Punching the clock

Recently there has been plenty of media coverage regarding some strikes at a Honda plant in China. The plant is in Guangdong province, which is the southeastern corner of China. It occurred in the Pearl River Delta area, which features Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and a host of other cites centered on the Pearl River and, more importantly, Hong Kong. Shenzhen is the city where the Foxconn suicides and subsequent controversy occurred. This was the first area to really get going in China after Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 takeover of the government and resulting economic reforms. It remains one of the most developed parts of China, with a huge economy, but not necessary that wealthy, as it houses huge numbers of migrant workers from the hinterland. If China is the world’s factory, then the Pearl River Delta is the factory floor. I’ll leave the analysis of what these strikes/suicides mean to the price of our computers, cars, or mops to the experts. But, they got me thinking about work in China, and especially how dissimilar my experience here is compared to normal Chinese people.

me working

My first thought when hearing about the strikes was utter surprise. This is because Chinese people seem to treat work much differently than Americans (or at least the Americans I hang out with). I feel that Americans work pretty hard, and attach a fair amount of importance to their work. We certainly work more than many other rich countries. On the other hand, I think most Americans have a good balance, and seek plenty of diversion, entertainment, and see their jobs as necessary to maintain their lifestyles, but not mandatory. In general, Chinese people see work as mandatory. I get this impression from my conversations with my students, so my generalization about Chinese people comes from 18-23 year olds from Jiangsu. Why is working (and working hard) mandatory? There is the outrageous pressure from society and the government to grow the Chinese economy in order to make China an economic powerhouse. There is the pressure from parents to get a good job to pay them back for the great sacrifices they made in order to pay for one’s education and upbringing. There is the societal pressure on men to work in order to make enough money to buy a house before he wants to get married. There is the pressure on older men and women to make enough money to give their children as much as they want: because the family is so important and China is growing so the next generation should have more than the current and because with the one child policy the child is for many families their only chance of continuing their lineage. There is a general pressure from society to be selfless-China is super collectivist (about the only thing the official Communist title gets right); so quitting one’s job to seek personal desires is shunned.

guy working harder than me

So, Chinese people work. And they work hard. If they don’t farm, most Chinese workers work in factories or plants. The normal schedule is between 48 and 72 hours a week. A worker will work six shifts a week-normally ranging from eight to twelve hours. He will work four days with one shift, and then one day with a two shifts-with about a day and half off every week. For the economically developed coastal provinces (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong) wages might run about 1250-1750 yuan a month for such work, or about 4-8 yuan an hour. Not a lot when a bowl of noodles costs 7 yuan, a bike 300 yuan, a cell phone 500 yuan, a car 100,000 yuan, and an apartment in a coastal city 300,000 yuan.

Because of the aforementioned obligations, combined with a social environment that discourages public complaints, they don’t really seem to complain about it to the people that matter. Now, the students that have graduated who I am friends with generally really dislike their jobs, and complain about them often. Yet, they don’t seem to even think about, let alone be willing to quit. The obligation to their parents is too strong. China’s uber-traditional culture (mostly influenced by Confucianism) doesn’t look too favorably on someone switching careers or taking such a risk as leaving a secure job. One should just bite his lip and keep going, for his parents, the country, and because it would be selfish to quit. I am continually surprised when students tell me about part-time jobs they have, often which are actually internships-as they don’t get paid. They are usually enthusiastic about the job/internship and when I press them about how little they are paid for lots of work, they always respond, “it doesn’t matter, I am doing it just to get experience.” My girlfriend herself has had summer jobs at a bookstore, at KFC, and cleaning houses. She doesn’t need the money at all, her family has plenty and her father is more than willing to give it to her. Rather, she did it just to see what it was like, to gain some experience. This willingness and eagerness to work is not the attitude that brings about strikes. All of the senior students must complete an internship in order to graduate (one of the very few good things about Chinese education). Many students work for two or three months, all day, every day, for nothing or next to nothing, just to get experience and to make contacts in preparation for getting a job. There is intense competition for college grads, because so many Chinese people are now graduating college. Unfortunately for them, the economy has not developed quite so fast so there are not enough jobs requiring degrees. Contrarily, there are plenty of factory jobs yet fewer people to fill them (part of the reason for the strikes).

more people working harder than me

I admittedly have little light to shed on this, as I am an incredible extreme in China. I barely (really, barely) work. My working conditions are amazing, I can show up a little late, leave a little early, have no oversight, and just get to hang out with 20-35 students. The main part of my job is asking questions to spur discussion and maintain a one man “English only” police force. If I need extra work, I can find it almost effortlessly, and can play a large part in making my own schedule. In fact, my light work schedule is one of the main reasons I stayed here another year and put up with the many negatives that come with living in China. I certainly am not going to be going on strike anytime soon. As for the other 1.3 billion people living here, and many of who have deplorable working conditions, I don’t see labor uprisings as a coming movement. I think the pressures here are far too great for people to risk their livelihoods, or simply lose face (so important in Asia) and the government's vise grip on hearts and minds should keep the Chinese working, working a lot, and working hard. (If, with deservedly higher wages.)