However, foreign-owned importers are still confronted with weak consumption. The national savings rate is, at 43.1 percent, very high, unusually so for a transition economy where people usually start spending. Germany was a case in point. The savings rate is rising by 6-2 percent per year. This can, however, only be regarded as a stop-gap measure.
Human resources present another kind of problem.
Staff is hard to find, and even harder to keep working when you have too many expatriates, which puts up the cost structure. You have to watch costs in China. There is an acute shortage of entrepreneurial talent and skills, placing a premium on foreign organizational and managerial know-how, extending even beyond the large organizations to quite small enterprises. Even the smallest companies devoted to jade carving or ivory sculpturing can be foreign-owned. Recourse to imported expertise is confined at present to equity rather than contractual arrangements.