NEWS & LETTERS, December 2009
Young girls fed to China's sweatshops
Leslie T. Chang, a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, writes in a highly readable book, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (Random House, 2008), of her experience in the factory town of Dongguan, China. Ms. Chang lived a decade in Dongguan, following the lives of two 16-year-old factory girls who worked in a tennis shoe factory, migrating there from the countryside. They are part of the biggest migration of peoples into an urban area in history--an estimated 130 million.
Hundreds of factories dot Dongguan. Entrepreneurs exploit the labor power of girls, some as young as 14. Working conditions are terrible, with young women often working around the clock for low pay that keeps them in a life of misery.
Chang follows the lives of two factory girls. Her theme is the fast-moving pace of China's industrialization and its effects on these individuals. It is young women who are the backbone of producing goods that have become the inexpensive consumer products of the world. What makes this story unique is that it singles out great changes occurring in individuals who are in the midst of China's "industrial revolution."
Chang, who knows the language, lived alongside the girls and read the diary of one, and was able to give an insightful human feeling to their lives. Perhaps the biggest change the girls underwent was their feeling of independence and ability to better their economic standing by hard work.
To better themselves they had to utilize their feminine wiles and be able to meet challenges with confidence, even if it meant a false confidence. Along with a better materialistic life, the girls lost a lot of traditional qualities their families held dear back on the farm.
Chang brought into this migration tale from the farm to the factory a parallel story of her own family's migration to the U.S. She saw the same work ethic in her parents that she sees in the factory girls.
Factory Girls is an enlightening look at working girls in China. It is a humanistic look at their living conditions, their hopes and dreams, and their striving to achieve a better life in the midst of the fast changing economic conditions of China.
--Nobu
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