Vaunted German Engineers Face Competition From China
BEIJING -- Li Tao, a 33-year-old engineer for Siemens AG, unfolded a silver, clamshell-shaped mobile phone and broke into a grin as the orange lights in its frame began flashing.
"It's unique," he said with an excited laugh.
What's more remarkable about the handset, nicknamed "Leopard," is its birthplace. It was developed not at Siemens' headquarters in Munich, but in a white six-story building on the outskirts of Beijing by Mr. Li and a crew of young Chinese engineers.
Siemens' decision to turn east for engineering know-how represented a big gamble for a company that has relied on the ingenuity of its German engineers for more than 150 years. It also reflected one of Germany's biggest economic challenges ever: The erosion of its dominance in engineering, long the lifeblood of the world's third-largest industrialized economy and a source of cultural pride.
For years, Germany, like many other countries, lost manufacturing jobs to China and other low-wage countries in Asia and Eastern Europe. But its engineering sector remained a safe haven, one of the few areas where the country could hold its own globally. Highly paid German engineers proved their worth with a steady stream of innovations, including the world's fastest train, designed by Siemens and ThyssenKrupp AG.
Now engineering jobs are beginning to move abroad as well. "If the Chinese can produce high tech at low cost, one has to consider where that's going to lead," said Siemens Chief Executive Heinrich von Pierer, who in May announced plans to hire 1,000 Chinese engineers this year and invest about $1.23 billion in China. "In Germany, we have to ask ourselves what we have to offer."
Germany's predicament shows how the flow of increasingly sophisticated jobs into low-wage markets is reshaping economies around the world. And the biggest winner -- China -- is not merely taking away existing work from industrialized nations, but is also creating thousands of new jobs.
Germany's preeminence in engineering is being threatened by several stubborn problems. The most obvious is high labor costs. Mr. Li and his colleagues earn about a fifth of the typical salary for a German engineer and work up to 25 hours a week more. At an average age of 32, they are about a decade younger, and turning out to be just as good. "We've reached a level of maturity comparable to Germany, where they've been developing mobile phones for more than a decade," says Beijing-based Wolfgang Klebsch, the head of Siemens's research-and-development operation here.
A lagging German education system also is contributing to the engineering decline. German high-school students rank below average in math and science compared with 31 other countries, according to a recent study by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The nation's universities, once famous for their Nobel prize winners, are now overcrowded and underfunded, and the number of engineering graduates has declined by almost a third since 1995, to about 36,000 a year. Moreover, 14% of Ph.D. graduates in engineering and science head for the U.S. every year in search of better opportunities, according to the German Scholars Association.
The CF-62, or 'Leopard,'was the first mobile phone Siemens developed outside of Germany.
Beginning with the development of the gasoline engine and X-ray technology in the 19th century, engineering innovations have nourished Germany's economy and fueled exports ranging from Mercedes-Benz sedans to Leica cameras. The country's engineering prowess grew out of a robust education system that produced more high-school graduates in the 19th century than the rest of Europe combined. Its guild system, under which budding tradesmen became apprentices at an early age, also promoted ingenuity.
Today, engineering remains crucial to Germany's manufacturing sector -- which accounts for a quarter of the nation's gross domestic product, a higher share than any other major industrialized nation. Engineering is also at the core of the country's Mittelstand, the 3.3 million small and medium-size businesses that make up 60% of the economy.
'Year of Innovation'
With so much at stake, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is trying to shore up the engineering sector. He declared 2004 the "year of innovation," and recently unveiled plans to upgrade 10 universities to "elite" status. "We're doing everything we can to get Germany's innovation systems up and running," he said.
But so far, the effort is sputtering. Germany's exploding deficit and stagnant growth forced Mr. Schroeder to trim federal support this year for research and development. Companies also are investing less. Corporate spending on R&D, which accounts for two-thirds of the total for the country, fell slightly last year, according to German industry trade groups, and a recent survey found that companies plan to invest even less in 2005.
China, meanwhile, is marching in the opposite direction. In recent years, the Chinese government has moved aggressively to improve technical education, both to serve the booming economy and to make the country less reliant on foreigners. The result: China's universities crank out more than 300,000 engineers annually -- almost 10 times the number in Germany.
Siemens, which makes everything from power turbines to kitchen stoves, has had a relationship with China since the 19th century. In 1879, the company delivered a generator to power the lights in Shanghai Harbor. In 1899, it built China's first tram line in Beijing. Its activities were limited after the Communists took power. When the Chinese government cracked open the door to foreign investment in the late 1970s, Siemens was one of the first companies to jump in. Soon, it was producing components for telecommunications infrastructure and switching gear. Shanghai is now home to its largest operation outside of Germany.
