USA Today / By Michael R. Bonsignore
During one of my early visits to China, a woman in our Beijing office told me how proud she was to work for a well-known U.S. company. I later learned that she rode a bicycle 10 miles each way to work.
When I saw her again during a later trip, she told me that she had saved enough money to buy a motor scooter. When I bumped into her during a trip last fall, she was driving her first car.
Now that's progress.
Her story is a metaphor for the quality-of-life improvements many Chinese people have enjoyed because American companies provide jobs with above-market wages and benefits.
But the story gets even better. Because we also export technologies and products to China, the growth of our business in China has helped create thousands of U.S. jobs. This year, we will sell nearly $500 million worth of goods and services there -- a number we plan to double over the next several years. That makes our shareholders winners as well.
It's a win-win-win situation that has worked for us since we began selling in China back in the 1930s. Honeywell opened a permanent office in Beijing in 1986, and our employment has expanded to nearly 7,000.
Critics opposed to granting China permanent normal trade relations contend that labor relations and working conditions need to improve. They're right. But the best way to drive positive change is by being there to make a difference in people's lives.
Average urban Chinese incomes have skyrocketed in recent years. Today, 96% of city families own a color television, 78% have telephones, 48% have seen an American movie, and 11% have owned stocks.
At Honeywell, we also brought our values, principles and operating standards along when we set up shop in China. We apply comparable employee health, safety and environmental standards in our Chinese and U.S. factories.
Our Chinese employees have embraced Honeywell's values. They welcome our strict ethical code, the value we place on quality and teamwork, and our legacy of community service.
The Honeywell Hope School is a prime example of community involvement in action. Built with donations from local employees and a grant from our foundation, the school is located in an extremely remote area that, like most of rural China, is rife with poverty.
My wife, Sheila, and I visited the school two years ago and met its 250 children and their dedicated teachers. A few hours with them had as great an effect on me as all the meetings I've attended with congressmen, trade officials and corporate leaders.
One of the students, a sixth-grader named Sun Lei, talked about a field trip she had made to the Honeywell factory in Tianjin, three hours and a world away from her village. Although she's learning English and speaks it well, she asked an interpreter to help her express her enthusiasm for the trip.
"Honeywell is a very good company with lots of interesting equipment," she told us. "I hope to work there some day. I will study hard to make all the Honeywell employees who built the school proud of me."
Western technology also is improving conditions in China. For example, since the mid-1990s, Honeywell has partnered with SINOPEC, China's national petrochemical company, to improve the efficiency of their refineries. We're also helping update Beijing's centralized heating plants and reduce energy consumption. The upgrades pay for themselves while dramatically reducing emissions.
If you've been to Beijing, you know how critical it has become for China to address its environmental issues, a major factor threatening the quality of life in China's cities.
The presence of American companies is having a positive effect on thousands of people in China, proving that engagement is a far more promising strategy than the alternative of limiting trade and isolating China from the rest of the world. Granting China permanent-normal-trade-relations status is an important step that will help ensure continued progress.
Michael R. Bonsignore is chairman and CEO of Honeywell and a member of The Business Roundtable's Trade Task Force.
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