Labor in China

Elite, Middle Class, and the Poor

In his article regarding the distinct classes in China, T. Cheek explores the characteristics and problems of each and why the government will never be able to satisfy everyone under the current system.

The Elite

This group is the wealthiest and has little to worry about. They drive luxury cars and live for money. This group fears an upprising from the poor and seek to keep the government and economy working in their favor. This is also the group that China shows off to the world to prove they are doing very well and their people are happy. It's good PR for them but unethical behavior at its greatest.

The Middle Class

People in this group gain the most from being conservative and maintaining the status quo. Middle class work hard and pay no attention to government workings (this is also the case in other Asian nations, such as the people I talked with while in Singapore). Middle class people live in a basic nuclear family and pride themselves on living without grandparents and extended family while nuturing their children to become productive members of society.

The Working Class

Here is the most dangerous group for communism, surprisingly since communism was founded to ensure the working class was happy and equal. These people work hard but do not have job stability. The problem with working class is they can easily be replaced at work and are often deprived of basic rights. However, they can fight back and often do. Those who protest on a local scale are given concessions to keep their movement local. Those that try to organize regionally and nationally, considered the greatest threat to communism, are stopped, brutally. This class is the one with the most problems that also has the greatest chance to change their situations.

The Underclass

Chinese people in this class have it worst. They must travel always to find jobs and rarely are paid or treated well when they can find work. Here, no one enjoys any rights and must work in sweatshops. Even though they have the hardest lives, their lack of shelter and identity in China stops them from every trying to protest for more rights.

Essentially, China can never stop fearing unrest because it can never satisfy all the competing interests of these groups.

Lipeng Blue Jeans Factory Documentary

This documentary made me cry, but I still don't think I'm going to be up in arms tomorrow when I wake up. It's terrifying and completely unjust but the documentary, while it paints a vivid picture of conditions for both workers and factory owners in China, does not outline ways for people or even international groups to fight to change the situation.

From a worker's point of view

The story of Jasmine, the 17 year old who left her family at home in order to support her family, really taps into the heart of the lower class plight. She first must find work on her own in a big city that she could never even have begun to imagine. Her motivation for sacrificing her own life is repaying her family for being born female. She says that she knows her family was disappointed when they gave birth to her, a daughter, and hopes her earnings will make them happy to have had her. Her situation is a bleak one in which everyone she works with is as young as or younger than her and a girl. This seems to be what happens to the females in China. This is an example of gender and human rights violations. The security of China's young girls is being threatened. They do not have the freedom to listen to music and go to school like other young girls and to grow. They are, however, aware of the corruption and harm being done to them. They discuss it but just say there's nothing they can do. It's a sad situation where only external forces can help them.

Looking at it from industry's point of view

Even factory owners see their situation as being taken advantage of. They praise Deng Xiopeng for his economic reforms that allowed them to move up in social class, but this is such a small percentage of the population. These elite class believe that the lower class are where they are because they are uneducated and incapable of learning work ethics. The factory owner in the story even says that he needs to control these lower people and they deserve to be told what to do. Then he goes on to complain that even his life is hard. He must work hard and gets taken advantage of by international labels who get paid way more than even he does. However, this does not excuse his behavior towards his workers.

Some factory workers from another factory spoke on camera, something they can be fined and jailed for, about their conditions and how factory owners manipulate them to appease U.S. labor inspectors. One even claims,

He gave us a memo to teach the workers what to say.

Thus, the lower class continues to be exploited, the U.S. thinks the workers are happy, and the factory gets to operate at its usual efficiency.

It seems like we can hate the factory owners, then. But it's hard to when you think about the U.S. labels that order from them. The price international companies demand from factories is so low that even if the owners did want to treat and pay workers more fairly, they could not afford do. Thus, one might see fit to blame U.S. companies even more than the Chinese government for encouraging the abuse of these workers. One could even go as far to say that U.S. labels are in fact even more to blame than the Chinese government because all the government does is allow it but, unlike the companies, does not actively encourage and desire it. So, when the Lipeng factory owner says,

Meeting shipping deadlines is our number one concern,

instead of listing "our workers" as such, it's easy to hate him. But, we need to remember that he is under close scrutiny from the companies that purchase from him and he needs to do whatever it takes to make it for his own well-being just as much as the workers must.

Either way, this situation is a bleak one. It's so sad and so alarming that I have no idea where I could even begin to help. How can one start when an end seems impossible to achieve? How can we bring security and peace to these young girls who are so far away physically and culturally from us? Like Cheek's article outlines, this is the most troubled class of all but the one posing the least threat because they can have no voice. So, if we have no voice and they have no voice, then there is no hope for them, is there?