Operational Costs of Business in China’s Inland Cities
Published: March 2011For the small to medium, export-oriented manufacturer, locating in an inland province is still considered quite risky and the cost-benefit calculations quite muddled.
No. of Pages: 12 pages
In this issue:
- Cost Comparisons of Factory Space, Wages and Welfare Payments
- Breakdown of Transportation and Logistics Overheads
- Infrastructure and Investment Environments
- Special Focus on Changsha, Chengdu, Chongqing, Hefei, Nanchang, Taiyuan, Wuhan and Zhengzhou
For the small to medium, export-oriented manufacturer, locating in an inland province is still considered quite risky and the cost-benefit calculations quite muddled. These are the businesses for whom this issue of China Briefing is written. It is widely held that land and labor costs in inland provinces offer quite significant cost savings over major east coast and southern cities. In this issue, we take a quick look at the numbers behind these beliefs - minimum wage and welfare payments, standard factory rental prices, and standard container transportation costs to Shanghai and Shenzhen ports. We also provide the practical information for which China Briefing’s regional guide books are well-known: basics of each inland provincial capital’s infrastructure, economy, and development zones.
We took a bit of editorial license with the definition of inland provinces here, expanding beyond the six provinces officially targeted in the “Go Inland” campaign - Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, and Hunan - slightly farther west to include Chongqing and Chengdu. These areas are all part of the broader discussion of locating inland.