Cost of an iPad?

The modern electronics industry from Apple to Dell is generating billions in profits and lots of toys for consumers. And the Chinese workers, under the corrupt dictatorship of the so-called "Communist" Party, are paying the price. Is it worth it?

Twelve workers have committed suicide so far this year at the factory that makes Apple iPads. Four others survived, gravely injured, and 20 were stopped from killing themselves by the company. All the dead were between 18 and 24 years old.

Foxconn - the city-sized factory in the Shenzhen free trade zone, southern China - employs 400,000 mainly migrant workers. They work 70 hours a week for about 50 cents an hour under a military-style administration and harsh working conditions.

Foxconn also supply Dell, Hewlett Packard and Sony and is one of the largest producers of computers and consumer electronics in the world.

One worker said: “We are extremely tired, with tremendous pressure. We finish one step in every seven seconds, which requires us to concentrate and keep working and working. We work faster even than the machines.

“Every shift (ten hours), we finish 4,000 Dell computers, all the while standing up. We can accomplish these assignments through collective effort, but many of us feel worn out.”

A week ago an undercover team infiltrated the plant. They told the Daily Telegraph: “Hundreds of people work in the workshops but they are not allowed to talk to each other. If you talk you get a black mark in your record and you get shouted at by your manager. You can also be fined.”

The company are constructing nets around the seven storey dormitories from which workers have been jumping. They have also hired 70 psychologists and brought in Buddhist monks.

Sweatshop

Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire chairman of Foxconn’s parent company Hon Hai, had toured the plant with journalists only hours before the latest death. “This is not a sweatshop”, he told them.

Apple’s sales were £30 billion last year. The company’s audit of its own “supplier responsibility codes” shows that 102 facilities flouted the “rigorous rules” on working hours, 39% broke rules on workplace injury prevention and 30% broke guidelines on toxic waste disposal. There were also violations on child labour and falsified records. Will Apple cancel these contracts? I wouldn’t hold your breath.

The modern, high tech, trendy image of Apple has proved to be a veil behind which hundreds of thousands of workers are brutally exploited in barbaric conditions.

Chinese workers need independent, democratic, campaigning trade unions to fight for decent pay and conditions and for an end to the tyranny of these workplace prisons.

Sharpe, John. Workers' suicides: The human cost of an iPad. Socialistworld.net.

Socialists invest in jobs, Capitalists invest in greed

China's response to the world economic crisis seems a lot better than the capitalist response. Now all they have to do is eliminate all the sweatshops.

From People's Weekly World:

China, hit by the current global economic crisis, with some foreign-operated plants closing down, took immediate, emergency action. Its State Council approved a $586 billion public works program to build new low-cost homes, mass transit and airports. The program will employ tens of thousands of unemployed workers and at the same time build or repair urgently needed infrastructure like bridges, roads and tunnels.

At the top of the agenda is rebuilding Sichuan Province, devastated by an earthquake that left millions homeless. (What a striking contrast to the abandonment of Hurricane Katrina victims by the Bush administration).

The Asian stock market soared 5.6 percent in response to China’s initiative and stocks in Hong Kong and Shanghai rallied strongly.

The New York Times pointed out that unlike China’s rescue package, our recently approved $700 billion bailout “helped strengthen bank balance sheets” but did not “mandate new lending or support specific investment projects in the United States.”

Because of their fanatical right-wing “free market” ideology, Bush and fellow Republicans are fighting tooth and nail against any steps to restrict corporate greed or government action to get our “real” economy going and growing.

The administration is using the bailout to help financiers who created the crisis but it has not slowed the plunge toward a deep recession. Last month 240,000 jobs were lost and the jobless rate zoomed to 6.5 percent. Meanwhile the bankers are using our tax dollars to buy up rival banks rather than free up credit to help jumpstart the economy.

The Times points out that “Beijing maintains far more control over investment trends than Washington does so it has greater flexibility to increase investments and counter a sharp downturn.”

In other words, China’s government has the power to command that these socialized institutions allocate resources to head off a depression.

China’s President Hu Jintao is scheduled to meet Nov. 15 with President-elect Barack Obama. Obama would do well to study China’s bold initiative. We do not have socialism and our banks are certainly not nationalized. But the people are losing patience as they watch their jobs, retirement accounts, and employer-provided health care go up in smoke. They are going to demand strong action to help the folks on Main Street.

