BEIJING - While Santa Claus lives it up
with Rudolph at the North Pole, his elves have
relocated to southern China's towns and villages.
Some 70% of the world's Christmas
ornaments and other paraphernalia now originate in
officially atheist mainland China. Tinsel, Santas,
mistletoe and artificial trees of every shape and
hue are churned out at a relentless pace by
thousands of factory workers in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.
According to the China General
Administration of customs, Guangdong on its own
exported more than US$620 million worth
of
Christmas products in 2004. For the country as a
whole, the figure was over $1 billion.
Even the White House now celebrates a
"Made in China" Christmas. In 2003, seven of the
trees adorning the US president's residence were
manufactured in China. In fact more than
two-thirds of the world's artificial Christmas
trees are made in the single city of Shenzhen.
As winter's icy tentacles lead into
Christmas, Santa's Chinese elves are enjoying a
bit of a quiet period after having toiled for the
majority of the year. "Our busy period is really
February to October," says He Li, assistant sales
manager of Yiwu Festival Gifts Company. The
company has annual sales of over $12 million and
employs between 800-1,000 workers. It exports 90%
of its products to the US, Russia and Chile and
specializes in manufacturing hanging toys, trees
and Christmas gifts.
The city of Yiwu in
central Zhejiang province, where the company is
located, is today one of the Christmas industry's
global centers. The city's gargantuan Futian
market, spread over 3.7 million square feet, is a
primary source of the world's knickknacks. Last
year, Yiwu posted sales of $2.5 billion, $1.5
billion of that in exports.
Like many
places in China, it has abundant cheap labor.
Two-thirds of the 316,000 farmers in the
surrounding countryside have left the land to
become part of Yiwu's mega-export machine. An
additional 400,000 migrant workers have come from
other provinces.
Yiwu's peasant-workers
aren't the only ones thankful for Christmas.
According to Xinhua, China's official news agency,
more than 7,000 farmers living in Xiaoguanzhuang
town in Jiangsu province collectively manufactured
some 100 million Christmas decorations for export
in 2004, earning close to $48.3 million. The town
now has 45 large businesses and more than 400
processing workshops producing angels, trees and
reindeer.
Many of the Pearl and Yangtze
River delta Christmas product manufacturers have
their own websites in English and Spanish, and
some are starting to branch out into other
holidays, such as Halloween. But competition is
stiff. "We have begun to feel the heat a little in
the last two years because there are so many small
factories that have set up shop in our city,
driving down prices," says Edith Yan, the sales
representative of Decoart Design &
Manufacturing Ltd, located in Huizhou, Guangdong.
Recent labor shortages in the Pearl River
Delta have meant higher salaries. Both Guangzhou,
the capital of Guangdong, and Shenzhen pushed up
their minimum wages by a third earlier this year,
to $83 per month. Combined with the rising costs
of raw materials like plastic, profit margins are
suffering.
A six-foot-high tree in Yiwu's
Futian market for example, is priced at less than
$4. A package of six sparkling ornaments costs
about 25 cents to make, and sells for 36 cents.
Concerns regarding product quality and
intellectual property rights have also begun to
hinder the mainland's exports to Europe. According
to Xinhua, Guangdong's Christmas exports actually
fell by 19.6% last year, compared to 2003.
For the country as a whole, exports fell
by 14.7%. Nonetheless, Yan says that large
companies like Decoart are weathering the storm
with relative ease. With annual sales of over $10
million, Decoart's customer base remains stable.
But she says companies must constantly innovate to
gain an edge.
According to a recent report
on globalsources.com, a sourcing information
website that specializes in China, the over 1,000
suppliers of Christmas lights in China are
releasing "unique designs in diverse colors,
styles and effects with greater frequency, to
remain competitive amid an intense price war".
Laser crystals and holograms are being pressed
into use in the unrelenting quest for novelty.
And while exports may be slowing down,
domestic demand is picking up. Two percent of
Decoart's Christmas decorations are now sold
domestically, according to Yan. China's Communist
Party banned public Christmas celebrations at one
point in 1993. But today, rather than being judged
as a vehicle for insidious ideological pollution,
Christmas is seen by Beijing as an opportunity
for encouraging consumer spending.
Hotels,
restaurants and shop fronts across the flashier
Chinese cities are thus bedecked in wreaths and
glittering Christmas trees. Usually surly
salespersons in supermarkets are transformed into
sexy Santa's helpers in red and white. He of Yiwu
Festival Gifts says that while 10 years ago, most
people in Yiwu would have been hard pressed to
even say what Christmas was, today's youngsters
celebrate the festival by decorating their houses
and exchanging presents.
For the bulk of
the toiling "elves" in southern China's factories,
however, Santa Claus remains as alien as if he
really were at the North Pole. Asked whether the
company told its workers anything about the
festival for which they spend their days and years
producing baubles, Yan answers, "Christmas is not
a big traditional festival here and we don't
celebrate it. Our workers are mostly middle-aged
women who don't need to know anything about it."
Pallavi Aiyar is the Beijing
correspondent for the Indian Express
newspaper.
(Copyright 2005 Pallavi
Ayar. Used
by permission.)
