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Women workers in the “Chinese Century”

Au Loong-yu & Nan Shan

“A blossom rose,

Before it could enjoy the warmth of the sun,

Before it could feel the touch of a breeze,

Was mercilessly broken off from its branch,

Got mixed with mud in the ground, shattered.

Its sweet scent was still in the air,

Its color still red.

Maybe some affectionate young man,

Once wished to offer this rose to his beloved bride?”

This is a poem written by a male worker to mourn the death of two women workers who undertook treatment in the same hospital where he was staying. They were both 18 and worked in different factories in the EPZ of the Pearl River Delta in southern China, and both were victims of chemical poisoning. One jumped out of the balcony of a hospital and killed herself on 2nd November 2003. The main cause were her factory refused to pay compensation and she could hardly find another job to support her family because of the illness. Another one died of benzene poisoning on 3rd November, after 11-month hospitalization. Since the factory concerned stopped paying money to the hospital for the treatment of this woman worker, the hospital stopped providing sufficient medication to her and she eventually died.

The tragic death of these two young women is only a tip of the ice berth of the plight of Chinese women workers in 20 years of ‘economic reform’ and ‘modernization’.

Profound transformation of the working class

Over the past 10 years, the active urban working population in Mainland China has grown to 200 million, but its composition has changed greatly. The large-scale privatization resulted from economic restructuring have dealt a big blow to the old working class. The number of workers in state owned enterprises (SOEs) shrank from 190 million in l995 to 83 million in 2000. The number of workers in collective enterprises has halved since 1995, or a net decrease of 14 million. Gone are the secured and well-paid jobs of the SOEs. Women workers in SOEs are the first victims of such transformation. They have been the first to get fired in the late eighties, who were told by the government that in this age of modernization their duty are to return to their home. Since then women workers over 40 have been more and more difficult to keep their job. The official unemployment figure is 3.1 %, or 5.6 million, but a more realistic appreciation may range from between10 to15 %, or 18 to 30 million workers. Some sources even put the figure as high as 40 million. Among the ranks of unemployed, many of them are women. 

At the same time, more than 100 million migrant workers from the rural area have roamed the country in the search of jobs. A new working class has been formed along with the old, and many of them are women. Under the one party state, working people are denied the basic right of association, therefore they are totally defenseless when super exploited. In addition to this, they are less educated and less skill than urban workers, thus their market value is considered to be substantially lower. All these factors make the wages of these migrant workers so cheap that it attracts huge number of Foreign Direct Investment. 

There are some 800 EPZs all over the world, employing approximately 30 million workers. The Chinese EPZs employs approximately 20 million of them which accounts for two third of the world total. The Chinese figure speaks for the fact that China has become favorite heaven for TNCs’ Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). FDI flows to countries where wages are exceedingly low, which implies high profit rate. Chinese wages is very low, even lower than India, although China’s GDP per capita is one time higher than India. China was awarded the title of ‘world factory’ for its huge export. The title should read: ‘the world sweatshops’.

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