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Brutal labor exploitation in China
By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水
Saturday, Jul 03, 2010, Page 8
If Hon Hai’s operations in China are sweatshops, then China
itself, the “factory of the world,” is a far bigger sweatshop than Hon Hai will
ever be.
Undercover reporters from the Southern Metropolis Daily, a reformist Chinese
newspaper, spent 28 days at a Foxconn plant.The final sentence of the resulting
article claimed that their story did not represent the inner goings-on of one
factory but, rather, the fate of a whole generation of Chinese workers.
Most of the Foxconn workers are peasants. They are a unique generation of
workers in that they embody certain “Chinese characteristics” and are unlike any
other laborers seen in the history of industrialization.
In the 1950s, China adopted a household registration system that designated
people either urban or rural dwellers. This system saw the emergence of a
polarized structure that continues to exist between rural and urban areas and
economies in China. The household registration system was strictly enforced and
the movement of people regulated for many years. However, after China opened up
and implemented reforms, hundreds of millions of peasants moved to the cities to
look for work.
These peasant workers have a dual identity. Their household registration is
invariably in a rural area, but they are also laborers, unable to gain residency
in the places where they work, despite in some cases having worked there for a
decade or more. In terms of employment, social welfare, medical insurance and
the education of their children, these people face systematic discrimination and
are in effect second-class citizens. What’s more, the Chinese Communist Party
enforces strict controls on the formation of labor unions and so peasant workers
are subject to extreme exploitation by capitalists.
The recent suicides at Taiwanese-owned Foxconn have received unprecedented media
coverage, with many claiming that Foxconn is an example of the worst type of
exploitation.
In this context, comments made by Beijing-based academic Shu Kexin (舒可心) are of
particular note. Shu has talked at length about issues, such as Chinese-owned
sweatshops, child labor and working conditions not even fit for animals.
Another Beijing academic, Chen Yongmiao (陳永苗), has said that the primitive
accumulation of capital under the Chinese socialist system has brought much more
pain to laborers than a capitalist system ever could.
Hong Kong-based academic Pan Yi (潘毅) has said that the current conditions faced
by peasant workers are even worse than those workers endured in the 19th century
when Karl Marx formulated his ideas on labor and exploitation.
Pan has said that since 2000, strikes have become almost commonplace in the
factories that belong to businesses in the Pearl River Delta and that thousands
upon thousands of workers have taken part in these strikes. He also observed
that the media never covers such labor unrest because strikes are simply too
common.
Despite this, the Hon Hai suicides were widely reported in the media and gave
rise to all kinds of pulp journalism. Rather than indulge in such unseemly
speculation, let’s look at the real issues facing China’s peasant workers.
With the plight of peasant workers so bleak, the first question is whether they
should be allowed to gain residency in the large cities to which they flock for
work?
This was asked back in 1993, but was put on hold by the Chinese government in
1994. There was more talk about changing the system in 2008. Peasant workers
were originally not able to stay in cities for long periods of time and were
therefore only ever able to gain temporary residency cards.
In 2008, this temporary residency card system was changed to a permanent
residency card system. However, it continues to be plagued by problems. For
example, a person has to have been in Shenzhen for 10 years before they can
apply for residency. Another problem is evident from Shanghai’s adoption of a
skilled labor migration policy, similar to those developed nations use to
attract skilled workers from developing countries. This means that those who
want to gain residency in Shanghai must possess certain skills. However, there
are probably only about 3,000 people out of the more than 5 million who live in
Shanghai without household registrations who could actually gain residency there
based on this regulation.
Surprisingly, it is harder for Chinese peasants to become citizens of Shanghai
than it is for them to gain a US green card or a household registration here in
Taiwan, while those who hold residency cards have far fewer rights than those
who hold US green cards.
The overly strict rules placed on peasant workers by China’s household
registration system have deprived them of their basic human rights and given
rise to all sorts of unusual situations.
Shenzhen originally had a population of only 310,000 people, however during the
1980s, the population increased by 300,000 to 400,000 annually, followed by
slower growth rates of 70,000 to 80,000 per year during the 1990s. It now has a
population of more than 14 million. However, only 2 million people have legal
household registrations. Out of a “floating population” of 10 million people in
Shenzhen, more than 7 million possess temporary residency cards, over 1 million
live in factory dormitories and more than 2 million are part of a “gray
population” and have no proper jobs.
Pan has said that cities exploit the labor of this “floating population” only to
send them back to the countryside when the projects they work on are completed.
What is worse is that 90 percent of China’s new generation of peasant workers,
about 100 million in total, have lost the skills necessary to perform farm work
and their incomes are nowhere near enough to enable them to settle in cities
like Shenzhen.
When these workers lose both the skills necessary for farming and their jobs in
the cities, they become social outcasts and it is absolutely no surprise that
some resort to suicide.
The polarized economic structure that exists between rural and urban areas has
created the legend that Shenzhen has become. It has also given rise to the
“China model” that some academics from Taiwan and around the world fall over
themselves to praise. Such people think it is trendy to discuss how the Beijing
Consensus will replace the Washington Consensus as a model for economic
development.
One cannot help but wonder whether these academics feel any sympathy for the 200
million peasant workers in China who are suffering a plight unknown in
industrial history. On a similar note, perhaps those people criticizing Foxconn
should spend more time looking at the true nature of the Chinese model of
economic development.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party
legislator.
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