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Warren I. Cohen on China’s ‘Factory Girls’

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Posted on Dec 5, 2008

By Warren I. Cohen

(Page 2)

Chang’s other principal subject is Chunming, older than Min, and intent upon self-improvement, as are many of the factory girls. In what little time they have after work, many take English classes, usually taught by charlatans. Others attend lectures by motivational speakers who tell them how to become rich by direct sales of items such as cosmetics, Tibetan medicines or “soul pagodas”—spaces where a loved one’s ashes can be deposited after cremation. Some of these turn out to be pyramid schemes.
   
      Chunming, who had several striking successes in sales and a precipitous fall as an entrepreneur during the period Chang followed her, was constantly reading self-help books in search of guidance. At one point she was focused on Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues. Another woman confided to Chang that she was seeking wisdom from “The Bible of Jewish Home-Schooling” to learn how to do business according to the Talmud.

 

book cover

 

Factory Girls

 

By Leslie T. Chang

 

Spiegel & Grau, 432 pages

 

Buy the book

 

One of Chang’s most fascinating observations has to do with the importance of the mobile phone to her factory girls. It is the only means of contact for what is essentially a floating population. Most of the women live in dormitories, but move from one to another as they change jobs. They can find each other again—and their boyfriends—by calling them on their mobile phones. At one point, Min’s phone was stolen and with it all the contact information she had for everyone she had met in Dongguan. She had little choice but to begin her social life all over again. 

Another point Chang notes is the sexual freedom her young women enjoyed. The Internet seemed to be the favorite vehicle for arranging dates, with both parties usually lying about vital statistics—and the men often about marital status. Sometimes they posted doctored photos. None of this would be unusual in the United States or Europe, but sleeping with multiple partners was not something life in the village had allowed. Dongguan permitted its residents a degree of privacy, at least for those who had succeeded in leaving the dormitories for their own apartments, however grim these may have been.

Finally there is the absence of Mao. It’s not likely that many factory girls turn to Ben Franklin for guidance, but there’s no indication that any of them are carrying around Mao’s “Little Red Book.” Communism as ideology is absent from Dongguan, from its museum and from its conversation. Indeed, the young women demonstrate remarkable political ignorance and indifference, often unaware of who China’s current leaders are—and not caring.

Chang’s subtitle conveys the meaning of her story. The migrants, more than 100 million nationwide, are changing China. Unmoored by their travels from the village to the city, they leave traditional values behind. Returning to their homes for the Lunar New Year, they find village life stifling and their behavior and rhetoric leaves their families discomforted and unsettled.

Much of this experience will be familiar to students of urbanization all over the world: “You can’t go home again.” What remains to be seen is what impact the current recession, with tens of thousands of Pearl River Delta workers being laid off, will have on the structure of Chinese society. The factory girls of Dongguan, unlike previous generations of Chinese women, seem most unlikely to just sit around and chi ku (eat bitterness).

Warren I. Cohen, professor emeritus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and senior scholar in the Asia program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is the author of several books, including “America’s Response to China,” the fifth edition of which will be published by Columbia University Press next year.

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By Evelyn, December 7, 2008 at 8:08 pm Link to this comment
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The values that now dominate in the West do not arise form anything in our cultural heritage. They are the result of industrialization and urbanization. China is also becoming industrial and urban, which is the inevitable result of the need for manufactured products in a world market. It happened in England, in Europe, later in the United States, then in Japan and Korea, and it is happening in China. Some day it will move to Africa. Urban industrial life is harsh, but so too is farm labor and a peasant economy. Given a choice, those who know both best, such as the young women of China today, usually make a free choice to endure the worst of sweat shop life over life on the farm, as did the girls of New England in the early 1800s.

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By martin weiss, December 5, 2008 at 11:22 pm Link to this comment

Just when the west has begun to see the end of viable industrial society and the foreshortened limits of wealth, China and India are entering the course of capitalist hazards and broken dreams.
Now we here in the US can clearly see the depredations of market values on our society, China must scale back its ambitions to preserve its future, and look elsewhere for its models.
Role reversal and cognitive dissonance strike when one least expects. Free women finding enduring values outside of labor-saving devices and investments define roles only R. Crumb, Stephen Delaney and Phillip K. Dick could have imagined.
Confucius would be amused that the sustainable China acquires wider responsibilities with its wider horizons. The Maoist cadre has left the building and Rachel Carson and Kate Hepburn are sympathizing with the social pressures that once confined their feet to distortion. Now the once imitative Oriental cultures shine with ancient design, and Eric Burden and the Animals big hit enjoying new recognition is “The Teahouse of the Rising Sun”.
Fortunately, the human condition still displays the reliance on communication that has set us apart from the merely ferocious. And just when China got its steel mills competitive, steel has become an embarrassment of riches.

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By Ipsi Dixit, December 5, 2008 at 10:11 am Link to this comment

‘HOW THE CHINESE ARE BECOMING WESTERNIZED AND JUST LIKE US’ ARTICLE.

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