Industrial Automation in China’s “Workshop of the World”
Industrial Automation in China’s “Workshop of the World”
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DOI：
10.1086/699471
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发表时间：
2019-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Naubahar Sharif;Yu Huang
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Naubahar Sharif;Yu Huang
中国政府宣布了通过自动化制造和机器人化来升级产业的重大计划。本文考察了南部城市东莞的政府如何推动“机器换人”计划，以改善自2007年以来面临严峻商业环境的当地制造商的前景。东莞是该国出口工业的主要中心。我们解释了“机器取代人类”倡议的条件，揭示了基于对东莞官员、工厂经理和工人进行的大量现场访谈的结果，并分析了自动化对劳动力市场的影响。我们发现，东莞政府对本地企业自动化的补贴对企业自动化战略的影响较小。相反，自动化的主要驱动因素是竞争激烈的市场压力，要求减少劳动力、提高生产率、改善产品质量以及处理职业健康和安全问题。应对自动化影响的工人遭受了各种各样的技能丧失和失业，尽管在某些情况下，他们通过额外的培训获得了技能提升。
The Chinese government has announced major plans to provide subsidies to upgrade industry through automated manufacturing and robotization. This article examines how the government in the southern city of Dongguan, a leading center of the country’s export industry, has promoted a “Replacing Humans with Machines” initiative to improve the prospects for local manufacturers facing toughening business conditions since 2007. We explain the conditions that informed the “Replacing Humans with Machines” initiative, reveal findings based on numerous on-site interviews with officials, factory managers, and workers about the effects of automation in Dongguan, and analyze the implications for the labor market. We find that the subsidies awarded by the Dongguan government to support automation in local firms played only a minor role in the firms’ automation strategies. Instead, the main drivers of automation were competitive market pressures to reduce the workforce, step up productivity, improve product quality, and deal with occupational health and safety. Workers coping with the effects of automation have suffered variously from deskilling and displacement, although in some cases they were offered upskilling through additional training.