Link

China in Africa by Richard Behar

China is leveraging its Communist political legacy and 3rd world status, as well as its surging financial muscle, to compete head-to-head with the Western neo-colonials in Africa. Specifically China has gotten in on the resource grab for oil, timber, copper and other minerals which the US and European powers have been engaged in for well nigh a century.

There are signs, depending always on the quality of the local leadership, that the overall model may have longer lasting positive effects such as infrastructure and hospital projects, there are signs that China is even more exploitative of the African workers than the Westerners.

This is the most disturbing aspects, that China is using its credentials as a nation exploited by Western colonizers to gain leverage with African nations sharing a similar history. However, based on this article, it is not applying socialist principles to those efforts but instead applying the most brutal capitalist exploitive model possible on the ground against local workers. Behar even suggests that there are reports that Chinese workers imported to Africa are convicts, essentially slave labor.

This is especially sad in the case of countries like Zambia where during the 70s workers enjoyed cradle-to-grave security based on an extensive welfare state funded by nationalized mineral wealth, a model the western powers could not abide for long and one that the Chinese government, at least for now, seems uninterested in resurrecting.

Below is an excerpt from an incredible article by the tenacious journalist Richard Behar which appeared in, of all places, Fast Company magazine. I highly recommend you take the time to read the article:

[...]

An unfathomably vast terrain comprising 49 nations, the sub-Sahara represents nearly one-fifth of the earth's landmass. Yet its total economy is tinier than Florida's. Here, 300 million people get by on less than $1 a day. Until they don't: It is the planet's biggest tomb, where compared to the 1960s, twice as many children under the age of 5 are now dying each day from disease; a bottomless badland where $500 billion of Western aid since World War II (more than four Marshall Plans) has barely made a dent in the poverty; a region whose market share of world trade is shrinking by the hour as it gets left behind, perhaps permanently, in the dust of globalization; a place so desperate for everything -- cash, trade, investment, infrastructure -- and so powerless to negotiate strategically, that it's pretty much up for sale to the highest bidder.

[...]

In describing China's exploits, it's tempting to evoke the image of a benign, postcolonial West being outfoxed by a ruthless and unscrupulous neo-communist power. Don't bother. The American track record in modern Africa has been deplorable -- a half-century of backing strongmen, turning a blind eye, and taking what we can get with little or no regard for the health or welfare of the locals. So no, this is not an update about the Yellow Peril, although no shortage of U.S. officials see China's safari as precisely that. Instead, this is a story about an economic model of exploitation that is at once formidably efficient and tragically flawed, about a planet that's being consumed by those who live on its surface. Today's global economy has an insatiable need for raw materials. That's as true for China's rise as it is true for the maintenance of America's economy. With China exporting some 40% of its GDP, Americans need to understand that behind that Made in China tag at Wal-Mart is a mutually reinforcing death spiral. We are beginning to overwhelm our host.

[...]

Equatorial Guinea is less a country than a corrupt, extended-family business that cooked up its own national anthem. And the American oil industry has been singing along for years, cuddling up as much as necessary (and with barely any competition) to Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the 66-year-old despot who has ruled this backwater since 1979. Smaller than El Paso, Texas, E.G. has nevertheless managed to get itself at or near the top of just about every shameful list in the world -- from the most-censored countries (according to the Committee to Protect Journalists) to the most corrupt (Transparency International) to the worst places to do business (the World Bank). Geoffrey Wood, a business professor at the U.K.'s University of Sheffield and coauthor of The Ethical Business, concluded in his own 2004 study of E.G. that the country is a "criminal state" that matches or exceeds the "rapacity and brutality" of the Duvaliers' Haiti, Somoza's Nicaragua, and Batista's Cuba. Despite an economy with the highest average annual growth rate in the world (21%) since 2001, more than half of the population lacks access to potable water and electricity. The UN says E.G. shows the greatest disparity on earth between per capita income ($50,000, surpassed only by Luxembourg) and human welfare (most of E.G.'s citizens live on less than $1 a day).

Behar, Richard. June-2008. China in Africa: Part I. Fast Company.

Primative accumulation in contemporary China

Pictured right is Chinese labor activist, Huang Qingnan. He lies injured after he was attacked with a machete for helping workers fight for their rights. These types of attacks were very common in the US well into the 20th century. Workers were beaten and lynched on a regular basis by paid thugs and police. One of the most famous incidents was the Ludlow Massacre, perpetrated in the name of John D Rockerfeller.