In December 2000, Siemens decided to take its involvement in China a step further. It dispatched Mr. Klebsch, an experienced handset-development engineer, to China to set up its first R&D center outside of Germany.
Within six months, he had hired 50 engineers, all in Beijing, to work on a high-speed wireless network and on software development. It had taken him twice as long to do similar hiring in Germany a couple of years before, he says. "The advantage of China is that everything is fast," he says.
In April 2002, Munich gave the Chinese team a new task -- the reengineering of Siemens mobile phones for low-end markets from the Middle East to Eastern Europe. To make the phones less expensive, the Chinese engineers removed Internet hardware and other costly features.
That summer, Siemens hired Mr. Li away from rival Philips Electronics NV, where he had worked on the development of home appliances, including shavers, blenders and hair dryers. A native of the coastal city of Dalian, Mr. Li is typical of the emerging professional class in China that companies like Siemens are eager to tap. He earned two degrees in his home province, in electrical engineering and business. In 2000 he set out for the capital.
His education has helped him realize the Chinese dream. He and his wife, a General Electric Co. manager, share an 1,100-square-foot, air-conditioned apartment in central Beijing and plan to start a family. He drives a late-model Toyota and enjoys vacation benefits comparable to those in many western countries.
At Siemens, Mr. Li became project manager for the development of one of the reengineered phones. His team completed the project in just six months, half the expected time.
With more than 500 models available at any given time, the Chinese mobile-phone market is among the world's most competitive. It's also the biggest, with annual sales of about 65 million units, and the fastest growing. Siemens generates nearly half of its $4.93 billion of sales in China with telecom equipment, much of it from handsets.
But by 2003, Siemens' share of the mobile-phone market had dropped to about 5% from nearly 10% in 2000. A new class of Chinese manufacturers had entered the market and were using flashy designs and bargain prices to rob customers from incumbents like Siemens, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc.
The sharp decline forced Siemens to confront a hard truth: The Chinese found the German phones boring. Siemens's phones came in dark colors and were shaped like candy bars. The Chinese rivals offered an array of bright colors and funky designs. The company's main problem was that the Chinese were flocking to clamshell-shaped mobile phones, a style the company didn't offer. Company officials decided they needed to move quickly to close the gap in their product line.
In the spring of 2003, Rudi Lamprecht, the head of Siemens's wireless division, decided to take a chance: He assigned the Chinese team to develop a new clamshell phone. He wanted to save money and see if the engineers could handle the job. Mr. Li was put in charge of the project, overseeing about 90 Chinese engineers.
Some Munich employees were skeptical that the Chinese engineers would be able to develop a new phone on their own and raised questions about the plan, according to Mr. Klebsch. "There was a lot of misunderstanding about the capabilities of Chinese engineers," he said this spring, standing in the Siemens testing lab here.
Nearby, a team of Chinese engineers sat at a console monitoring the emissions of a handset sealed in a 30-square-foot, foam-padded chamber as Mr. Li looked on. At another station, a colleague checked a phone's durability by dropping it on the floor. Upstairs, engineers stood over vise-like contraptions and tested how the handsets' circuitry reacted to different electrical impulses. "There really is no difference" between the Siemens labs in Germany and the one here, said Mr. Klebsch.
Nevertheless, the project was the most technically difficult so far for the Chinese team. To compete with the latest clamshell offerings from its competitors, Siemens had to offer something special.
The Chinese engineers decided they wanted the phone to have a special horseshoe-shaped antenna that could double as a hook for a carrying strap -- a particularly complicated problem. None of the other Siemens handsets had anything like it, so most of the components had to be designed from scratch. They also wanted the phone to have two displays, an inside one for features like an address book and games, and an outside one that showed the time and caller's name when the phone is closed. The technical specifications for the phone were more than 100 pages long.
Tight Deadlines
By the middle of last year, Mr. Li and his team were working late to meet tight deadlines. As team leader, Mr. Li consulted regularly with colleagues in Germany and the U.S., arriving at work early and leaving late after conference calls.
The result, delivered in time for celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of Siemens's Shanghai office in May, was a silver phone with orange lights embedded around a clamshell frame that flash in different sequences to signal calls, messages and alarms. The phone's keypad can be used to compose light shows.
Mr. Li, who talks in rapid-fire English, praises the "experience and knowledge" of his German masters and is careful to credit their input on the project. But he isn't afraid to laugh at their peculiarities either. Walking across Siemens's campus-style compound in northern Beijing, he pointed out that the 1980s-era gray, low-rise buildings were built entirely of German materials, an indication of the company's initial determination to micromanage every detail of its Chinese operations. For most of the past 20 years, Munich treated the Chinese outpost like a colony, with a large staff of German expatriates at the top and little chance for locals to advance.
