At a factory in China’s manufacturing heartland, workers manually add small splashes of paint or glitter to printed images of flowers — small tweaks designed to boost dwindling profits in the face of softer global demand.
“We would like to say that if you can go high-end, the better the quality of your paintings, the more classic they will be. But in the current global economy . . . the more we sell, the lower the price,” said Wang Xiaosha, general manager at Fujian Jie Ao Industrial in Minhou county in China’s south-eastern Fujian province.
While President Xi Jinping wants China’s economy to focus on “new quality productive forces” — such as green technology and electric vehicles — low-end factories have long been the backbone of the country’s explosive growth and one of the largest sources of jobs.