Chinese activists have been concentrating on publicising the contents of the new Labour Contract Law that will come into force on 1 January next year. One of its positive features is that it will make it more difficult for employers to dismiss workers.

The law was passed despite fierce and sustained opposition from multinationals led by the American Chamber of Commerce, who threatened capital flight.

A compromise draft was eventually approved by the National People’s Congress – China’s non-elected parliament – with the bosses reassured by the certainty that implementation will be lax, not least because China’s only legal trade union is constitutionally and legally bound to uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

While this link gives the organisation considerable leverage in law drafting, the union has barely any influence on the shop floor. Local government officials frequently find common interest with capitalists and ensure that enterprise-level trade unions are run by management or their stooges.

The rare instances of union officials speaking out on behalf of workers usually leads to their being sacked or transferred. Workers who organise outside the traditional union structures face arrest and imprisonment.

Although there is no protection of the right to strike in China and freedom of association is banned, there has been a marked increase in strike activity, as workers have made good use of recent labour shortages and a growing awareness of workers’ rights to demand a living wage paid on time.

Independent unions are banned, but workers often form hometown associations that are sometimes capable of organising strikes. Occasions where these associations unite in strike action are increasing.

The fight for labour rights in China’s cities. Socialist Worker. 11-Dec-2007.

Give Me Mao Better Statistics

Since the 1980s the propaganda campaign to discredit the achievements of socialistic states has intensified in support of the neo-liberal TINA ("there is no alternative" to capitalism) agenda.

A recent article in the Monthly Review (September 2006) by Joseph Ball picks apart the pseudo-science of the anti-Mao revisionist history movement:

Over the last 25 years the reputation of Mao Zedong has been seriously undermined by ever more extreme estimates of the numbers of deaths he was supposedly responsible for. In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people, slashing the level of poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. Mao’s theories also gave great inspiration to those fighting imperialism around the world. It is probably this factor that explains a great deal of the hostility towards him from the Right. This is a tendency that is likely to grow more acute with the apparent growth in strength of Maoist movements in India and Nepal in recent years, as well as the continuing influence of Maoist movements in other parts of the world.

[...]

[I]n 1973-5 life expectancy in China was higher than in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and many countries in Latin America. In 1981 she co-wrote an article where she described the People's Republic of China as a 'super-achiever' in terms of mortality reduction, with life expectancy increasing by approximately 1.5 years per calendar year since the start of communist rule in 1949. Life expectancy increased from 35 in 1949 to 65 in the 1970s when Mao’s rule came to an end.

[...]

Monthly Review: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?

Businesses Advance Socialism in China

Excerpts from an article by Li Qian from China Daily:

When China opened up to the world over 20 years ago, Wei Jianhua joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) because of its social ideals. A decade later, she became an owner of a chemical manufacturing corporation – a private enterprise.

At the end of last year, more than 2.86 million party members work in privately owned enterprises, including 810,000 running their own businesses, shows figures released by the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee.

Party members going into private businesses, especially those who left state-owned enterprises and government positions once became a national hot topic starting from the early 1990s when the country deepened development towards the market-oriented economic system.

[...]

The businesswoman's conversion has led to a fresh interpretation of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The CPC's constitution states that human society should eliminate the exploitation of the labor class, and calls on party members to establish businesses that are owned by all citizens or a collective of people.

But for Wei and many other Communist entrepreneurs, serving the people and country could be practiced in other ways.

"I believe the key issue is how to properly allocate profits to benefit the society," Wei said. "My company didn't receive a single penny from the government, but provides job opportunities and products. And we're committed in shouldering social responsibilities.”

[...]

"I feel I'm not a pure businessperson. When commercial interests conflict with social duties, I'll definitely place responsibilities ahead," Wei explained. "It's not just me, actually there are a great number of private business owners who have the same philosophy as me."

[...]

In the Sixteenth National Conference of the CPC in 2002, private owners and individual entrepreneurs were labeled for the first time as "Builders of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics".

"My heart was moved when I heard the news," Wei recalled. "I immediately felt my life was fulfilled."

China Daily: Red capitalists keep socialism alive

China Vows 100 Years of Socialism

China's Communist president made an announcement regarding the political liberalization of the country, which was much maligned in the capitalist press. I am very much in favor of much more autonomy for labor unions and political activists in China. An effective and democratic system of workers councils that have rights which supersede the bureaucracy would be very welcome.

