Posted on 09/25/2004 5:03:34 AM PDT by traumer
Liu Fangran has never left China but she, along with millions of other young women in factories across China, is responsible for clothing almost a third of the world.
When global trade rules change in a few months, as the World Trade Organisation abolishes textile quotas, experts say that figure could jump.
Sky News reporter Holly Williams says Chinese factories could eventually be churning out 80% of the world's clothing.
The key to its success is an army of women in the teens and early twenties, willing to toil long hours for low pay.
20-year-old Liu Fangran travelled hundreds of miles from her hometown in Central China's Henan Province to find a job at the Liangshan Clothing Company in Beijing.
Quota
She works a minimum of ten hours a day hunched over a sewing machine and earns just £60 pounds a month. Her pay is docked if she does not meet the quota set by her boss.
"I came here because I couldn't find any decent work back home", said Liu, "I just couldn't make a living."
At Liu Fangran's factory alone there are another 400 women with similar stories.
Dressed in cotton aprons and lined up in rows under dim light-bulbs, they race to finish their daily quotas under the watchful eye of factory boss Si Youru.
(Excerpt) Read more at sky.com ...
So when hostilities finally erupt with China and we have to go without cheap Chicomm goods, we'll be naked as well?
Slaves can be quite useful. (/ sad sarcasm off)
ping
"China's big advantage is that people are cheap here", says Si, a weather-beaten Communist Party member....
But a cheap, foreign labour force comes with drawbacks. Many companies are seeing their designs copied before re-appearing on Chinese high streets at a fraction of the price of the genuine item.
In many cases, the same factory that makes the real goods also sells copies out the back door.
Well, then what is the answer? Should we quit buying the cheap Chinese clothes? Will this then eliminate the need for this backbreaking inhumane sort of work which crushes young women? Or . . if we quit buying, would that penalize and cause these same young women to have to do without their own necessities? If the need for such work is eliminated, will they go back home and live basic lives off the land - and would that be so bad? If every hour of the day is long, hard, unrewarding work with little relief, is the person's life really better just for the sake of an extra scrap of just enough food to be able to keep doing the same thing until the health is broken?
I honestly don't have the answer - it's an enigma to me.
But it's a one way street for sure. And it'll keep on going until something breaks....
There is no way that the U.S. can compete with that kind of labor.
There are many that say that we shouldn't be worried about thay kind of job - Americans are destined for better jobs and futures. I ask them to look around the next time they are out and about at the mall perhaps. Take a good look at all the people around you. Are they all capable of handling a business? Can they all be relied on to take charge of their futures?
Next you'll hear the advocates of "free trade" tell us that they have more faith in the American citizen. The Americans are resourceful and can be relied on to fend for themselves and grab hold of opportunities. Again, go to the mall, or even better take a walk through any large city and tell me that all of the people hanging out on street corners are capable of running a business.
The super-capitalists of this country are eliminating the middle class slowly but surely. We are forced to become working class serfs to large corporations or go on welfare.
Americans who want a solid future for their children are being priced out of jobs that allow them to make the sacrifices for their children. We can no longer look forward to working at a steady job, planning for our children to go to college so they can be better off than us.
Our children and many others are now forced to compete with low priced labor on so many levels. Next we'll hear "Well, that's what their labor is worth". Like the cost of goods the value of labor depends on the market. When the market is flooded with cheap labor isn't the price of labor then artificially (and this case deliberately) held down? Super-capitalists see cheap labor as stepping stone up for them. It doesn't matter that the rest of those left behind have to work harder and harder just to maintain their status quo.
The supplanting of our industrial base with the service economy is parallel to the dot.com era. With no tangible assets, service industries, like the dot.com industries will be the first to fall in the event of some economic catastrophe.
Right on - you put it very eloquently.
I don't want to sound like 'the sky is falling' but I do worry or at least wonder about the future. And I am not talking about a far future - just perhaps 5-10 years...
What we're seeing here is the formation of a new serfdom, and the vast majority of our children & grandchildren are going to be at the bottom.
Well --- all we're doing is propping up their Communist country --- let her go home and grow rice with which she can feed herself --- sustinence farming is not at all worse than what she'd doing now --- or if the Chinese people tire of their poverty, let them overthrow their Communist government. Then they could build their own economy and jobs --- and be consumers instead of just slaves.
Should the price of goods be set by the market, that is - by what someone is willing to pay, or should prices be set by by the state?
When all material and labor belongs to the state, as in communism, then yep the state can set the price.
If you value freedom, then you do not want the state assuming control of your assets, thereby allowing the state to set prices.
The problem with China is they are joining in the food chain, and we want to stay on top of the food chain.
What assets do yo own? While the government lets you live in your house (if you pay your taxes) we are further taxed by said government on everything we have, buy, acquire and earn. Tell me, where are the freedoms you speak of?
As long as the government is willing to control virtually every aspect of our domestic lives is it too much to ask that they do what is in their power to preserve this country for future generations?
Thank You Wal-Mart.
Property rights are an inherent right, that is they are a fantasy, they do not exist unless others choose to believe in them. The government ignores your property rights when collecting taxes. The theory is that with our system of supposedly self government, the Constitution limits the government’s ability to ignore your property rights. So the deal is that we voluntarily allow the government to tax us.
The problem is those who don’t own property agitate for those with property to be taxed, because they perceive the benefit of something for nothing.
So the freedoms I speak of – our Natural Rights – do not exist – except for our ability to choose to respect them. This is exactly as to why they are defined as inherent – as part of our being – and not defined as a real article such as a rock or a pencil.
Opting for government price controls just further obscures the concepts of Freedom – that is the concept of property rights.
So - what's your point - that the New England textile industry is still as robust as ever despite what has happened?
The fact that there are so many women working in China's textiles factories is an indication that China has a long way to go as a developing nation. The day will come when those textile factories will leave China and go to places like Africa or Central Asia. For those who are alarmists about China, that's when the worry should really begin.
Developed nations rely on technology and information as a primary source of export instead of labor intensive products such as textiles.
Post #14 by Fishing-Guy has a good grasp on global trade.
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