Today, things are changing. The company canteen may still offer German wurst for lunch, but the operation here is increasingly Chinese. During his May visit, Mr. von Pierer announced plans to build a 30-story, $100 million skyscraper on the Beijing site.
In addition, Mr. Klebsch and 200 other top Siemens managers in China have been told by Munich to find Chinese replacements. Mr. Klebsch says some of his colleagues in Germany have reservations.
"It's a threat to their own organization," he says. "The products we've developed here are for the global market. Our phones have the German quality standard."
Sensitive to political fallout at home, Siemens rejects suggestions that it plans to shift R&D jobs out of Germany. Still, new R&D positions are increasingly being created abroad and not in Germany. Mr. von Pierer plans to hire more software engineers in China and build a central research facility there.
Mr. Klebsch's operation recently became too large for the cramped facility where the Leopard was designed, so Siemens rented out a neighboring high-rise. Mr. Klebsch, who now has a penthouse corner office, says he expects to hire more than 800 engineers by the end of next year for a total of 1,200. The goal is to design five new models of handsets simultaneously.
中国工程师改写西门子技术版图
西门子公司(Siemens AG)33岁的工程师李涛(Li Tao, 音译)打开了一部银色的掀盖式手机，随著手机上橘红色的小灯开始闪动，他露出了灿烂的笑容。
李涛兴奋的笑著说，这款手机是独一无二的。
如果说这款绰号“美洲豹”的手机有什么不同凡响之处，那就是它的出处。这款手机并不是在西门子公司慕尼黑总部开发出来的，它出自北京郊外的一幢白色6层小楼，包括李涛在内的一群中国年轻工程师是它的设计者。
对于西门子这家150多年来一直依靠其德国工程师的聪明才智开发产品的公司来说，将目光转向东方，借助那里的工程技术人才，这不啻是一场大的赌博。此举也是德国正面临其有史以来最大经济挑战之一的现实反映：德国在世界工程技术领域的优势地位正在动摇，而这一地位长久以来一直是德国这个世界第三工业大国的力量之源，也是德国人民族自豪感的一个来源。
像许多其他国家一样，多年来德国的制造业就业岗位也一直在向亚洲和东欧地区的低工资国家流失。不过该国在工程技术方面的竞争优势仍然完好无损，这也是该国不多几个仍在全球拔得头筹的领域之一。德国工程师们以其源源不断的技术创新向世人证明，他们享受高薪合情合理。举例来说，世界上速度最快的火车就是由德国公司蒂森克虏伯(ThyssenKrupp AG)和西门子联合开发出来的。
然而现在，连工程技术方面的就业岗位也开始向国外转移了。西门子公司的首席执行长冯必乐(Heinrich von Pierer)说，如果中国人能够以低成本生产高科技产品，人们就不得不考虑这将导致什么后果了。冯必乐今年5月份在北京宣布，西门子计划今年增聘1,000名中国工程师，并在中国投资10亿欧元（合12.3亿美元）。冯必乐说，德国公司在本国招聘员工时经常顾虑重重。
