中国内陆、而非海外的企业来说，决定搬迁也不容易。联业制衣的李国权表示，自己的公司在5年前做了一项调查，结果发现，迁往内地能将劳动力成本降低15%，但内地的基础设施水平可能不如广东。
For manufacturers that cannot easily relocate, one solution is to automate more. Samsonite’s Mr Parker says his Chinese vendors are doing exactly that. He says there is plenty of scope since many Chinese factories use far more basic equipment than, for example, those the suitcase maker employs in its own facility in Belgium.
对不容易迁移的制造商来说，一个解决办法是提高自动化水平。新秀丽的帕克表示，他的许多中国供应商就是这么干的。他说，自动化还有很大的空间，许多中国工厂中使用的设备比新秀丽自己在比利时的工厂（打个比方）要简陋得多。
“In China . . . you will find a totally different set-up and it is driven . . . by the relatively low cost of labour,” says Mr Parker. “That’s all changing because as the costs of labour increase, so some of our more enterprising suppliers are beginning to invest in more . . . sophisticated sewing equipment in order to reduce the labour content.”
帕克表示：“在中国……你会发现完全不同的设备，这是劳动力成本相对较低……导致的。随着劳动力成本上升，这一切都在改变，因此在我们的供应商中，一些更有进取心的工厂为降低劳动力成本，已开始投资购买一些更……精密的缝纫设备。”
Some local governments, such as Dongguan, are trying to accelerate that process with subsidies. Mr Yao, the deputy party secretary, points to the knitting town of Dalang as a successful example, saying that its factories used the government funds to buy 40,000 computerised knitting machines, reducing the need for 200,000 workers.
东莞等地方政府正努力通过提供补贴，来加快企业的自动化进程。东莞市委副书记姚康将大朗针织镇作为一个成功的典型。他说，大朗镇的工厂利用政府资金购买了4万台电脑针织机，可减少20万名工人。
While manufacturers juggle solutions to rising labour costs, the trend is expected to get worse for various reasons. Rising wages are partly due to local governments raising the minimum levels. In its 2011-15 economic plan, Guangdong is targeting a 40 per cent rise. But the driving cause is factories being forced to pay more to attract workers amid an increasingly tight labour market.
尽管制造商为解决劳动力成本日益上升的问题绞尽脑汁，但预计这种趋势仍将继续恶化，原因有很多。工资日益增长的部分原因在于，地方政府提高了最低工资标准，广东省在其2011-2015年的经济计划中就提出了最低工资标准增长40%的目标。但更主要的原因是，在一个供应日益紧张的劳动力市场中，工厂被迫要支付更高工资来吸引工人。
Several factors explain the scarcity of workers but the main reason is demographics. As a result of its one-child policy, China’s working-age population – people between the ages of 15 and 59 – fell by 3.45m to 937m in 2012, in what was the first decline in many years.
造成工人短缺现象的原因有许多，但主要原因是人口结构因素。由于多年实行计划生育政策，2012年中国的劳动年龄人口（15岁至59岁）多年来首次出现下降，至9.37亿人，比前一年减少了345万人。
The labour squeeze is exacerbated in the PRD as migrant workers now have greater opportunities in their home provinces. These new opportunities are a result of central government policies aimed at promoting inland development to reduce the income gap with rich coastal regions. The “go-west” strategy is creating jobs in the interior that are particularly attractive to women who in the past left their children and moved to Guangdong for factory jobs.
农民工如今在家乡省份有了更好的工作机会，这加剧了珠三角地区劳动力市场供应紧张的局势。这些新的机会是中央政府出台政策的结果，这些政策旨在推动内地发展，以缩减内地与沿海富裕地区的收入差距。“西部大开发”战略为内地省份创造了就业机会，对那些过去把孩子留在家中、去广东的工厂里打工的妇女们来说，这种机会尤其具有吸引力。
Another reason manufacturers are having to pay more is that workers are increasingly picky about jobs, since they have more choices as the PRD labour market shifts in their favour. Young workers are also less willing than earlier generations of migrants to toil in factories.
制造商不得不提高工资水平的另一个原因是，工人们对工作变得越来越挑剔，因为随着珠三角地区劳动力市场开始变得对工人有利，他们有了更多的选择。与前几代农民工相比，年轻的工人们也更不愿意从事辛苦的工厂工作。
The explosive growth in smartphones and Weibo and Weixin – known as WeChat in English – one of the most popular social media services in China, has further empowered workers by making it easier for them to learn about other factories that may have better conditions.