Still, it is disingenuous for the capitalist press in the United States or the G8 world to be overly critical of China's one party system. The reality in the U.S. is that we have, in the words of Eugene V Debs one party with two wings - the capitalist party. Debs, the most influential American socialist to date, wrote the following:

As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.

Whether the means of production—that is to say, the land, mines, factories, machinery, etc.—are owned by a few large Republican capitalists, who organize a trust, or whether they be owned by a lot of small Democratic capitalists, who are opposed to the trust, is all the same to the working class. Let the capitalists, large and small, fight this out among themselves.(Debs, 1900)1

Today Xie Tao had the following to say:

"We are still far away from advancing out of the primary stages of socialism," he said. "We must stick with the basic development guideline of that stage for 100 years."

Still, he said that "the socialism system is not contradictory to democracy," adding: "A highly developed democracy and a complete legal system are inherent requirements of the socialist system and an important benchmark of a mature socialist system."2

China is very cautious about the effects perestroika and glasnost had on Russia. I find it encouraging that a country the size of China will continue to try to build socialism, acknowledging that the context of their doing so is highly flawed.

Crisis in Legitimacy

The sky is falling, the sky is falling - or at least the stock market is...

Today we will see whether Wall Street follows the tumble some of the global exchanges, notably Europe and Japan, took today. Notably, Communist China's market posted a 100+ point rebound. This seems to show that socialism is even better at managing stock markets than capitalism (I'm being witty here of course).

It would be too easy to say that the only people affected are the speculative elites. Unfortunately the reality is that many workers in the west have most of their savings tied to equity markets, so a prolonged decline will hurt a lot at a time when we can ill afford it.

Therefore the news that economic ministers in Europe are calling on businesses to share their profits with workers is very encouraging. The Financial Times reports:

European companies must give workers a bigger share of their soaring profit or risk igniting a “crisis in legitimacy” in the continent’s economic model, Germany’s finance minister warned on Tuesday.

Peer Steinbrück’s comments were part of a concerted attempt by Europe’s economic leaders in Brussels to persuade companies to share profit with workers as well as shareholders.¹

I applaud these leaders for standing up in the face of business might in an extremely hostile climate and stating the truth - we the workers create the wealth of the world and deserve our rightful share. Of course we should not have to rely on meek government officials to go begging for business to behave in an ethical manner.

The gains of the working class have been fought for and died for by countless nameless agitators and organizers. These heroes of the past must be honored by a new generation who will stand up and demand the wealth they create be given back to them - reversing the current trend.

Other references: 2

First Labour Union Formed at Chinese Wal-Mart Store

Illustration from DesignWorks

From the AP, via KFSM:

BEIJING -- An official Chinese news agency says the first labor union at a Wal-Mart store in China has been formed following a lobbying campaign by the country's official union group. The official Xinhua News Agency reported today that 30 employees at a Wal-Mart store in the southeastern city of Quanzhou, in Fujian province, voted Saturday to form a union.

The news agency said a 29-year-old employee named Ke Yunlong was elected chairman of its seven-member committee.

The official All-China Federation of Trade Unions has been lobbying Wal-Mart tores Inc. for two years to organize employees of its 60 stores in China. The federation had accused the company of obstructing its efforts.

Wal-Mart opened its first Chinese outlet in 1996 and says it has 28,000 employees in China. It says it plans to add 18 to 20 stores on the mainland this year. Phone calls today to Wal-Mart's China headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen weren't answered.

Revered Chinese Author Ba Jin Dies at 100

Revered Chinese Author Ba Jin Dies at 100
Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — Ba Jin, one of China's most revered communist-era writers
who attacked the evils of the pre-revolutionary era in novels, short
stories and essays, died Monday of cancer in Shanghai, the official
Xinhua News Agency said. He was 100.

Best known for his 1931 novel "Family," the story of a disintegrating
feudal household, Ba Jin also translated the Russian writers Ivan
Turgenev and Pyotr Kropotkin.

Ba Jin worked well into his later years writing essays and compiling
anthologies of his work.

He was part of the young intelligentsia in the early 20th century that
looked to Western philosophies — Marxism, anarchism, and liberalism — for
solutions to China's backwardness and social inequality.

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