Shenzhen sits in the Pearl River Delta in South China, just north of Hong Kong. “We have one freedom only,” a labor activist explained to me, “the freedom to consume.” With consumerism as the only panacea, harsh working conditions, low wages, virtually no union protections, and a legal system that denies full rights to peasant-workers in cities like Shenzhen, Chinese communism has created the most brilliant system on earth for capitalist exploitation of its working class. What challenges do these peasant-workers face as they build a life for themselves in Shenzhen-particularly at this historical moment when President Xi Jinping has steered his country sharply toward authoritarianism? While gleaming shopping malls dot the urban landscapes of China, selling Nikes, Coach bags, and Prada shoes, a more authoritarian regime is making it harder for workers to organize or protest their low wages and poor working conditions. Forming a class of nearly 290 million people, according to China Labour Bulletin, the peasant-workers constitute 35 per cent of China’s total working population (810 million) and have become central to the success story of Chinese capitalism. But whereas New York City’s industrial working class in the early twentieth century was composed of immigrants from across Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean, Shenzhen workers are mostly internal migrants from China’s countryside-they are China’s famed “peasant-workers,” as they are commonly known. In each blossoming industrial cityscape, migrants, often from peasant backgrounds, mingle and bustle across the crowded sidewalks and streets. A booming factory town, Shenzhen feels in some ways as I imagined New York City or Chicago one hundred years ago: their neighborhoods overflowing with working people and families, the streets jammed with traffic, peddlers of various kinds shouting out their deals and tempting you to buy. During a recent visit to Hong Kong and mainland China, I explored labor relations in this city of 13 million that has been at the heart of the nation’s industrialization miracle. Workers in Shenzhen, China, toil day and night sewing clothes, building iPhones and iPads, constructing skyscrapers and new subway lines, and cleaning hotel rooms for global capitalists negotiating business deals. In 2010, Foxconn added netting on the roofs in an effort to prevent suicides. Julie Greene ▪ Fall 2018Ī Foxconn dormitory in Shenzhen, China. While gleaming shopping malls dot the urban landscapes of China, selling Nikes, Coach bags, and Prada shoes, a more authoritarian regime is making it harder for workers to organize or protest their low wages and poor working conditions.
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