Alexandra Harney
Author, The China Price.
and the realities of its economic expansion.
Highlights
Alexandra Harney is the expert on Asia’s future. As author of acclaimed book The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage and head of research at Asian management consultancy Visibility, Alexandra advises hedge funds, advertising agencies, governments and international organizations such as the Fair Labor Association on how to position themselves in Asia. Her on-the-ground approach takes clients and audiences beyond the region’s frequently unreliable statistics to what is really happening in business and the economy.
Alexandra’s unique role as a consultant, a fellow at the University of Hong Kong, and a contributing editor to the Economist Intelligence Unit, as well as her fluency in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, gives her access to rich, diverse sources of information that most regional analysts lack.
While economists sit in their offices and mine data, Alexandra maintains a constant dialogue in three languages with her extensive network of contacts in every major industry in Asia and travels constantly within the region to meet with the policymakers and businesspeople who make the decisions that drive Asia’s growth. The result is an extremely up-to-the-minute, accurate and prescient view of this crucially important region that businesspeople and government officials have come to depend on.
Topics
The future of Chinese manufacturing
The changing Chinese workforce
The evolution of the global supply chain
Corporate social responsibility
The China Price
The true costs and global implications of China's phenomenal growth.
Who are the people behind the China price? How do they make goods so cheaply? At what cost to them, and to us? And how long can they keep it up?
China has become a victim of its own success as the world's leading manufacturer of labor-intensive consumer goods. The rush of investment in factories has driven down profit margins and driven up prices of everything from raw materials to labor to power.
The forces that will shape China's manufacturing sector in coming decades are already clear: rising wages and material costs, greater demand for unionization, a higher risk of litigation, a dwindling supply of cheap workers, calls for better product quality and safety, and substantial downward pressure on margins.
The true cost of Chinese competitive advantage is the teenage boy who loses an arm to a machine after 18 hours on the assembly line. It's the 400,000 Chinese deaths linked to air pollution every year. . .
We all pay the China price.
Visit The China Price website and Alexandra’s blog .