What's Going On With China Labor?
Taikongren's Advice Blog has a nice post setting forth and commenting on many of the various issues swirling about these days on labor in China. The post is entitled,"Taikongren’s definitive 'What’s happening with Chinese Labor' post," and it does a very good job setting out China's labor situation and raising some interesting issues attached to that. If you want to know more about China's current labor situation, I recommend you read it.
Taikongren asserts the following:
1. Wages in primary manufacturing areas are rising.
2. Wages are rising due to a shortage of workers.
3. Wages rising in China's interior are causing coastal wages to rise.
4. Foreign investment should be headed to second-tier cities and to the interior, but this is not really happening much.
5. Some capital-heavy manufacturing companies have decided to move back to the US. NOTE: I am NOT aware of this happening.
6. China should start making higher end products to fit its more-expensive industrial base.
7. The strikes of the Honda Factory and Foxconn suicides are often linked in the news but they are not really related.
8. The government is promoting higher wages.
9. China's Labor Law is empowering China's workers.
10. What is going on with strikes and other labor issues at the State Owned Entities? NOTE: I have been wondering the same thing and I asked this question over at the China Law Blog Linkedin Group.
11. Chinese workers are using the internet and cell phone text messages to organize their labor protests.
In an unfortunate bit of pique that mars an otherwise thoughtful post, Taikongren pokes fun at Rebecca MacKinnon, for having told the New York Times that "QQ is not secure" and for having been described by the New York Times as “a China specialist." I do not believe the average New York Times reader knows what QQ even is, much less that the Chinese government monitors it. I also feel I must note that Ms. MacKinnon is widely considered (by me too) as one of the most knowledgeable Westerners on China's Internet.
Comments (8)
Read through and enter the discussion by using the form at the endJesse Covner - June 27, 2010 9:12 PM
I am honored that you called attention to my post, which is really just combining information from many other posts.
I guess I should not write pique into my posts. Its not professional. Right now I write like I talk: with bad grammar, and without enough dicipline. I will try to improve on this.
I am prejudiced against Ms. MacKinnon, and so I "poked fun" at her. This comes from her past comments about Google and the Chinese internet. I strongly believe that when Google "left" China, they did so in a way which was not particularly morally righteous...it was rather self-righteous. I felt the subsequent analysis and commentary by her and others, was even more self-righteous than Google's own reasoning. Furthermore, I feel most of the analysis and commentary underestimates the clear sophistication of Chinese internet users.
In the NYT article with Ms. MacKinnon, the main theme was basically "look at these quaint Chinese workers who use technology to communicate, but lets not forget that actually Big Brother is watching them". Funny thing is... the article (and no other article I read) didn't say why Big Brother is looking at them. We, the reader assumes the they are watched because the control-freaks in the government just like to watch anything that may cause dis-harmony. But this is different. The almost obvious implication of the labor unrest is, at a certain point, the government of China will come down hard on the protesters. The only topic more taboo to the CCP than the independence of an island province is the topic of an independent, geographically connected organization becoming the representative of workers, whom should be soley represented by the Party. Independent Labor is a direct threat to the principle of the Party as the sole representative of the Worker, which is at the heart of Leninist Marxism.
It does not take a media or internet expert to understand that, with such a sensitive issue, the government is going to look at all media and have monitors everywhere. They will read SMS messages, QQ, Skype, email, and each and every communications channel. Despite this monitoring, the labor unrest will continue... unless it jumps beyond the purpose and "channel" which the government thinks is acceptable. So to me, a meaningful analysis of the the use of technology in this issue would not be to state the obvious - that a particular channel is monitored and controlled by the government - but rather to analyze the real effectiveness of the controls.
Chris - June 27, 2010 10:24 PM
Taikongren's point's all valid enough... My overall observation is that Chinese labour just became tired of over-the-top exploitation and the fact that wage growth in the coastal areas in the tough manufacturing sector did not keep pace with major changes in the cost of living.
Prices of basic, day-to-day commodities and services have rocketed in recent years, but have somehow been kept out of CPI figures. Electricity, gas, gasoline, vegetables, rice and meat have been moving at double digit figures year on year. These make up a big hunk of Chinese workers' expenditure...
Meanwhile wages in the hinterlands have genuinely grown... leaving little incentive to travel a long way to be paid so little.
The explosion in housing prices in the urban centres have also left little hope that migrant workers might be able to enter the housing market in the major cities.
William Pesek's article Chinese Workers See Red is a good summary of the issues. Chinese workers want the opportunity to buy some of the goodies they produce. Fair enough and about time.
