Photographer captures bizarre, intimate scenes of Chinese factory life

zauhar said:
Yeah, Victor, the 'quagmire' that once was known as a decent life. Since you want to use personal experience as a credential, I did live through those times, and things were much better for the US middle class. Jobs were relatively plentiful, education meant something, one salary could support a family.

Things went downhill in the 80's when people with your ideology started to get the upper hand.

Randy
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I'm not arguing against union power per se, but the kind of industry protection seen in the auto and agriculture industry. Unions are good, but when governments help them overpower firms, there are going to be plenty of problems.

Soberly, I'd argue that this was inevitable for the US anyways - a nation only has so long when it's competitive compared to the rest of the world. The US is already way past that peak, and China is also on the wrong side of the slope. In a few years we'll see jobs leak to even lower-income regions, Africa and Central/Southeast Asia being prime examples. I say this as someone with a decade of formal training in economics.

I don't have any "ideology" in this at all - the definition of being a good economist involves not taking your own biases into the argument. It's a sad reality, I know, but that's what it is.

Colin Corneau said:
True...labour unions have a proven track record of improving living standards, raising widespread income levels and improving education and health levels -- trickle-down and tax cuts most certainly do NOT.
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Trickle-down theory is flat out stupid. Tax cuts actually have merit, but have to be for the right taxes and implemented at the right time to properly work. Unions are necessary, but neither monopolies nor monopsonies are good for the economy. In theory unions exactly the size of firms work best, but that is almost never the case in real life...
 
Colin Corneau said:
We actually agree on the gradual process most societies go through upon industrializing, as well as the high horse a few people here get on when commenting on this topic.

I don't have illusions about where Chinese workers are on this path, and I've acknowledged the reality that these jobs represent a big step up from rural farm life.
However, there's also a very real sense of grievance towards the West and its attitude to China in the minds of many Chinese...based on about 150 years of colonial history. Simply shrugging and saying "oh well" when confronted with reports of appalling health and safety situations would be callous.

Be clear: we're not talking about making another few bucks an hour or having 3 weeks vacation each year. We're talking conditions that drove workers to suicide at FoxxConn...workers being exposed to toxic chemicals just to save pennies on the cost of an iPhone...among other things.

How can anyone claim to have concern or compassion for Chinese people and just shrug when confronted with these things?

Sorry, but putting pressure to eliminate conditions that literally kill Chinese workers will hardly put anyone out of business. Let's get real.
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There is a line between hard work and abusive work, I agree. I would like to point out that Foxconn's suicide rate is probably not much higher than the rate for China's adult population (25/100,000). When you hire on a regular basis 150,000 workers, some of them are bound to have stress issues and breakdowns. But Foxconn cases become national news highlights...and the poor kid who hangs himself in a college dorm gets maybe a quarter page in the local paper.

Other than that, I completely agree that there are indeed cases that destroy health and kill workers, and I applaud actual efforts to reduce or eliminate such incidents.
 
The point I'm trying to make - Some Chinese, under Mao, felt that there was some sense of stability ('the iron rice bowl'), and a real sense of community and social responsibility. There is now a horrific dog-eat-dog mentality, a more brutal form of capitalism than you see anywhere in the capitalist world. Some are certainly benefiting - the roads are now choked with cars instead of bicycles! But many of those 'success stories' already had connections to power, just like the Russian oligarchs. It is far from being a meritocracy.

Randy
 
YYV_146 said:
I'm not arguing against union power per se, but the kind of industry protection seen in the auto and agriculture industry. Unions are good, but when governments help them overpower firms, there are going to be plenty of problems.

Trickle-down theory is flat out stupid. Tax cuts actually have merit, but have to be for the right taxes and implemented at the right time to properly work. Unions are necessary, but neither monopolies nor monopsonies are good for the economy. In theory unions exactly the size of firms work best, but that is almost never the case in real life...
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I quite agree with your second paragraph...

As a nod to the OP -- I like the idea of an "insider" making images of their experience and that of their peers. Sometimes an objective outsider's viewpoint will show the way to truth...sometimes it takes one on the inside.
 
This is very typical and hard to compete with.

A team of our purchasing agent went to China to source components. It was winter, below zero and no heat, ZERO.

When one worker was observed doing something obviously dangerous, he called it to the attention of the guide who answered it was OK because they could always get a new worker.

Our jobs have been outsourced to places where there is no OSHA, no unions, no dignity and where people will work for food.

I submit something wrong here.
 
Do we really need moral and dignity to beautify our raw action of consumption. Like organic food or Made in USA with union care.

Come on, we're already on the same boat, since long ago, till the next comes.
 
YYV_146 said:
I don't have any "ideology" in this at all - the definition of being a good economist involves not taking your own biases into the argument. It's a sad reality, I know, but that's what it is.
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Inevitably, claims of "ideology-free" economics, like earlier claims of "value-free" social sciences, bear a transferential relationship to the thing (in this case ideology) that they think has been excluded. The part with which I'd agree is that it (ideology, or the locus of ideological production) isn't a matter of individual volition or choice. It is rather disciplinary and institutional. Disciplines are constructed around a consensus of what constitutes legitimacy. Methodologies, theses and objects that are not considered legitimate are excluded from the discipline at the outset.


YYV_146 said:
low prices might be more beneficial for the laborers.
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It depends on how you define "the laborers", though, doesn't it? Economists who take salaried labor as the norm only do so in defiance of a massive historical archive documenting the existence of considerable amounts of irregular, exceptional labor in all areas at all "stages" of modern economic development. Historically, both Left and Right have been blind to this aspect of historical labor conditions, falling into the methodological trap of considering salaried labor as both a norm and a form of historical progress. The historical economist Yann Moulier Boutang has a large tome detailing elements of this history and its implications for economic theory, but it is available in French.
 
Colin Corneau said:
This is the same process our society went through, in the early Industrial Age -- people left the farms and countryside for better opportunity in cities. A lot has been written about pollution in China's cities but let's remember it was the same situation in the West a few generations ago...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog

Better labour conditions need to be pressed for by the West, to save Chinese workers from explotation but the fact is factory jobs represent a step up for many Chinese citizens...it's more money than a rural farm and a chance at future advancement in the cities. These workers are not gullible or foolish.
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I agree with you in principle, however I'm not quite sure what 'exploitation' is.
 
Platinum RF said:
The factory owners are most likely from West and from Taiwan. Such as these factories that make iphone for apple.
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The factory owners from the West have much higher standards than those for local consumption. However the Chinese government will only ever publicly criticize foreign firms as a means of diverting attention from its own corruption and failings.
 
I get the sore feeling that these reports using words like 'nightmare' to describe the situation of Chinese factory workers are mostly about celebrating the US of A for having left behind similar working circumstances.

most of the photos shown I don't perceive as being all that bizarre and intimate, certainly much stronger photos are there to be taken
 
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