We were only kidding when we said we didn’t like working for western multinationals!

You don’t need to commission a survey to know that western multinational firms are unpopular in Hungary. Despite the many thousands of jobs such firms have created in Hungary over the past two decades – many or most of which offer better pay and conditions than local companies – a large minority or even majority of Hungarians don’t like the idea of working for foreign bosses from elsewhere in the EU, or the US. Two things suggest this may change. One is the ongoing downsizings at many foreign-owned companies, especially manufacturers, which will naturally have a certain “absence makes the heart grow fonder” effect. Another is the prospect of working for a non-western multinational.

Via business daily Világgazdaság I see that the Chinese IT giant Huawei will be opening two production facilities in Hungary, one in the northwest town of Komárom, and the other down in Pécs. Together the two plants will employ a total of 700 workers, and are, at least by my count, the biggest chunk of new manufacturing FDI to arrive in Hungary since the onset of the global financial crisis.

Since I’m against the sort of xenophobia that makes many Hungarians apparently happy to see western multis flee the country, I’m not going to say that people should be unhappy that Huawei decided to set up shop in Hungary. Still, you have to wonder how a factory job at a company based in the “wild east” factory town of Shenzhen – where a cushy job is one with a bathroom break sometime between dawn and dusk – might be different from one at a firm based in Holland or California.

On the other hand, given the monstrous layoff numbers we continue to see, especially in the manufacturing sector, perhaps people will see Huawei’s decision to set up shop in Hungary for the blessing it is. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “a diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.”