Lou Zhongping, a 43-year-old businessman from Zhejiang province, manufactures a quarter of the world's beverage straws at his 400-employee factory, but he is not that proud. In fact, he says, "If I were given another chance, I would stay sway from this business."

A feature story from the 21st Century Business Herald described the hardship Lou is going through.

Lou's straws sell by the metric ton, which breaks down to be about 0.008 yuan (US$0.001) per straw. Of that price, half had being going into resin cost, but now that percentage has risen even higher because resin prices went up more than 30 percent since last summer. Lou's factory uses 30 metric tons of polypropylene every day.

To cut costs and improve efficiency, he modified the 60 extrusion lines and implemented a heat-recycling system. But that's just not adequate to maintain margin.

In order to minimize negative impact of the inflating yuan, Lou only approves contracts with cycles shorter than a month-and-a-half.

Lou also is determined to diversify risk and limit large clients. "We can't let a single client take up more than 3 percent of our entire sales." It's easier to raise prices with smaller clients.

Thanks to the dragging U.S. economy, Lou's U.S. sales have shrunk by a third. Lou decided to switch his focus to the domestic market. The Beijing Olympics gave the market a lift, he said. Beverage straws were used to make a handle/holder for small national flags.

"The largest market is right here in China," Lou concluded with a relatively upbeat spirit.