People's Republic Labor of Love - Company Business and Marketing

Employees who get laid off usually get sad, then mad. Some even grab extra office supplies on their way out the door.

But at one dot-com bust in China, freshly axed workers are taking a different approach: They're planning to update content and sort out tech glitches on their own time, from their homes and for no pay. A few of them are even buying computers from the distressed company.

A year and a half ago, ChinaNow.com launched an online guide to Shanghai and soon expanded to cover five other cities in China. But business soured, and earlier this month buyout talks with a large American portal came to naught. ChinaNow was faced with shutting down the Web site and keeping just two staffers to write and sell paperback guidebooks. Instead of mourning, Su Wen, an editor, and a few colleagues rallied over e-mail to recruit volunteers to keep ChinaNow going. Ex-staffers such as Zhuang Ming are helping out while pounding the pavement for new jobs. "I need a salary to live," says Zhuang, 25, but he'll spend nights updating the site and making sales calls.

"It really flies in the face of what people say about young people in China: that they have no loyalty, no company culture, no roots, that they are just adrift with no moral compass in a post-communist world," says Kaiser Kuo, another editor.

They're not quite the model workers of communist folklore, but in a China where to get rich is glorious, their efforts are a rare show of dedication.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Standard Media International
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group