ABSTRACT
In 2009 I was interviewing Chinese migrant workers at a Guangzhou railway station where they usually break their journey from various rural locations before travelling to or from cities such as Dongguan and Shenzhen further south. These cities are the centre of low-end labour-intensive manufacture in the Pearl River Delta. When I was interviewing a worker others nearby would often gather around and listen and would be keen to add their own comment. I was talking to a young woman who was explaining that her wages had dropped to almost half as the 2008 global financial crisis affected orders for the factory employing her. She was ‘going home’. She said her wages were too low to compensate for living in a ten-bed dormitory while being obliged to tolerate superiors who were ‘high and mighty’ and ‘nasty to workers’. She added that worker contracts were not offered at her factory and in any case the contracts were ‘not worth anything’. Two other young women listening to this exchange pointed out that factory management goes around contract conditions. They were keen to point out that they had heard that when workers in their factory had been dismissed, they were receiving only around 80 per cent of their due wages. These two young women had also chosen ‘to go back home for now’. After China was accepted as a member of the WTO in November 2001 and the MFA lapsed in December 2004, there was unprecedented global demand for China’s low-cost textiles and clothing. China soon became the world’s largest exporter of textiles and garments. By 2010, in spite of the negative effect of the 2008 GFC, the country was exporting 30.7 per cent of the world market’s textiles and almost 36.9 per cent of the global market’s garments. In the first three quarters of 2011, China was enjoying 29 per cent year-on-year rise in textile output value (Xinhua, 29 October 2011). However, contrary to immediate appearances, China’s ongoing role as the ‘workshop of the world’ for low-cost goods, including textiles and clothing, was under threat. China’s low-priced product manufacturers were soon to face twin but contradictory demands. They had to maintain their price advantage in order to attract export contracts and protect global market share. At the same time, there was a chronic shortage of the rural workers they employ. China’s rural-to-urban migrant workers were increasingly unwilling to accept the wages and working conditions on offer.
