| | WUHU, China -- Years after activists accused Nike and other Western brands of running Third World sweatshops, the issue has taken a surprising turn.
The path of discovery winds from coastal factory floors far into China's interior, past women knee-deep in streams pounding laundry. It continues down a dusty village lane to a startling sight: arrays of gleaming three-story houses with balconies, balustrades and even Greek columns rising from rice paddies.
It turns out that factory workers -- not the activists labeled "preachy" by one expert, and not the Nike executives so wounded by criticism -- get the last laugh. Villagers who "went out," as Chinese say, for what critics described as dead-end manufacturing jobs are sending money back and returning with savings, building houses and starting businesses.
Workers who stitched shoes for Nike Inc. and apparel for Columbia Sportswear Co., both based near Beaverton, are fueling a wave of prosperity in rural China. The boom has a solid feel, with villagers paying cash for houses.
"No one would take out a mortgage to build a house," said Wang Jianguo, 37, who returned after a factory injury in a distant province to the area near Wuhu, west of Shanghai. "You wouldn't feel secure living in a house you didn't own."
In the end, market forces and ambition, not activism or corporate initiatives, pushed up wages and improved working conditions. The forces originally unleashed by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping still drive China's economy, producing a manufacturing labor shortage and giving villagers viable choices beyond factory work.
[...]
U.S. journalist Leslie Chang followed young Chinese assembly-line workers for her recently published book, "Factory Girls." Chang says money sent home, and migrants moving back, are changing rural China.
Line workers, she says, can earn several times the average $200 annual income of a farm family.
"They're sleeping 12 in a dorm, and it looks like a pretty crappy life," Chang said. "But you don't hear workers say, 'Oh, I have no hope, I'm a slave.' They say, 'I want to save some money. My dream is to be Bill Gates or to own a restaurant.'"
Chang views sweatshop critics as condescending. She notes that the 19th-century U.S. industrial economy developed in a similar way, as Vermont and New Hampshire farm girls migrated to work in Massachusetts textile plants, sending savings home. She says savvy Chinese workers, not preachy activists, are securing better conditions and wages in China's fast-developing economy.
[...]
That formula is working -- after two decades -- for Chen Laixiang, a 40-year-old villager from Anhui province, long one of China's poorest inland areas. Chen's face is weathered and his hands callused from working outside for 20 years, pouring concrete in cities ranging from Nanjing to Beijing.
Now Chen and his brother, a woodworker, are back -- starting a business in Zhi Chang, their native village. They won permission to lease land and enlarge a pond.
The brothers are stocking the pond with fish. As 50-50 partners, they took a small-business class and invested $22,000 to build a fishing resort.
[...]
Anhui has attracted factories. Workers in the plants have dreams. Like almost all the young women in her village, Zhang Yuan went out to work in a garment factory.
"Living in the countryside, you feel like a bird in a cage, not knowing the world outside," said Zhang, a petite 19-year-old who sews garments in Shanghai Silk Group's plant in Xuan Cheng, Anhui.
Zhang lives in a factory dorm during the week. She spends weekends at home, 40 minutes away by bus. Her parents, a driver and a housewife, have used money she earned during the last year to buy a fridge, a color television and a motorbike.
"If we go outside, we may encounter a lot of difficulties," said Zhang, who aims to open a clothing shop someday. "But even if we try and fail, we will never feel regret." | |
