2005年NPR美国国家公共电台十二月-American vs. Chinese Manufacturing: Whic

（单词翻译）

Many people in this country believe the United States and China are just beginning an epic¹ economic battle. They argue that Chinese producers are so efficient and so cheap that they'll work their way up the manufacturing ladder until there aren't any more US factory jobs.

But in China, many argue just the opposite that the United States is so dominant² in certain types of manufacturing that China will never catch up. NPR's Adam Davidson visited a factory in both countries to see how each side is competing.

Both China and US have lots of auto³ parts makers⁴, and that makes it easy to compare how factories in the two countries compete in the global market.

We'll start in China. Wanxiang is a major Chinese car parts firm. It is in Zhejiang, two hours south of Shanghai. Huang Yuhong stands at a large machine.

"I am polishing the part. " She says.

The plant is clean. There are long rows of machines. At each one, a worker, almost all of them young women, wears a blue smock and white cap.

Things are different, when we move to McHenry, Illinois. , where the Affinia Group makes brakes under the brand name Raybestos. The factory is clean, but doesn't sparkle like Wanxiang's. The machines are older, the workers more casually⁵ dressed. Richard Lopez, shows off his Chicago Bears number 44 shirt.

"Sure, I watch the Bears."
"Who is 44, Curtis Enis ' 一个橄榄球运动员 the Chicago Bears' unsigned No. 1 draft pick . "

Workers wear heavy metal shirts, some have tattoos⁶ and piercings. So far, China seems to be winning, who would't trust uniformed cleanness over free-spirited chaos⁷? But then you ask the workers what they know about their jobs. Take Huang, who is polishing that two-inch diameter round silver part. "w25064n1l. . . ." She reads the code number, but when I ask her what kind of part it is, she doesn't know. She doesn't even know if it goes in a car. Huang is from Anhui, a poor inland province. Most factory workers like her live in dormitories and see their families rarely.

"I don't want to spend my whole life here and I want to set up my own business in the future. "

She dreams of opening a store that sells maternity⁸ clothes. She knows little about the machine she uses every day . She was trained to push the right buttons to start the polishing process and little else. Back in MacHenry, which Lopez does not operate one machine, he works on four simultaneously⁹. They call it a cell.

"I can do anything in the cell. Um, like this. Right now, you can run it at minus one, but if you were to want me to show you how to offset¹⁰ it, you know, to put it at zero, I'll come in here. "

Lopez came here just out of high school. In eleven years, he's become fluent in the machine tool program . He can go up to just about any machine in the factory, program it from scratch, and operate it. In addition to four machines, he also does quality control. It would take at least six workers at Wanxiang to do what Lopez does alone.