Factory Girls

I recently read an interesting book about life of factory girls in China written my Leslie Chang, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal who lived in China for a decade. This book traces the life of women from the countryside who work factories in China.

China now has more than 130 million workers and the government is frantically creating jobs for these people who's exodus from the villages and rural towns would otherwise become a big problem for the country. As it is, supply is already greater than demand, despite the huge growth in industrialization in China, depressing salary and extending working hours and aggravating working conditions.

The recent news of many suicides at the Foxconn factory manufacturing Apple iphones and other products has raised worldwide attention to the plight of the Chinese migrant workers, prompting the factory management to raise their salary by up to 20%. Unknown to the outside world, many continues to be "sweatshops" employing under aged workers, working in an unhealthy environment and putting them through long hours of work away from their homes and their loved ones. Exploitation has its limits and I believe more of these will be exposed as more and more writers pen their thoughts about the situation in China!

It is no wonder that many are jumping on the bandwagon for jobs in more developed countries such as Singapore and Japan, and despite the lower level jobs (eg waitresses, floor cleaners etc...), the salary, working and living conditions are much better than in the cities of China.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand more about the life of Chinese migrant workers. I consider myself to be one of these and while I try to portray a clear a picture to you in this blog, the book certain gives a different perspective of life as a migrant worker back in China.