Adam Daniel Mezei - June 28, 2010 6:04 AM
Mr. Conver sounds like the perfect CCP apologist. I know he's parsing and showing his lexical derring-do because he's being defensive and wants to come off sounding erudite-enough to tussle with the likes of a Ms. McKinnon or a Dan Harris, but it still reads like high-falootin' propaganda. Disturbing comment of yours, sir.
Jesse Covner - June 28, 2010 5:06 PM
Hi Adam,
1. Are you being ironic or poking fun at me? Which is fine if you are BTW. I just can't see how anyone read what I write and say I sound erudite. I don't really know the definition of erudite... and lexical (I will look this words up though)
2. How am I apologizing for CCP?
Thomas R - June 29, 2010 6:48 AM
I am no expert on labor in general or Chinese labor specifically, but this article seems to argue that labor is cheaper in the interior than the coast.
http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a0/?vgnextoid=e575162430f79210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=China&s=News
@Adam, Mr. Conver in no way seems to be a CCP apologist, merely stating the obvious.
zhonguotong - June 30, 2010 4:57 AM
Between the original post, and Covner's original comment, I can see why Rebecca McKinnon is being called by journalists and he is not.
I think the best comment that sums up the author's understanding , angle, and depth of analysis can be best summed up where he writes "1) how can an operator’s job on a CMS type production line become more humanized?, 2) is monotonous farm-hand work any better?"... it isn't the only problem with the post, but certainly sums up his own view of the people themselves, the economic situation they are in, and just how one should "manage" them.
Which doesn't make Covner an apologist for Beijing, but certainly makes Covner an apologist for Foxconn and anyone in the industry who provides "good jobs" for "fair day of pay". Does not matter that the job requires 6 days of work at 14 hours a day at 3-4 weeks in a row? pay comes 3 months late (w/out overtime)? f*ckem.. we can find more cause we are better than the farm and they should be grateful for the opportunity.
robertb - July 5, 2010 8:02 PM
I remember how a Chinese friend once said to me, "China's government will not allow the Chinese people to do anything for long that they don't approve of."
I vaguely remember another economist commenting that this type of behavior from coastal Chinese workers is highly "pro-cyclical" behavior, meaning that these types of wage demands could only occur during peak periods of high-cash liquidity.
So where is the Chinese government in all of this? Maybe they finally want to actualize what they've been preaching for years: industrial movement to the west of China. Western provinces now have the roads, and they are increasingly getting the rail capacity, to get to ocean ports.
Paul - July 29, 2010 3:13 AM
Some of Taikongren's assertions I would be inclined to agree with based on personal observation, and experience and input from others in the manufacturing industry. However, from reading some of his other posts in his blog, I take issue with the statement:
1. "There is no evidence at all to suggest that Foxconn is at fault in any way." That is really a strong statement for a guy who already concedes his post is based on meta-research and not an intimate knowledge of what happened at Foxconn.
First, I understand his point (from the rest of his blog) that ultimately, an individual is responsible for his own suicide. But that does not mean Foxconn isn't "at fault in any way." First, he concedes that Foxconn has "labor management problems" and that Foxconn "is responsible for its environment." So if Foxconn has created, say, a "hostile environment" for its workers, is Foxconn not at fault in some way? Or is he merely saying that, morally speaking, a suicide is responsible for himself? Btw, he is right though: that swimming pool is only for management/Taiwanese.
He argues that a factory line worker's boredom or repetitiveness cannot be changed. This is part and parcel with the factory model; we both agree on that. But factories can still ameliorate the conditions and environment of that job from breaking up shifts, providing better facilities, training factory managers not to abuse and intimidate workers, and perhaps most of all, paying higher wages (on time). Again, as he states, factories don't do this because of cost-down policies, for which Foxconn is infamous for taking to an extreme. In his blog, he concludes the factory model is a consequence of market forces from the factory to the brand to the consumer ie that everyone is part of the system. So, he says, everyone must share some blame (which I agree). But then he also says, hey don't blame Foxconn, because they are no different from the rest of the factories?? I don't follow that logic. Hasn't he already blamed all factories by identifying the factory model itself as problematic?
(though I would saythat the undercapitalized small/medium HK/Taiwanese factories are by and large the worst offenders). While generally, Foxconn has built some nice facilities (they have a ballet/dance studio for workers!!), wages have been a problem, and some of the factory managers are known to be abusive.
2. A minor quibble, and maybe I missed his hyperbole, but hinterland or inland doesn't have to mean Gansu - and then at the same time he argues that manufacturing should be moving to places with infrastructure (or pool of workers) or with markets like the 2nd/3rd tier cities??(Which some are if they can afford to).
Oddly, he closes all comments to that blogpost and seems to be a little defensive here. But ok, that's his blog. And ironically but in an apt way, in the US, QQ has another meaning.