Many people talk as if China is no longer a third world country, but it still seems like a terrible place to live for many people. I saw a documentary about Apple’s factory where they have to work 12 hours a day doing the same thing over and over again and they aren’t paid by the hour but by how much they produce. Many of them sleep there in these tiny dormitories with as many as 10 people to a room, it sounds truly terrible. In many factories a lot of workers perish from the horrible conditions. Their persecution of the Falun Gong involves organ theft and people disappearing, ending up either in labor camps or simply killed on the spot.
Do the majority of Chinese people live in borderline slavery and persecution or is this just a fairly small percentage of the population?
Most Chinese people live relatively free lives, and most certainly live in a paradise compared to a generation or two ago.
One of the things that always got to me in China was seeing the grandparents with their grandchildren. The grandparents remember a time when one out of seven people in the province died of famine, where corpses lined the roads and people are the bark from trees. The baby will never know hunger, and will probably go to university and live as part of the global middle class. Even in the eighties many people were not free to choose their jobs, living situation or even marriage partner. Nowadays, young people are more worried about getting the new Lady Gaga album and trying to start businesses. It’s almost a different planet.
There are intrusions on daily life. The one child policy is a thing, although there are many exceptions. Being publicly politically active can be dangerous, although sharing private opinions and light mouthing off generally won’t attract attention. Travel can still be restricted, although Chinese tourism is booming. And life is still very rough for farmers and labored.
The factories are a mixed story. My students would work in factories during the summer, and they enjoyed the money and independence it brought. While working that long seems terrible, for someone whose alternative is getting married young to a farmer, it’s an attractive alternative. Often young people will spend a few years at a factory growing a nest-egg, helping out the family and looking for husbands on their day off (and you can bet back on the farm they didn’t get a day off.)
But many of my students parents worked in factories full time, and they suffered greatly. Many lived thousands of miles away and only saw their spouses and kids once a year. They worked like machines and spent every cent on educating their kids. I think it makes a big difference if one is doing it to get a start as a young person, or if one is doing it as a career.
I think workplace safety isn’t a high priority in China. There aren’t many laws about it, and what laws exist are poorly enforced. I recently read about Guiyu, where a great deal of electronic waste gets disposed of. Through a lot of burning, melting, dissolving and picking, precious metals get extracted from discarded electronics; that’s what drives the industry. There are are disposal companies that follow all of the government regulations about how to do this, but these companies are outcompeted by an array of illegal backyard operations that don’t give a rat’s ass about the rules. The result is intense pollution of the local environment, and major public health issues. The legal disposal facilities are relatively idle, but the illicit operations are booming; public health is suffering because the government there is not doing an adequate job of promulgating/enforcing the rules.
And then you also have situations like this human-powered press transfer system: workers are positioned inside the stamping machine, and are required to assume a specific safe position before each stroke of the machine. Not something you’ll see anytime soon in the US.
So yes - long hours, dangerous working conditions, a lack of enforcement of existing rules. Sounds a fair bit like The Jungle.
"Violence is often used to intimidate “holdouts” into selling their homes on land that is to be redeveloped. Sometimes the thugs to do this are sent by the land developers, and sometimes they are sent by the local government. This was the second most-discussed article on NetEase yesterday…
From NetEase:
Xi’an Households Attacked for Refusing Relocation and Demolition, 3-Year-Old Girl’s Bones Broken
2014 July 20 early morning, Shaanxi province Xi’an city, two private residences in Andi village of Xi’an’s Baqiao district were attacked, causing varying degrees of injury to four adults, and a fractured skull to one 3-year-old girl, who as of this writing remains in a life-threatening condition."