Tuning in China

[pianoguru at cox.net]

Bob, Bernard, et al.

I am in China now.  I have been making trips to piano companies here for the past four years,  That does not make me an expert on the subject at hand, but I can shed some light on the question,  $8 USD, sounds about right for a piano tuning here,  At four tunings per day, that translates to about 400 RMB per day.  As a self-employed person, we all know that what we get paid for our time is not what we take home as profit,  If we get paid 400 per day, we are doing well to net 200 or 300.  A piano factory worker here makes about 100RMB, or for the higher skilled jobs about 200.  Bare in mind that  a buck buys a whole lot more here than it does in the US,  Regardless of the exchange rate between USD and RMB, 100RMB/day is a living wage here, barely,  The minimum wage in the US is not.  

To be a self-employed tech here is not an easy life.  There are not that many pianos to be tuned.  With all the pianos built here, many build pianos for export only.  The Chinese government owns many of the piano companies.  The privately owned companies have to pay a 15% tax on every item they sell domestically, to be allowed to compete with the government owned companies, in their own domestic market.  Government owned companies only exist to produce employment for their workers,  Privately owned companies have to produce a superior product to overcome this 15% "handicap."  They are beginning to catch on to the idea that a company  cannot continue to prosper if it exists only to employ its workers; it must produce quality for the consumer, to survive.

Frank Emerson