德国在工程技术领域的崇高地位正受到几项痼疾的威胁。最显而易见的问题就是该国的高劳动力成本。李涛及其同事的工资仅是他们德国同行的五分之一，而他们每周的工作时间却比德国同行多出25小时之多。他们的平均年龄只有32岁，比德国相同岗位的工程师年轻十岁左右，正处于干事业、出成果的最佳年龄。负责西门子公司北京研发业务的沃尔夫冈?克列布奇(Wolfgang Klebsch)说，虽然德国开发手机的历史已有10多年，但西门子在北京的手机研发业务已步入可与之并驾齐驱的成熟阶段。
德国教育体系的落后也是造成德国工程技术领域滑坡的原因。经济合作与发展组织(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)最近所做的一项研究显示，德国高中学生在数学和科学方面的水平要落后于世界其他31个国家。即便是曾经培养出众多诺贝尔奖金获得者的德国大学教育体系，目前也为学生超编和资金不足所困扰，自1995年以来，大学工科毕业生人数已下降了近三分之一，每年减少约36,000人。另据德国学者联合会(German Scholars Association)提供的数据显示，该国每年理工科博士学位获得者中的14%都流向了美国，为的是寻找更好的发展机会。
以19世纪率先开发出汽油发动机和X光技术为肇端，德国在工程技术方面的创新一直推动著该国经济的增长，并使德国成为从奔驰轿车到徕卡相机等众多知名产品的出口国。德国在工程技术方面的强大实力根植于其强有力的教育体系，该国19世纪时的高中毕业生比欧洲其他国家的总数还要多。该国的行会制度使有发展潜力的少年可以及早开始其学徒生涯，这也促进了德国的技术创新。
即使是今天，工业设计和生产工艺方面的专长仍然对德国制造业的竞争力起著至关重要的作用，德国的制造业占国内生产总值的四分之一，高于其他任何主要工业化国家。制造业也是德国中小企业的中坚力量，德国330万家中小企业创造了该国经济总量的60%。
由于德国在工程技术方面的领先地位已如此岌岌可危，德国总理施罗德(Gerhard Schroeder)正试图振兴这一领域。他宣布2004年是“创新之年”，最近还公布了将德国10所大学发展成世界名校的计划。他说，政府正在尽一切努力使德国的创新体系重新启动起来。
然而目前为止这一努力的效果并不显著。德国不断膨胀的财政赤字和停滞不前的经济迫使施罗德今年不得不削减了联邦政府对研发活动的支持。德国企业界的投资也在下降。德国工业团体提供的数字显示，占德国研发总支出三分之二的企业研发支出去年小幅下降，而最近进行的调查更发现，德国企业计划2005年进一步减少投资支出。
而中国的发展势头却正好相反。最近几年，中国政府一直在大力改善该国的技术教育，这样做的目的既是要为迅速发展的中国经济输送人才，也是为使中国减少对外国人的依赖。其结果就是：中国大学每年培养出的工程师超过30万人，几乎是德国的10倍。
作为一家产品从发电机到厨房炉具无所不包的企业，西门子与中国的关系可以追溯到19世纪。1879年，该公司生产的发电机发出了上海港口的照明用电。1899年，西门子在北京铺通了中国首条有轨电车线路。1949年以后，西门子几乎断绝了与中国的交往。而当中国政府在上个世纪70年代末向外资敞开大门以后，西门子又是首批投入中国市场的外国公司之一。该公司很快就开始在华生产用于电信基础设施和交换设备的零部件。上海目前已是该公司在德国以外最大的运营基地。
2000年12月，西门子作出了进一步涉足中国市场的决定。该公司派遣其经验丰富的手机开发工程师克列布奇来到中国，建立起西门子在德国以外的第一个研发中心。
克列布奇在6个月内就招到了50名工程师，这些员工全在北京工作，从事高速无线网络的研发及软件开发工作。列布奇说，几年前他在德国同样招募50名工程师却用了一年的时间。在他看来，中国的优势就是任何事情都进展迅速。
2002年4月，西门子公司总部给其中国团队下达了一项新任务──对西门子的移动电话进行设计和工艺方面的改造，使其适应从中东到东欧的广大低端市场。为了降低移动电话的成本，中国工程师去掉了西门子移动电话中原有的互联网硬件和成本高昂的功能。
那年夏天，西门子从其竞争对手荷兰飞利浦电子集团(Philips Electronics NV)招募来了李涛，他此前在飞利浦从事剃须刀、搅拌器和吹风机等家用电器的开发。李涛是大连人，在中国新兴的专业人士阶层中他是一位典型代表，而西门子目前正急于利用这类人才资源。李涛在他家乡辽宁省获得了电子工程和商务两个学位，2000年时他来到北京闯天下。
他的教育背景帮助他实现了中国梦。他和在通用电气(General Electric Co.)担任部门经理的妻子在北京市区拥有一套100平方米、带空调的单元房，他们还计划要孩子。他驾驶一辆新款的丰田轿车上下班，并且还能像许多西方人那样享受带薪假。
加盟西门子后，李涛担任了西门子一款移动电话改造工作的项目经理。他领导的小组只用6个月就完成了这一工作，仅为计划时间的一半。
