But no one can complain about social security in Shen's company. An extremely well managed staff canteen entertains workers for free when they've worked overtime due to an urgent job that had to be finished.

Nevertheless, there have been strikes in the factory. "Workers weren't satisfied with their wages anymore," Shen recalled. "The factory management was at a loss with the situation—so we, the owners, arrived and negotiated new conditions with the workers."

Like other companies in the area, Shen's company cooperates with a local technical school for engineering and metalworking. The students have been educated for two years in the school, and some of them become interns in the company for one year with the possibility of being hired afterward.

The youngsters come from far away places like the villages of Anhui Province. Now they live on the premises in triple bedrooms. If they stay with the company after completing their internship, the technical school receives a bonus. But times have changed.

Shen said the students were highly qualified and motivated 10 years ago, but their only goal today is making money. In former times, there was little industry around the area and even fewer job alternatives. Nowadays, young people do business in the night markets or scratch out a living by hustling small jobs. Now only a third of students know how to operate a lathe.

But that's not why Shen's business is shrinking.

The crisis and how life used to be

Orders declined by 50 percent starting in December 2008, and the slump has grown even deeper since March 2009 due to the global financial crisis.

Entrepreneurs whose sectors are suitable and who can afford it have resorted to high technology. But producing cast parts is not hi-tech, and it's never going to be. That has led to substantial layoffs in Shen's company, where 50 percent of all jobs have been shed.

"We used to employ 200 people. Now, only half remain," Shen said. "Our partners in Germany are encountering difficulties, too. Customers are demanding price cuts in the recession. We are in a mess—some of our competitors have already gone bankrupt."

What's his remedy to overcome the crisis?

"Don't increase your number of hands. Be satisfied with a smaller margin. Move forward slowly, don't hurry. Attempt to enlarge your clientele," he suggested. "I am currently serving 23 clients, and I want to take part in more fairs in Germany. If I'm lucky, I can build up long-lasting business connections with more than 40 clients."

Shen is very conversant in the German language and culture. Qualified in chemical engineering, he worked for five years in a state-run company that had strong bonds with German chemical fiber manufacturer Zimmer, now part of Lurgi Corporation.

In 1978, Shen participated in a German course in Shanghai for six months. For the next eight years, he served in the foreign economics department of a state-run company that produced ball screws. When the corporation began a joint venture with Neff Gewindetriebe from Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and Shen's wife started teaching in a middle school in Nanjing, Shen quit his job and started up a business for himself, with a partner having a degree in material sciences.

Beginning with a seed fund of $700, Shen built up the company into what is known today as Nanjing Circle Precision Machine Manufacturing Co. Ltd. "It all began with an office of 16 square meters," Shen recalled.

But soon they had to deal with the fact that a simple trading company had no future. They later rented a 200-square-meter room from a middle school and built up a workforce of 20 employees, and then moved to proper factory premises covering more than 3,000 square meters.

With a new highway being built at their workplace, the company had to move out again. Five years ago, Shen obtained a factory site that covers 26,000 square meters, of which the workshop takes up 17,000 square meters.

"We craft work pieces tailored to the client's design. Business was good, so we had to expand. It is two years now that we're in this place, and investments have been considerable," Shen said.

Shen reserved a narrow strip of land next to the factory site on which to grow grapes. "Table grapes," he noted, as the wine is not what he intends to gain. The thick-peeled grapes from Nanjing taste delicious. Even in an industrial area consumed with serving the world economy, traces of agriculture remain.

The author is a German living in Beijing