智能手机、微博以及风靡中国的社交媒体服务微信（海外版是WeChat）的爆炸式发展，让工人们更容易知道哪些工厂可以提供更好的待遇，这进一步增加了他们的底气。
Factories say finding female workers is increasingly difficult. The one-child policy, coupled with the general preference for male children, has skewed the gender balance, reducing the number of female workers. But young women also increasingly prefer service industry jobs over more arduous production line work.
工厂表示，招聘女工越来越困难。计划生育政策再加上许多地方偏爱男孩，导致中国人性别失衡，女工数量下降。不过年轻女性也越来越明显地倾向于找服务行业的工作，而不是更辛苦的生产线工作。
The demographic and economic trends that are sparking higher wages in the PRD are forcing multinationals to raise prices, put more pressure on their suppliers to cut costs or simply accept lower profits.
人口结构和经济趋势引发了珠三角地区薪资上涨，也在迫使跨国企业提高产品价格，对供应商施加更大压力，要求它们削减成本、或直接接受更低的利润。
But some manufacturers, such as KTC in Heshan, say a more serious issue than rising wages – which can be absorbed at a cost – is the difficulty in finding enough workers with the right skills to allow production to continue.
但鹤山KTC等制造商表示，比薪资上涨更严重的问题是，很难招聘到足够多拥有合适技能的工人来维持持续生产。薪资上涨不过让工厂增加了一些成本。
KTC has opened a factory in Laos but, as in the case of Crystal Group, the workers there make less complicated garments than in Heshan because they do not have the same skills as their Chinese peers.
KTC在老挝开了一家工厂，但与晶苑集团的情况一样，那里的工人们生产的服装比鹤山工厂里生产的更简单，因为老挝工人的技术不如中国工人。
Top Form, a Hong Kong lingerie maker, faces a similar problem. Kevin Wong, executive director, says it closed a factory in Shenzhen and opened one in Cambodia in 2011.
香港内衣制造商黛丽斯公司(Top Form)面临一个类似的问题。黛丽斯公司执行董事黄启聪(Kevin Wong)表示，该公司在2011年关闭了深圳工厂，并在柬埔寨开了一家工厂。
Mr Wong says that although wages in the southeast Asian nation are one quarter of the level in Shenzhen, that was not the main reason for the move.
黄启聪表示，尽管东南亚国家的薪资水平是深圳的四分之一，但这并不是黛丽斯搬到那里的主要原因。
“It was never the labour cost. Once you don’t have the people, the overhead just kills you,” says Mr Wong, explaining that it was becoming impossible to find enough workers in Shenzhen.
黄启聪说道：“劳动力成本从来就不是一个问题。要是招不到工人，管理费用就会要了你的命。”他解释称，在深圳，已经不可能找到足够的工人了。
Regardless of the industry, the challenges in the PRD are forcing all manufacturers to find cost-cutting solutions, with the most extreme one being relocation from China. But Mr Debham says talk of multinationals abandoning China are overblown, and that many companies do not follow through on their repeated threats to leave China.
无论是哪种行业，珠三角地区面临的挑战正迫使所有制造商寻找削减成本的办法，最极端的做法是撤离中国。但德布哈姆表示，跨国企业即将放弃中国的说法言过其实了，许多公司虽然再三威胁要撤离中国，但它们并没有真的付诸行动。
“People think that the cost issues in China and the labour issues in China will inevitably force low value-added production out of China, but it is still there,” says Mr Debham.
德布哈姆说：“人们认为，中国的成本和劳动力问题将不可避免地迫使低附加值的生产撤离中国，但如今这些工厂仍留在这里。”
Given the scale of manufacturing in the PRD, the region is likely to remain the world’s factory for a long time. But manufacturers in the region and consumers buying the products face a pricier future.
鉴于其庞大的制造业规模，珠三角地区可能在很长时间内依然会是“世界工厂”。但该地区的制造商以及购买其产品的消费者，未来将面临价格上涨的前景。
William Fung, chairman of Li & Fung, the big global sourcing company that procures products for everyone from Walmart to Target, says rising labour and raw material costs mean the model that served China and the world for 30 years has changed for good.
利丰(Li & Fung)董事长冯国纶(William Fung)表示，劳动力和原材料成本不断上升意味着，为中国以及全世界服务了30年的模式已经永久性地改变了。利丰是一家全球大型采购公司，为从沃尔玛(Walmart)到塔吉特(Target)的各大企业采购产品。
“The era where China subsidised the world’s standard of living – by giving them really affordable goods from 1979-2009 – is basically over,” says Mr Fung. “People will pay what other people will probably say is a proper price.”
冯国纶表示：“中国为全球生活水准提供补贴的时代已基本结束——从1979年到2009年，中国为全世界提供了物廉价美的商品。未来人们将要支付在其他人看来或许更公允的价格。”