鉴于任何时候市场上都有500款以上的移动电话可供应选择，中国手机市场的竞争程度可谓世界上最激烈的。中国还是世界最大的手机市场，每年的手机销售量约为6,500万部，且这一市场的增长速度也是世界最快的。西门子每年近50亿美元在华销售额的将近一半来自电信设备，而手机又占了其中的大部分。
然而到2003年时，西门子在中国手机市场的占有率已从2000年时的近10%下降到了5%左右。中国一批新兴的本土制造商杀入了手机市场，它们凭借时尚的设计和低廉的价格将手机客户从西门子、诺基亚(Nokia Corp.)和摩托罗拉(Motorola Inc.)等行业巨擘中抢了过去。
市场占有率的急剧下降迫使西门子公司不得不面对一个严峻的现实：中国人不喜欢西门子手机的外观。西门子的手机都是深颜色的，外形就像糖块。而其中国竞争对手生产的手机颜色亮丽，外形新奇。西门子面临的主要问题是，中国人偏爱掀盖式手机，而西门子却没有这样的产品。西门子的管理人士决定，要迅速弥补产品品种上的不足。
2003年春，西门子无线部门的负责人鲁迪?蓝普新(Rudi Lamprecht)决定冒一次险：他指定一个由中国工程师组成的团队来开发一种新型掀盖式手机。他一方面是想省钱，一方面也是看看中国工程师是否能胜任这项工作。李涛被指定为这一项目的负责人，他手下掌管著约90名中国工程师。
克列布奇回忆说，西门子一些在慕尼黑的员工当时对中国工程师能独立开发一款新电话表示怀疑，并且对公司的这项计划也提出了质疑。“当时人们对中国工程师的能力存在许多误解。”说这话的时候克列布奇正身处西门子在北京的测试实验室，时间是2004年春天。
在离克列布奇不远处，坐在控制台旁的一组中国工程师正在监测手机的辐射情况，被检测的手机放置在一个2.7平方米的密闭空间内，李涛也在一旁观看。在另一间实验室里，一组中国工程师正在检查手机的耐磨损性，他们一遍遍将手机往地上扔。在楼上的房间里，另外一组中国工程师正通过一些精巧的仪器检测手机电路对不同电磁波的反应。克列布奇说，西门子在德国和北京的实验室真的没有区别。
不管怎么说，这一手机开发项目是西门子中国工程师们迄今为止所遇技术难度最大的工作。为了能与竞争对手最新推出的掀盖式手机相抗衡，西门子必须拿出有特色的产品。
这些中国工程师们决定给这款手机安装一种马蹄铁形的天线，这种形状特别的天线还可充当挂在皮带上的钩子。这更增加了开发这款手机的难度，因为这种天线是西门子其他手机所没有的，所有相关零部件都需从头设计。这些中国工程师还希望该款手机有两个显示屏，内部显示屏用来显示手机存储的内容及玩游戏，而外部显示屏则可显示时间和打来电话者的姓名。单这款电话的技术规格就写了100多页。
李涛和他领导的团队为了按时完成任务而加班加点地工作。为了能与在德国和美国的同事定期打电话交流，李涛经常早来晚归。
终于，赶在今年5月西门子上海办事处成立100周年之际，中国工程师们完成了这款银色手机的开发工作。这款掀盖式手机上分布著一些橘红色小灯，分别用以提示来电、信息和警报等。人们可以用电话按键来调节灯光。
李涛说话很快，但脸上却挂著见腆的微笑，交谈中他不忘称赞其德国上司的“经验和知识”，以提醒人们不要忽略他们对这款手机的贡献。但他也敢于嘲笑德国上司的怪癖。当步行穿过西门子位于北京城北的校园式建筑群时，李涛介绍说，这幢建于上世纪八十年代的低层建筑所用的建筑材料全部来自德国，并指出这显示了西门子对其中国业务最初事无巨细的管理方式。在过去20年中的大部分时间里，中国业务就像西门子慕尼黑总部的一块殖民地，这里的大部分高层职位都被德国人占据，中国员工几乎没有进一步升迁的机会。
时至今日，情况已在发生变化。午餐时间餐厅里可能仍会提供德国香肠，但西门子中国业务的本地化色彩却是越来越浓了。西门子公司首席执行长冯必乐今年5月访问中国时宣布，该公司计划斥资1亿美元在北京建造一座30层的摩天大楼。
此外，克列布奇和其他200位在华的西门子高层管理人士已被慕尼黑总部告知，要寻找中国人来接替自己的工作。克列布奇说，他一些在德国的同事对此持保留态度。
他说，公司中国业务的发展对这些人的饭碗是个威胁，西门子目前在中国开发的产品是面向全世界的，公司中国业务开发的电话具备德国产品的质量。
由于担心在德国引发一些不希望见到的政治后果，西门子否认它计划将德国的研发工作岗位转移至海外。不过，该公司新设立的研发职位却越来越多地出现在国外，而非德国本土。冯必乐计划在中国招募更多的软件工程师，并在中国建立一个中央研究机构。
克列布奇领导下的中国业务最近扩大得太快，原有的办公场所已无法容纳，西门子公司不得不将其北京办公楼旁边的一幢楼房租了下来。克列布奇目前也不得不□身于一间狭小的办公室，他希望明年年底前能再招募800余位中国工程师，使西门子的中国工程师总数达到1,200人。其目标是能在中国同时设计5款新式手机。
