QUALITY MANAGEMENT OF MAINLAND CHINESE TOWNSHIP ENTERPRISES

In this paper, one city and two provinces in mainland China, namely Peking (Beijing) city and Honan (Henan) and Kwangtung (Guangdong) provinces, are studied for the purpose of comparing and analyzing management systems in township enterprises with respect to location. In order to obtain comprehensive coverage, Total Quality Management (TQM) was selected as the subject of analysis. TQM has been practiced in mainland China for over ten years. State-owned enterprises adopted TQM earlier than rural ones, which only picked up the concept after 1986. In recent years, with the advantages of being small in size and fast in response, township enterprises performed far better than state-owned enterprises. However, according to official People's Republic of China (PRC) inspection reports, township enterprises seem to fall behind state-owned enterprises in regard to product quality. According to the analytical results from 105 samples, significant differences can be summarized into three main aspects: (1) external environment, (2) internal environment, and (3) discriminant function.