ABSTRACT
Hai Heng (English name Robert) is Shanghainese. He is 29 years old and works for a privately owned fabric trading company – owned by a Shanghainese woman, who is married to a famous local television presenter. This helps give her a ‘good political background’. The fabric company, which has ten employees, does not manufacture at all. They export fabrics: they are a ‘middleman’ company. They buy and sell. If a client’s order is below a certain amount, Robert’s company buys from the factory, pays the factory and then sells onto the client. Some orders, however, are over US$1m. In these cases the buyer pays the factory directly and pays Robert’s company a commission. He says ‘US$1m’, in a ‘LC’ (letter of credit) because in 2008 buyers were paying only in US dollars. Buyers want to do business in euros too, but at the moment are only set up to do US dollars. All the suppliers are from neighbouring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces – from not Wenzhou, but Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jiaxing in Zhejiang, from Wujiang and Suzhou in Jiangsu province: from Huzhou which sits on the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Perhaps the secret of Shanghai’s (comparatively) fabulous wealth is its positioning between these two economically super-vibrant provinces. They – especially Zhejiang – provide a labour force for Shanghai of middle-class, very ambitious lower and middle management. In Shanghai’s periphery, factories make the stuff that Shanghai sells. These are more often than not light industry factories. Silk from Hangzhou and Jiaxing, which are important trading cities on their own. Robert’s company does two lines: silk and beddings, for example, duvets. Robert is head of beddings.
